Núria Casanova Martí
Singer, choir director and music teacher.
Nuria was born in Catalonia, Spain (20th November 1964), to a very musical family. She began singing in choirs at the age of 8, regularly featuring as a soloist. Having started her formal musical education at 10, by the time she was 18 she decided to study singing, vocal technique and musical interpretation at the Liceo Conservatoire of Music in Barcelona, taking on additional private singing lessons with professional singers as well. In 1987 she graduated in Musicology at the University of Bellaterra in Barcelona.
In 1991 Nuria moved to Auroville, an international city in South India, where she currently resides. There, she continued to pursue music. As a singer she gave various solo and duo concerts in classical repertoire as she had been training. In 2008 she began to explore more jazz and folk music and has since been giving concerts in these genres, collaborating with jazz musicians from Auroville and the surrounding area.
In Auroville, her musical career broadened not only in musical style but also into different areas of musicianship. In 1993 she took on the direction of the Auroville Choir and in 1995 the Auroville Youth Choir, both of which she continues to lead presently. These choirs cover a broad repertoire ranging from classical to popular music and perform yearly in and around Auroville.
A self-taught conductor, Nuria received great help and guidance from conductors that visited Auroville over the years. She also went on to participate in several conducting workshops when going back to Catalonia to visit her family.
As a music educator, Nuria taught music at the Auroville Kindergarten from 1991 to 2006 and at Transition School (a primary school of Auroville) from 1993 to 2015, where she developed a well-rounded music program around singing and the fundamentals of music theory, history, appreciation and practice. She currently gives private one-to-one singing lessons alongside her continued work as a choir director and performer.