About Me

My name is Nikola Hoff Almenning. I was born in Coesfeld, Nordrhein- Westfalen, Germany, June 1987. My father is German while my mother is Norwegian. I moved to Norway with my mother the summer of 1992, and have thus spent most of my childhood and onwards here. I attended school here in Norway, as well as receiving lessons in my mother tongue and a plethora of musical subjects during the course of the years. My family is a small one; I was an only child for a very long time until I got a brother at the age of eight.

Music has always been a major part of my life. My family seems to be a musical one, as I remember singing and playing with them from an early age, either singing along with my mother accompanied by her guitar playing, or messing around on my grandfather´s electric organ with him in attendance behind me and some very ancient headphones plugged in. I loved listening to him play. As far as I know, I´m the only one who has received some serious tuition in the musical arts; both my grandfather and my mother are autodidacts, as am I when it comes to other instruments like the whistle, the guitar and the ukulele.

My first memories of actively pursuing musical activities, apart from a very unsuccessful venture into the world of children´s gospel choirs which I still hope will sometime be forgotten, are from the time when I started attending school. I joined our school´s marching band in second grade, and was taught to play the piccolo and concert flute. I loved it, and stayed in the marching band about 10 years. After that, I got my own flute and started taking classes at the communal music school in Trondheim.

My first "serious" role on stage was that of the rich lady Schöller in a play about the history of Trondheim. Well, it was a school project, but it left a lasting impression. I remember the huge rococco style dress, the way I would focus on the green exit sign in the back of the hall to avoid getting nervous while singing my very first solo song in a theatre play. I still remember that song, melody, text and all. I felt like a queen. I loved it. The way the stage lights hurt my eyes and almost blinded me when I stood center stage, the applause, the orchestra, the acting... It was great. And I would dare to believe that I would not have become a serious musician if it hadn´t been for that one play.

Time passed after this, of course. I will have to say, unfortunately, that the years after we moved to Norway was an increasingly difficult time for me, due to various reasons. My way of coping was immersing myself in the beauty of music. It helped me a lot, and today I cannot imagine an existance without music. I have tried, and failed. I know now that I need to sing - it´s a basic need, just like the need for food or clothing. It is just like the urge to touch and try to play any musical instrument I might discover hidden in some nook somewhere. This has resulted in a somewhat interesting form of multi- instrumentalism on my part. My mother seems to have discovered this at some time, because there suddenly was a brand new electric piano sitting in our living room one day. And I didn´t have to beg to get a piano teacher. And a few years later I started teaching myself to play the guitar. Again. On my mother´s old guitar from the 1960´s. Then I got a cheap guitar that my aunt didn´t use anymore. It sounded perfectly horrid - the acoustics and the tone were just terrible. To my great surprise, I got an amazing classical guitar for my birthday the following year. And I was hooked, yet again. I discovered the ukulele as I attended Viken FHS in 2007/08. And I couldn´t help myself - it was such a cute instrument, I had to get one. So that is a very crammed and short story about my obsession about musical instruments... let´s get on to the important part, shall we? I think I have kept you waiting long enough anyway.

So, singing. I have, as I´ve mentioned, always ben singing. But it really didn´t occur to me that I should be singing until about 2000 when I joined the Nidaros Cathedral´s Girls Choir (Nidarosdomens Jentekor). I sang there for about three years, and during this time I got "discovered" by a retired opera singer whom, I believe, is an aquaintance of my mother´s ex- husband (a Norwegian man). Following this, I started receiving vocal lessons at TKMK, the communal music school. My singing progressed very rapidly, and only a year or two later I was admitted into the music programme at Trondheim Katedralskole, which I finished with top marks in my vocal exam.

This section is still a work- in- progress. Please stand by as the rest is being written.