Hadar Noiberg

Since arriving in New York City at age 21, flutist, composer and arranger Hadar Noiberg has established herself as a major force in the Cuban, Jazz, and World music scenes. With a language that transcends her Middle Eastern roots, she fuses styles seamlessly, distinguishing herself as both innovative and highly skilled.

Hadar’s beautiful latest CD, “From the Ground Up”, is a perfect excuse to host her as our Featured Artist of the Week.

1) What or who inspired you to want to be an artist?
The freedom of expression was always appealing to me in being an artist and an improviser. One of the things that were the most magical to me in music was that it’s an art form that you can share with other people. It’s like communicating on the highest possible frequency.

2) What was your creative journey that has brought you to where you are in your career today?
My creative journey has always been asking questions: Where do I come from? What’s the next step? How can I be the most authentic I can right now and bring my true self to the table. There’s also a part in me that like to push genre boundaries so I was always creating from all of my different musical worlds and inspirations which brought me to do the kind music I do now and with a trio with flute, bass and drums.

3) What do you need as an artist today?
Time and space. The more time and space I have in myself for creativity the happier I am, so I’m in constant search and understanding of what my responsibilities are, as an artist, and what I can relinquish.

4) What creative project are you working on now?
Well, my trio’s new CD just came out LAST MONTH! This is very exciting to me. I feel very proud of this album and I’ve made it with people whom I love as musicians but are also my friends. My trio members are the fabulous Haggai Cohen Milo on the bass and Allison Miller on the drums and i invited Anat Cohen on the clarinet and Yotam Silberstein on the guitar to be guests on the recording. I’m working now on new music for the trio, including more work with affects and loops.

5) Where do you see yourself and your career in 10 years?
In ten years I see myself after my 7th album, touring with my band internationally. I also collaborate with other artists and tour with them as well. I arrange and musically direct some albums for singers (I love working with singers) and I write songs for them as well. I give master classes internationally for classical musicians as well as improvisers about music, freedom, expression and improvisation as well as special seminars about extended flute techniques and using effects and loops. I was nominated for a grammy, maybe even won one. I choose the projects that interest and move me and I make a great living only from making my art.

6) What does it mean to you to be an Israeli artist?
It means that I grew up in a certain way: listening to the music that was around me, eating the food that was around me, smelling the special scents that were around me and so all of these things and more are a big part of who I am. It means that, like me, my art has a bit of “chutzpah”. I love the Israeli culture and I feel it’s so diverse and colorful that I keep discovering different parts of it in myself and I’m now certain that whatever music I write or play, the ‘Israeli’ voice in me will always come through and shine through my music.

7) What does it mean to you to have an organization like the America-Israel Cultural Foundation supporting Israeli culture in the past 75 years?
I love collaborating with the AICF. As an adolescent living in Israel, their scholarship was very helpful to me. Now I feel like we’re working together- we, as established artists, give AICF a good name by becoming better at what we do and spread their name around the world, and they’re doing the great work of connecting Israeli artists with each other as well as exposing them to the Jewish and Israeli communities around the world.