Nadja Stoller

About me: I am a sponge — I soak up impressions and inspiration from everyday life, from art and literature, and from people and their stories. All of this accumulates in the mysterious reservoirs of my psyche. These reservoirs swell and overflow, and their contents trickle in small streams into the river that is my music. Music is my most personal and direct form of expression: a natural outlet that transforms feelings, thoughts and dreams into songs. I have always seen myself as a vessel, a kind of conduit — not so much the creator as a sentient organ that processes and shapes what it has absorbed. The process is intensely intuitive: impressions arrive from wherever they come, and it feels like my calling to select the most important ones and turn them into music. That is when the real work begins. My second solo album, Earthbound, grew out of a silence — a standstill that at times felt hard to bear. The inspiration that normally surfaced organically no longer came. What followed was a long period of sorting, rejecting, doubting and, at times, despair. The title Earthbound emerged from that evolution. The word’s double meaning stirred something in me: on one hand, earthbound can mean arriving on Earth from elsewhere — a state of suspense in which one can choose to land or to observe from above. On the other hand, it can mean rooted or captive — the feeling of the ground beneath your feet. These two poles will draw me throughout my life, fueling my search for lightness and the yearning to fly, while also anchoring my need for rest, security and roots. The ten songs on this album are the essence of my intense quest between those two poles.

Bern, Switzerland