Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ellen Radka Toneff was born on June 25, 1952 in Oslo, Norway. She was the daughter of the Bulgarian folk singer, pilot and radio technician Toni Toneff, and grew up in Lambertseter and Kolbotn. She studied music at Oslo Musikkonservatorium (1971–75), combined with playing in the jazz rock band Unis.
From 1975 to 1980 she led her own Radka Toneff Quintet, with a changing lineup including musicians like Arild Andersen, Jon Balke, Jon Eberson and Jon Christensen, among others. From 1979 she cooperated with Steve Dobrogosz, and in 1980 she participated in the Norwegian national final of the Eurovision Song Contest with the song Parken by Ole Paus.
Toneff was awarded the Spellemannsprisen 1977 in the category best vocal for the album Winter Poem, and posthumously received the Norwegian Jazz Association’s Buddypris in 1982. The Radka Toneff Memorial Award is funded with royalties from the albums Fairytales and Live in Hamburg. A biography of her life was published in 2008.
Her 1982 album Fairytales was voted the best Norwegian album of all time. Vocalist Radka Toneff, considered one of Norway’s greatest jazz singers, committed suicide with an overdose of sleeping pills and was found in the woods of Bygdøy outside Oslo on October 21, 1982.
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