Noemi Liba’s music is never less than stunning. Soulful vocal phrasing, soaring live string arrangements, stark medieval horns, intricate eastern percussion, loops and samples ~ her music is a tapestry of beauty, poetry, daring arrangements and striking beats. Ornate, yet still raw, this is definitively original, visual and evocative music.
Freefall, the remarkable debut ep from Australian singing sensation Noemi Liba, was testimony to an eclectic musical apprenticeship, a life at the edge of the musical frontier.
Noemi is now following up with her long awaited first full length album, See, Saw, mixed by three times Grammy winner John Hudson. More an epiphany than a collection of songs, See Saw is a daring, emotive, yet seamlessly woven juxtaposition of an enormously eclectic array of musical cultures and serves as a spellbinding platform for her mesmerizing live shows.
Born and raised in Melbourne, Australia, Noemi has been performing solo and in ensemble since 1992, delivering an enthralling, inimitable mix of pop, jazz, Middle Eastern-flavoured music across Australia, the U.S.A, Canada, Asia and the Middle East.
Early in her career, armed with a guitar, a bag of songs, and her beguiling, honeyed voice, Noemi roamed the Australian festival circuit (Port Fairy Folk Festival, Adelaide Fringe Festival), garnering popular and critical acclaim as a distinctive and gifted singer- songwriter. She then returned to formal jazz training, completing an Advanced Diploma of Music Performance (Jazz and Contemporary) at NMIT, Melbourne in 2002 and has studied with Iraqi master Oud player, violinist and composer Yair Dalal, and Frank Zappa pianist Allan Zavod, who has described Noemi as “One of Australia’s true innovative talentsâ€.
This formal training has complemented Noemi’s deeper musical odyssey, an inner searching for her muse. Born into a Jewish family – her grandfather was a classical tenor singer, her mother a manager for jazz musicians, Noemi travelled the Middle East (Israel, Jordan, Egypt) from an early age in search of her heritage, and her future, both culturally and musically.
Among her broad influences, Noemi counts female vocalists Bjork, Kate Bush and Billy Holiday, punk and new wave bands of her youth such as Laurie Anderson, Frank Zappa and The Cure, Early Music of Medieval Europe, trance trail-blazers The Orb, and jazz icons such as Miles Davis and Wayne Shorter. Indeed, jazz horn lines undeniably influence the string lines arranged by Noemi on her albums.
The release of her Freefall EP placed Noemi on the world stage, leading to collaborations with other international performers, such as World-renowned Biennale artist Heri Dono, and with Yair Dalal and the Chicago Oriental Orchestra, in 2005.
In a series of her own solo performances, Noemi and her string trio performed a series of ‘Underground’ performances together with cutting edge 3dimensional projection team eness, 2007 (Melbourne). She then moved to New York where she worked with mentors such as Brad Albetta (producer, Martha Wainright), Mark Helias (Don Cherry, Anita O’Day) and with Ayelet Rose Gottlieb (John Zorn, Mycale).on her recording project and performances.
In addition to her music pursuits, Noemi, has a degree in philosophy and literature and has published a book of poetry. Noemi is currently based in Melbourne, Australia, and is back and forth regularly to her second home, New York.