Ingrid Lukas

Born on 20 August 1984, is an Estonian singer-songwriter, pianist and composer. Ingrid studied piano three years at the ?Tallinna Muusikakeskkool?, before she went to Switzerland in 1994. Since 1994 she has been living in Zürich. In 2007 she graduated from the HMT Zürich (Hochschule für Musik und Theater) as a vocal teacher of pop-jazz music.

Since 2007 she has been having her own band including Céline-Giulia Voser, Michel Gsell and Patrik Zosso, which has not kept her from being a guest vocalist with the group ?Metamorphosis? or more recenty singing at Schauspielhaus Zürich in children productions, such as ?Peter Pan? (2005), and ?Cinderella? (2007) as well as Nik B?rtsch's RONIN Monday concert series. Ingrid Lukas teaches singing but has been a singer-songwriter since 2000.
Ingrid's music career started at the age of five years and three days, on August 23rd 1989, exactly 50 years after the Hitler-Stalin pact was signed, while she joined hands and sang along with millions of people who demanded freedom and independence for the Baltic states. The so-called Baltic chain was an uninterrupted 600-kilometer human chain joining the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
Since that day, it had been clear for Ingrid, that she wanted to make singing her purpose in life. Exactly on that day she set out on her music career, first by playing the classical piano at the Tallinn music school and after emigrating to Switzerland she kept up her musical interests despite her enthusiasm for competitive swimming. In 2000, she composed her first set of pop-soul songs. To gain more profound knowledge and professional depth, she took up her studies of Music at HMT Zürich in 2002. By focusing on arrangement and composition the crucial question arose as to what one?s musical identity actually was. Thus, not surprisingly she made this quest the subject of her diploma paper: ?How to Find One?s Own Style in Music?. Her research brought her closer again to the Estonian oral history of music. Thus folklore and the archaic simplicity of the Estonian singing culture with its characteristic repetitions have come to influence her compositions to this day. With times she has increasingly more often been writing songs in Estonian. The music of such composers and artists as Arvo P?rt, Bj?rk, Bugge Wesseltoft, Sidsel Endresen and Nik B?rtsch have influenced her work so far.
Yet another questions is of great importance to her, both with regard to music and life in general, namely ?How little is enough??. By this, she means to aim at a strict restriction to substance (reduce to the max). The way she is to reach this is by acribic revision, by working and reworking on what is there and thus stripping it off all unnecessary until the simple essence reveals itself.