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Heather Nova

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Heather Nova is a singer-songwriter and poet based in Bermuda.

Heather Nova was born Heather Allison Frith on July 6, 1967 in Bermuda. The family on her father's side is one of the oldest in Bermuda, with their history on the island going back 300 years, while her mother is of Canadian origins. Heather spent most of her childhood with her family (including one sister, Susannah, and one brother, reggae singer Mishka) on a 40-ft boat built by her father, where the Friths spent most of the 1970s and part of the 1980s, sailing up and down the Atlantic and Caribbean waters and coasts.

Heather started playing guitar and violin at a very early age, writing her first song when she was 12. Her family relocated to New England where she attended the Putney School in Putney, VT. Following her graduation in 1983, Heather enrolled at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where she majored in film in 1989. She also sat in on poetry classes, and wrote music to go with her student films, as well as keep writing music.

After graduating from RISD, Heather moved briefly to New York City (where she unsuccessfully tried to interest some major labels in a demo), before moving to London, England, a place she called home for twelve years (she already had British citizenship due to her Bermudian origins). In 1990, she released her first recording, an EP called "Heather Frith" — she had not yet changed her name by then. The name change came a year or so later , when she chose a name that would be easily pronounceable in every European language, "Nova".

The new name debuted in 1993 with her second EP Spirit in You and her first full album, the critically acclaimed Glow Stars. The success of the album led her to record and release her first live album, Blow, the same year, which she supported by a tour of Europe. A year later in 1994 she released what many consider to be her finest work to date, the emotional yet jagged album Oyster, for which she toured for almost two years. Another live album, Live from the Milky Way, was released in 1995. The long-awaited follow up to Oyster was released in 1998, entitled Siren, after which she joined Sarah McLachlan and others on the North American Lilith Fair, which is a music festival with only female performers.

After the release of Siren and a massive world tour to promote the record, Heather took a break while various television show and film soundtracks licensed some of her songs and her record company (Sony Records/The WORK Group) released various singles from the album, which received only moderate play on America's MTV2, Europe's MTV and Canada's MuchMusic and on mainstream radio, although she was popular on college radio. Also during this time, she recorded a version of the often covered traditional song Gloomy Sunday, for the German WWII feature film drama Ein Lied von Liebe und Tod (released under the International title Gloomy Sunday) and released yet another live album, "Wonderlust", in 2000.

Over the years, Heather has written and recorded over a hundred songs. With the release of South (2001), she returned to the international spotlight with an appearance on the soundtrack of the John Cusack movie "Serendipity", a couple of music videos, and a collaboration with Swedish technopop band Eskobar, for a song called "Someone New", also released as a video, which proved so popular that it was played primarily on America's MTV, not just MTV2 (which is normally reserved for less-popular songs). Storm, Heather's fifth studio album, was released in late 2003 on Big Cat Records, like her latest record "Redbird" released in 2005.

In December 2005, Heather Nova released Together As One, an EP supporting the Bermuda Sloop Foundation. The EP was only available in Bermuda shops and from the fan-run websites, HeatherNova.Net and HeatherNova.De.

She self-published the sorrowjoy in 2002; it is a 72-page book of her poetry and drawings. the sorrowjoy CD was released in March 2006, which featured Heather Nova reading the poems from her book set to ambient music. The album was only available at concerts on the Intimate Evening tour and from the fan-run websites, HeatherNova.Net and HeatherNova.De.

Heather lives in Bermuda with her husband, music producer Felix Tod, and their son Sebastian.

Contents

Discography

The cover of 2005's Redbird
Enlarge
The cover of 2005's Redbird

Albums

Singles and EP's

Books

External links

 

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