Rita Engedalen is often referred to as Norway’s Queen of the Blues. Engedalen creates and performs her own music and is thoroughly genuine.
Chapels And Bars are Rita Engedalen’s 4. album. Of her previous albums Engedalen has won the Norwegian Grammy award for the album “Heaven Ain’t Ready For Me Yet” and she was also nominated for a Grammy for her last album, “The Tree Still Standing”.
Rita Engedalen has built a large audience through an impressive series of festival appearances and touring at home and abroad. So it is with good reason that she is often referred to as Norway’s Queen of the Blues. The brand new album Chapels And Bars consists mainly of newly written original material and was released in connection with the Notodden Blues Festival in early August 2011.
Musical guests on the album include names such as Bjorn Berge, Tuva L. Syvertsen (Valkyrien Allstars), Knut Hem (Hem Strengelag, Reidar Larsen) and Margit Bakken (Women In Blues) and the Swedish blues champion Sven Zetterberg. Strinmachine Bjorn Berge also contributes to the album with great guitar playing and his powerful singing on the title song Chapels And Bars. Sven Zetterberg contributes with soulful singing and wonderful harmonica in a version of Rita’s concert favorite Ball And Chain.
The guest list is topped by a gospel choir from Mississippi. It was a dream come true when Engedalen traveled to Mississippi and recorded the song “Holy Land” with Coahoma Community College Choir. All these wonderful guest appearences contributes to make Chapels And Bars Rita Engedalen’s most varied and consistent album release to date.
In 2010 Rita Engedalen was awarded the prestigious honor Notodden Blues Festival Blues Award. In 2010, Rita also received the prestigious “Gammleng Prize” awarded by the Fund for Performing Artists in Norway. During this year’s Kongsberg Jazz Festival Rita Engedalen, as the second woman in history, was awarded “Kongsberg City of Merit”.
We can smell new awards a mile away for the album Chapels And Bars.
