Norwegian singer Kristin Amarie’s voice sits somewhere between Enya and Linda Eder. Her music ranges from otherworldly to intimate. She calls herself a citizen of the world and it’s clear that she has embraced influences from her many travels into her sound. Perhaps it’s because in her own words, “I grew up in Norway. So we never really had access to the latest stuff. We were listening, you know, like 10 years later than everyone else.”
One thing Kristin did have access to was live music. “I was so fascinated with musicals and operas. My best friend’s Dad was working at the Norwegian opera and I used to get to go there all the time and be backstage and I would just sing and make up my own tunes and make up my own operas and musicals.”
Composing came naturally to Kristin, “It was just made up stories in my head and then I made songs to go along with it. And I would sing all the parts of course.” When Kristin’s grandmother heard her she was astonished that Kristin was singing “silver threads” which meant really high with freedom. “She used to record me all the time and she would always encourage me.” However, in Norway at that time there weren’t many opportunities for a young Kristin to display her gift. “You didn’t do any show particularly about yourself. You always kind of want to put yourself a little bit down. So even today, it’s very much in me that I’m always a little intimidated. Talking about myself, you know, doing interviews, being on stage performing. I have huge performance anxiety.”
Kristin’s travels started in her own words “inside my head” due to her vivid imagination. “I was just a little kid laying on my grandpa’s lawn and looking up in the sky and seeing the airplanes.” At 12, Kristin traveled with her family to Cyprus. “I just fell in love with it.” Kristin continued to travel throughout the years, though she now calls Cyprus home base.
Despite her early interest in music, Kristin tells us it took years for her to find her way into pursuing it as a career. “I wanted to do music and make it a living but my parents were a little bit worried. ‘This is your hobby, just keep it a hobby, but you’ve got to do something else for a living.’” And so Kristin reluctantly followed their advice. “I worked with other things, like numbers in an office, the things that I really didn’t want to do. But you know, it’s how it goes.”
The desire for music never dwindled and Kristin found her lifelong pastime of making up songs coming back to the forefront. Kristin reached out to producer Alex Salzman who agreed to collaborate on her original songs. Alex was able to create orchestrated arrangements of her music that “blew me away!” Kristin remembers thinking, “Wow, I wrote this. This is my song. Wow, I can do anything now. So you know, it just gave me a real boost and I wanted to do more and more.”
Kristin met New Age pianist and composer David Lanz at a workshop and was drawn to many elements in the music so when her producer suggested she adopt the style, she agreed. However, for Kristin from her earliest years mimicking opera, her interests don’t fit neatly into any one genre – except perhaps classical crossover and that’s only because the boundaries for genre-bending are virtually non-existent.
Now married, Kristin and David began collaborating together and have released various projects. Having such an established musical partner has its benefits and drawbacks. Kristin shares that many automatically assume David is the composer of their material together. “Whatever we would write together, it was always referred to as him writing it.” However, as we’ve seen throughout her life, composition and storytelling have come naturally to Kristin and in fact she has been a great help to David in experimenting with new ideas. In David’s interview with the Mainly Piano blog he says, “She has pulled me out of many ruts I found myself in over the last few years!”
The positives have of course outweighed the negative for this musical power couple. “Since he was already in the industry, I’m quite sure it helped open doors for me as well because, you know, now you have a name and promoters would more easily take you on because people knew David Lanz. And of course, the fact that he plays the piano very well helps because my piano playing was never really great. It was my second instrument. I can play it a little bit, but it’s more difficult for me to compose, if I don’t have someone to just say, ‘Ah, yeah, let’s go here and here. And he will just automatically pick up on it, he’ll play the right chords.’”
The first album the pair released together was Forever Christmas, followed by Silhouettes of Love, Lettere D’Amore and a brand new rendition of Ave Maria that was released as a single in 2023. “It’s very close to my heart. I grew up in church, with my mom and my grandpa, and we’d go to church and we would hear all these songs and they would mostly be beautifully performed. Also in church it just put you know, a mark, it’s part of my heart to to express prayers, which is hopes, which is always searching for something good, for help, or maybe for thanking, which maybe more of us forget to do in the end, but it’s close to my heart.”
Listeners will be excited to hear “Caruso” – a new collaboration between Kristin and American tenor, John Riesen is coming soon. “It’s rarely been done as a duet so we have a new arrangement, and I just love it. So I do it with John, David on the piano and Kurt Bestor, behind the arrangement, beautiful strings, and I hope people will love it as much as we do.” The single is part of a new album project that is set to be released after Christmas.
Kristin’s music is ever evolving but the quality is constant and there is something for everyone within her catalog. Learn more about Kristin and order her music at: kristinamarie.eu
