Ema Nikolovska – A Portrait

There’s a very impressive video on the internet that not only features Ema Nikolovska, but which she also helped to create: »Farewell to the Earth«. In just eight minutes, the video shows why the singer belongs in the fast lane. In it, she is standing on a small stage in a pub, surrounded by all the hustle and bustle, before a typical bar audience. No one is taking any notice of the young woman with the red beret. But neither does she pay any attention to the chaos around her.

She begins to recite, talking about the impossibility of being someone else, of physically escaping yourself. A fruit machine drones in the background and quiet triplets begin to emanate from a piano. Ema Nikolovska sings the first few lines of Franz Schubert’s »An den Mond«, stumbles over two consonants, then starts a song by Debussy that soon dreamily evaporates into thin air. It continues like this – new scraps of poetry, songs and lieder keep emerging. One of the drinkers occasionally begins to sing along, and at the end, a round of applause starts off hesitantly before intensifying into a rousing cheer.

»She wanted stability and found it in chaos«, it says in the accompanying text – and that, perhaps, describes not only Ema Nikolovska’s personality, but also a complex issue faced by an entire generation of young musicians. How will concert life develop from here? How can the traditional concert format remain interesting to audiences? What role does sustainability play? What kind of transformation is needed to ensure that classical music remains relevant in society?

Ema Nikolovska knows all about this misery; she is young enough that her role models will not be found among the great, established singing stars such as Waltraud Meier, Renée Fleming, Cecilia Bartoli or Elisabeth Kulman. In our fast-paced society, it is simply no longer enough to sing high notes beautifully. Singers these days need to offer something extra. For example: carefully curated concerts and a repertoire that knows no limits. And that’s where Ema Nikolovska comes in. At first glance, her programmes are complex, almost confusing. But when you look and listen more closely, they have so many interconnections, similar moods, themes and intuitively perceptible musical methods to offer that you find yourself emitting ohs and ahs almost every second (only in your mind, hopefully!).

Born in Skopje in Macedonia in 1998, Ema Nikolovska never intended to pursue a career as a singer. She had her first violin lesson when she was four years old. By then, the family had already emigrated to Toronto. Growing up in two very different cultural and linguistic environments shaped who she became. »I’m sure that it strongly influenced my perception of music and sound as an enormous universe. While I explore this universe, I feed my personal database of sound and imagination. And that in turn subconsciously – or even consciously – influences the decisions I make, the risks I take, and how much I bank on and follow my curiosity.«

And so Ema Nikolovska went ahead and followed her curiosity: she took her first singing lessons at the age of 16, by which time she already had a degree in the Violin. It just quickly felt very, very right, she says in hindsight, much more so than the violin. After switching, she didn’t have to wait long for success. She studied singing in Toronto and London, and soon went on to win numerous prizes and awards, including at the ‘s-Hertogenbosch International Vocal Competition in the Netherlands and at the Kathleen Ferrier Awards in the UK.

In 2019 she became a BBC New Generation Artist – a scheme for nurturing young talent that has turbocharged the careers of artists such as Janine Jansen and Igor Levit – and in the following year she became a member of the opera studio of the Staatsoper Berlin. She also quickly made the leap into the premier league as a lieder singer, with performances in the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin and in the Wigmore Hall in London with renowned piano accompanists such as Malcolm Martineau and Wolfram Rieger. Hamburg audiences will also be very familiar with her: in 2021 she made a dazzling impression at the »Song of America: A Celebration of Black Music« festival in the Elbphilharmonie, and in 2022 she is giving her first lieder recital in the Recital Hall as part of the FAST LANE series.

And yet despite all this, she is already thinking about what is to come after this first wave of success on which she’s currently still surfing. She is keen to challenge audiences and question listening habits – with good programmes that bring together contrasting sound worlds. There are no limits, at least not in Ema Nikolovska’s head. These high-quality and unusual programmes have already become her trademark and she has even given masterclasses on the topic. Her aim is to ensure that every member of the audience experiences a minor life-changing moment at least. She is a true believer in the power of music.

Artikel: Renske Steen, last updated: 7.12.2022.
Translation: Seiriol Dafydd