Cæcilie Norby (born 9 September 1964) is a Danish jazz and rock singer. She has performed as part of the bands Street Beat, Frontline, and One-Two. Since the mid-1990s, she has worked as a solo artist.
Career
Norby was a founding member of the band Street Beat in 1982. For two years, she was a member of the jazz-rock band Frontline. From 1985 to 1993, she worked with singer Nina Forsberg in the rock band One-Two.
In 1995, she turned to jazz and released her first solo album for Blue Note, titled Cæcilie Norby. The self-titled debut recording was co-produced by Niels Lan Doky as was followed by her album My Corner of the Sky in 1996. My Corner of the Sky prominently featured American musicians, including David Kikoski, Joey Calderazzo, Terri Lyne Carrington, Scott Robinson, Randy Brecker, and Michael Brecker. The repertoire for both albums included only a few jazz standards like "Summertime" or "Just One of Those Things". Instead, she and Lan Doky arranged classic popular songs for a jazz line-up, like "Wild Is the Wind", "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" and a track by Curtis Mayfield on the first album, "The Look of Love", "Life on Mars", "Spinning Wheel" and "Set Them Free" by Sting on the second. For both albums Norby also wrote lyrics to compositions by Randy Brecker, Chick Corea, Don Grolnick and Wayne Shorter.The track "African Fairytale" on My Corner of the Sky is actually Shorter's "Footprints", first recorded in 1966 on his album Adam's Apple and on Miles Davis' Miles Smiles of the same year. Both albums gained wide attention and five-digit sales, especially in Denmark and also in Japan.
Her third album Queen of Bad Excuses, released in 1999, was a collaboration between her and Lars Danielsson, who already played bass throughout My Corner of the Sky.
She released her fourth album First Conversation in 2002, which received a 4.5 star rating from Jazz Music Archives.
Norby turned 60 in 2025 and marked the milestone by releasing a new album titled Sixty. The release was followed with four sold-out concerts at Hotel Cecil.
On July 13, 2025, Norby performed at Bremen Teater during the Copenhagen Jazz Festival.
On September 17, 2025, Norby is set to perform in the Glass Hall Theatre at Tivoli Gardens, accompanied by the Tivoli Big Band under Peter Jensen.
Personal life She was born 9 September 1964 in Frederiksberg, Denmark, into a musical family. Her father, Erik Norby, is classical composer and her mother, Solveig Lumholt, is an opera singer.
Awards 1985: Ben Webster Prize 1996: Best Recording Album in Japan 1997: Simon Spies Soloist Prize 2000: Wilhelm Hansen Music Prize 2010: IFPI's Honorary Award
Discography With Frontline Frontline (1985) Frontlife (1986)
With One Two One Two (1986) Hvide Løgne (1990) Getting Better (1993)
With DR Big Band 2009: Jazz Divas of Scandinavia (Red Dot)
Solo albums YearAlbumPeak positions DEN1995Cæcilie Norby1996My Corner of the Sky1999Queen of Bad Excuses2002First Conversation22004London/Paris (live album)112005Slow Fruit202007I Had a Ball: Greatest & More (compilation album)2010Arabesque232013Silent Ways272015Just The Two Of Us with Lars Danielsson2019Sisters in Jazz with Marilyn Mazur, Hildegunn Øiseth, Rita Marcotulli, Nicole Johänntgen, Lisa Wulff and Dorota Piotrowska2020Portraying2022Earthenya2025Sixty
References
External links Official website