About Annette

March 22, 2008 - Artist's Biography

Annette Cantor is a performer of improvised vocal music and an established recording artist. In her performances she creates at once ethereal and passionate vocals, fusing East Indian flavors with classical European Musical Traditions, and particularly Gregorian Chants. Her voice is soothing and expressive, and she accompanies herself with the East Indian tambura and the violin.

Her music addresses ancient themes which are relevant for us today: The mystical feminine is honored in her CD “Songs to the Goddess”, while the CD “Adoro Te” features improvisations on ancient Gregorian Chants set to Balinese gongs and Indian tablas.

She appears in concerts throughout the United States and in Europe, sings for blessings and art installations be it in nature, in art galleries or in concert halls.

She collaborated with one of the founders of New Age music, C.G. Deuter, with whom she has recorded 4 CD's and appeared in several memorable concerts. In a two year collaboration with Shanti Shivani, she experimented with Gregorian Chants meeting East Indian Dhrupad. The CD “Sacred Fusion” emerged from this successful musical partnership. For her solo evenings with Improvisations on Gregorian Chants she has been joined by accomplished musicians like the drummers Geoffrey Gordon, Jeffrey Lidke, Tobias Roberson and Gregory Gutin. The cellists Michael Kott and Lory Pollina, American Indian flutist Patrick Shendo — Mirabal, sound artist Sydney Davis and renown healer/poet/musician Sudama Kennedy.

Joining her voice with dancers and installation artists, she participated in the “Resonant Wave Festival” in Berlin in May 2002. She performed for the installation “In the presence of absence” by Helmut Löhr and Harriet Bart at the Center for Contemporary Art and Evo Gallery in Santa Fe 2003, as well as for the instellation “score for a space” by Helmut Löhr at Claudia Marr Gallery 2007.

Her deep love for poetry has been expressed in evenings together with distinguished, contemporary writers and poets like: Donna Thomson, Jane Hirshfield, Drew Dellinger, Roger Housden as well as the scholar and inspired presenter of Rumi Poetry, Coleman Barks.

Annette has been performing as a singer and as a violinist since her childhood in Germany. She trained at the Vienna Academy of Music, Austria, where she spent 6 years immersing herself in the world of Western Classical music. In 1985 she moved to New York City, where she explored modern dance and became a movement therapist - Alexander Technique - with a private practice and workshops in the US and Europe, experimenting in her singing with sound and movement as a path of meditation and healing. She moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1993 for the birth of her first daughter, Leah, and gave birth in 1996 to her second daughter, Naomi, using sound during the birth process. Her singing is an integral part of her spiritual practice and her path as a sound artist.

“Annette Cantor's voice is literally divine. She brings song and music to a realm of beauty that is like none other I have ever experienced. Whether singing to a thousand listeners or one, you cannot help but be moved and healed by her presence and voice.” Roshi Joan Halifax