Biography

She’s sung in front of queens and princes and shared stages with superstars of every musical genre - tenors, punks, pop idols and rappers. She’s performed at the Winter Olympics and the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony. And she’s on the biggest-selling film soundtrack of all time.

Defying labels and categories simply to be herself, Sissel is truly a one-off. With her unique voice she can turn her hand to any style of music, from operatic arias and centuries-old classical melodies to traditional folk, modern jazz, pop, punk and hip-hop.

Wherever, whenever and whatever she sings, she shines with a voice as pure and clear as the mountain streams of her native Norway. Unconcerned by categories, styles and the vagaries of fashion, Sissel says simply: “My heart is in beautiful music. Music that touches me.”
Her music has already touched millions. A child star since the age of 11, she is now a national institution in Norway and has sung all over the world, selling six million solo albums since her recording debut at the age of only 16 and featuring on the 30-million-selling soundtrack to Titanic. Somehow she’s also found time to bring up two children along the way.

With a repertoire ranging from Schubert and Chopin to Lloyd-Webber and Morricone, Handel and Bach to Lennon and Lord (that’s Jon Lord of rockers Deep Purple), Sissel was a crossover artist long before marketing men invented the term.

“I like the variety of doing a bit of everything,” she admits. “The style of music is not important to me as long as it has good melodies. Sometimes at concerts I like the music when it is groovy and other times I like when it is haunting. A lot of classical music has that element and folk music has it too.”

Sissel’s new album Into Paradise, recorded In Norway with the internationally-renowned Trondheim Soloists, reflects her passion for music in all its many varied forms. Mozart and Bach rub shoulders with Puccini and Abba jostle for attention alongside Norse folk tales that have been handed down from generation to generation. “Who will it appeal to?” Sissel muses. “People who like beautiful music.”

It’s an album that will be enjoyed equally by classical aficionados and pop fans alike – and especially those who enjoy the growing ‘classical crossover’ style popularised by performers like Russell Watson and Katherine Jenkins, Charlotte Church and Hayley Westenra.

So who is Sissel?

Sissel Kyrkjebo was born in 1969 in Bergen, gateway to the fjords on Norway’s west coast. It’s a place where she has always found her muse. “The Norwegian countryside is my inspiration. I am very proud of Norway and its fantastic nature. All through my childhood we used to go hiking in the mountains every Sunday, whatever the weather.”

Growing up in the Seventies, it was Norwegian and Swedish radio that provided Sissel with her earliest musical influences. “My parents always had the radio on and we would listen to everything: country-and-western, Swedish pop and Ray Charles, Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck. “

Two brothers with a love of rock music provided a counterpoint. “My younger brother listened to Pink Floyd and my older brother was obsessed by Kate Bush. Her album ‘Lion Heart’ was the first record I ever bought - I liked the fact that she was trying to do something nobody else did, and I liked that she had her own style. In fact,” smiles Sissel, “she sings a little bit like me with that high voice.”

Her next idol would be Barbra Streisand but by then Sissel had discovered classical music, albeit by accident. “My parents bought one of those mail-order music compilations which included two two albums of classical music,” she recalls. “They had never listened to them and when I was six or seven I found them on the shelf and played them for the first time.”

When she was only nine Sissel joined a children’s choir under a New Zealand-born conductor and stayed with them for seven years. “That was my musical education. We sang everything – classical and jazz and even Maori songs. People said we sounded like an angels’ choir because we had this very clean pure sound, almost like an English boys’ choir.”

The choir gave church concerts and gave the young choristers their first taste for travel when they were invited to perform in England. But Sissel was already starting to stand out from the crowd. At the age of 11 she won a talent competition and soon the child prodigy was becoming a local celebrity, with articles about her appearing in the regional newspapers.

At 14 she made her television debut in another choir on a children’s show, and she went on to become a popular TV performer with a repertoire including Streisand’s You Don’t Bring Me Flowers.

Sissel’s biggest break came at the age of 16 when she was invited to sing during the intermission of the 1986 Eurovision Song Contest staged in her hometown of Bergen. Millions saw her sing snippets from a number of native Norwegian songs and, as a result, she turned professional. Her first album was released when she was 17. “It was pop and folk crossover but nobody called it crossover in those days because no one had thought of the term yet,” she recalls.

Sissel became a national star overnight. Her self-titled debut album sold a record 300,000 copies in Norway (pop. 4.2 million), producing several hit singles including a Norwegian version of Nana Mouskouri’s Only Love. But she turned down invitations to perform all over Europe “because I was still at school and I wanted to finish.”

Collecting various awards, including the Norwegian equivalent of a Grammy, her fame spread when she graduated to Danish television, and her next album – a collection of Christmas favourites – broke her own record by selling more than 500,000 copies.

After school she moved to Oslo and starred in The Sound Of Music as Maria. Later stage roles included a Scandinavian version of The Little Mermaid and a Norwegian production of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt with music by Grieg.

A rich and varied career spanning almost 20 years has included singing the Olympic hymn at the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, representing Norway at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, and performing at the first Christmas concert in Moscow with the great tenors Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras.

Domingo later invited her to sing at his Christmas concert in Vienna, viewed on TV by millions across Europe, and recorded Ave Maria as a duet with Sissel in 2002, a tune she would re-record a year later with Welsh tenor Bryn Terfel (and a third time, solo, for a Japanese car commercial!).

She has given gala performances in front of both Prince Charles – twice – and Queen Margrethe II of Denmark and shared stages with superstars such as Celine Dion, Sting, Moby and Charles Aznavour; she’s sung at Carnegie Hall with The Chieftains and appeared twice on David Letterman’s talk show in New York.

Other collaborators in Sissel’s star-studded working life have included pop legend Neil Sedaka, jazz star Diana Krall and crossover favourite Josh Groban, as well as unlikely duets with Danish punk band Sort Sol (Black Sun) and rapper Warren G – the latter producing a hit single across Europe.

In 1996 Sissel was asked by composer James Horner, who had heard her singing a Norwegian folk song, to contribute the haunting, ethereal vocal tracks for his soundtrack to ‘Titanic’. The film went on to become the most popular of all time and the soundtrack, although best-remembered for Celine Dion’s hit single My Heart Will Go On, sold some 30 million copies worldwide.

Since then Sissel has been involved in more film history, singing all over the world in Howard Shore’s Lord Of The Rings Symphony concert tour. Shore had originally envisaged three solo singers but so versatile is Sissel that she was able to sing all three roles – soprano, mezzo and boy-soprano. She has also contributed stand-out songs to the soundtracks of The Adventures Of Pinocchio (1996), including a duet with Brian May, the Irish drama Evelyn (2002), and Vanity Fair (2004).

Away from the stage and studio, Sissel was married for 11 years to Danish entertainer Eddie Skoller, the pair becoming one of Scandinavia’s most popular celebrity couples and producing two daughters, Ingrid and Sarah, now aged nine and six.

“I don’t think I can focus on any one particular style because I just love singing,” says Sissel. “I love all kinds of music. And as long as it suits my voice I will sing it. I feel very privileged and lucky to be doing this, I really do. And I have so much joy. If the joy ever disappears, that will be the time to stop.”

That time, you sense, is a long way distant. The future for Sissel is only just beginning.