Mathilde Santing

Dutch singer Mathilde Santing, born Mathilde Eleveld, followed an atypical path that began in indie rock circles before shifting toward jazz-inflected covers of songs by other artists and later extending into mainstream musical theater. Her reputation rests largely on her understated, emotionally detached interpretations of material from songwriters seldom tackled by women, among them Todd Rundgren, Tom Waits, John Cale, and especially Randy Newman, who once characterized her 1993 album Texas Girl and Pretty Boy as “some of the very best recordings I know of my work.” Since entering the music scene in 1982, she has collected numerous honors from the European music industry. Openly lesbian, she released a reinterpretation of the Jimi Hendrix classic under the altered title “Hey Joan.”

Born in 1958 in Amstelveen near Amsterdam, Santing worked as a solo performer and band member from 1972 through 1981, notably providing backing vocals for the respected Amsterdam group the Tapes. Her debut solo release, a 1982 mini-album of standards, appeared in both seven- and nine-track editions. Not long afterward she opened for Newman during one of his Dutch engagements. Although the mini-album eventually earned gold certification, she chose an entirely different direction for the follow-up, Water Under the Bridge, replacing the standards with a subtly arranged collection of original songs written chiefly with bandmates Ralf Hermsen and Dennis Duchhart. Many listeners still regard this record as her finest achievement, yet its 1986 successor, Out of This Dream, blended covers with originals, after which she largely ceased writing her own material.

She made her musical-theater bow in 1997 with the stage production Joe: The Musical and, in 1999, appeared to embrace mainstream entertainment by serving as opening act for Shirley Bassey on two concerts. That same year her cover of the Black song “Wonderful Life” became a hit. In 2003 she toured with the Dutch-language cabaret-style production The Nine Lives of Mathilde Santing, rich in autobiographical detail, and the next year joined several other Dutch artists on the benefit single “Song for Beslan,” recorded for victims of the terrorist attack on a Russian school. Later in 2004 she conducted a master class on Dutch television that featured a number of former soap-opera performers. In 2005 she was also among the Dutch vocalists who contributed to a benefit single for victims of the Asian tsunami.