Alexander Rybak

Born in Minsk in Soviet Belarus and settled in Norway during his childhood, Alexander Rybak has built a career at the crossroads of pop, folk, soft rock and classical crossover, with the violin as his central signature. Trained at the Barratt Due Institute in Oslo, he first drew attention in Norway in the mid-2000s, appearing on the show Idol and winning the 2006 television competition Kjempesjansen with his song “Foolin’”. In 2007 he appeared in the musical Fiddler on the Roof in Oslo. His career took on a European dimension in 2009 when he represented Norway at the Eurovision Song Contest with “Fairytale”, a song he wrote and composed himself that blends pop songwriting with folk motifs. He then released the albums Fairytales (2009) and No Boundaries (2010), before broadening his repertoire with more acoustic and family-oriented projects such as Visa vid vindens ängar (2011), recorded with Mats Paulson, followed by Christmas Tales (2012) and Trolle og den magiske fela (2015), later adapted for the stage as a musical. Singing in English, Russian and Norwegian, Alexander Rybak has also pursued collaborative work, television projects and tours in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, before returning to Eurovision in 2018 with “That’s How You Write a Song”.