Ingvild Koksvik

NORWEGIAN SINGER, SONGWRITER, ALTERNATIVE POP ARTIST

BIO 

The purity of Norwegian singer-songwriter Ingvild Koksvik’s soprano has a clarity that lifts everyday stress. With her pianist husband, Lars Jakob Rudjord, Ingvild conjures evocative soundscapes that help the listener tune in to the searching serenity within us all.

Haunting and atmospheric, her songs distills the tranquil solitude and majesty of their home in Farsund, on the windswept Lista peninsula, into a very Norwegian soul. “The wind is almost always blowing, and the sea is sometimes kind, sometimes dangerous; there are hundreds of shipwrecks around the coast here.” she says. “I think living here affects the way I make music, and my sound.”

With “Song From the Deepest Sea,” Ingvild Koksvik’s poetic, pagan Nordic soul can at last be understood by English-speaking admirers. While visiting New York to record this, her fourth LP, at Studio G Brooklyn, the Norwegian avant-folk singer-songwriter finally felt free to translate and re-interpret five album tracks from her domestic release of the same name, "Og Sangen kom fra Havet." 

The sad shanty, “Song from the Deepest Sea,” and the lilting fulfillment of  “Home at Last,” both express how the sea and its mystery have changed Ingvild. The lyrical “Mathilde,” tells the local legend of a sailor’s widow with twelve children. Against lethal currents, in her fragile boat, she rowed to a distant market to sell the daffodils she grew and feed her family. Today, centuries later, the yellow flowers still bloom where she once lived.  That intermingling of love, beauty and pain runs through the doomed summer passion of “Something Better,” between lovers who soon turn restless. The exquisite agony of remembering a love that’s gone forever infuses “Just a Strand.”

Ingvild’s most personal music yet, “Songs From the Deepest Sea,” follows albums devoted to the works of poets like Norway’s national bard, Rolf Jacobsen. “Nattåpent”’s (Night Watch) airy singing and ancient folk instrumentation captured the fragile emotions of Jacobsen’s verse, with Ingvild’s own limpid intensity. Encouraged by producer Joe Hamilton, Ingvild has sensitively expanded her sound on her latest album. Her home team is Lars’ keyboards and cellist Katrine Schiøtt. Extra New York flavour comes from Marc Ribot’s guitar on ”Song from the Deepes Sea” and ”Mathilde,” Michael Jinno’s guitar on “Home at Last,” and Tony Maimone’s bass on “Something Better”.

“For this record, I wanted to go into the studio with an open mind,” Ingvild says. “Joel challenged me to try everything out, more and different instruments. It is different, but I didn’t want to sound strange; this music is different, but still I think it sounds like me.”