Albums

Alter

LP, 2013
Crammed Discs

Alter is a poetic ode to spring, love, the Frisian landscape and the cycle of birth and death. For this album Nynke worked together with the Spanish producer/guitarist Javier Limón, one of the leading producers in the Mediterranean music world. It turns out to be a meeting between two people with a passion for language and poetry, who both know how to capture emotions in music like no other.

Javier Limón: "The Frisian language is very melodic. In Nynke's music you can hear the landscape: the vastness, the long lines and the drama of the overwhelming skies. And then of course there is that exceptional voice; when Nynke starts singing, something happens."

Alter combines a musical base of flamenco rhythms and guitars with the characteristic percussion of composer/slammer Sytze Pruiksma and the sound of the Noardske balke, an old traditional Frisian stringed instrument. The album is recorded and mixed by Salomé Limón in studio Casa Limón (Madrid). During the recordings, musicians Manuel Machado (flugelhorn), Antonio Serrano (harmonica), Rafael Jiménez'El Chispas' (cajón), flamenco singer Saul Quirós and flamenco dancer Belén López make musical contributions.

Nynke writes all the lyrics except for Foarjiersfers (based on a poem by Rutger Kopland), De Brulloft (translated cover of Lhasa de Sela), and Eftereach (written in collaboration with Frisian poet Tsjêbbe Hettinga, whose voice also sounds in the song).

The Brussels-based label Crammed Discs releases Alter internationally, introducing a worldwide audience to Nynke's work and the Frisian language.

Felt by Claudy Jongstra

The red felt cap Nynke is wearing is by artist Claudy Jongstra. She makes a work of felt in different shades of red, dyed with the madder root, a typical Dutch plant. The woven threads in the hood refer to the traditional Frisian head iron and the head of a dragonfly, an animal that symbolizes transformation. Marcel van der Vlugt takes the photos for the album cover and Femke Teussink for the campaign image.

Devotion

Alter means altar (Frisian), change (English) and different (Latin). The album title reflects Nynke's dedication to the preservation of diversity, her transformation into a mother and the many musical wanderings through other cultures.