Isabelle Grussenmeyer

Biography

New songs for children resound
Evoking in Alsatian merriment unbound
Stories that joy to our hearts bring
and invite us all to dance and to sing

Isabelle welcomes you to her children’s universe!

Isabelle composes music, and writes and sings songs in Alsatian, her native language. She sang her first children’s songs with her great grandmother. Thereafter, she discovered René Egles and his songs for children. When she was 11 years old, Isabelle had her stage debut with the renowned singer and songwriter.

Isabelle’s ear-catching tunes and boundless enthusiasm for the Alsatian language are contagious and have children singing along in no time. Her songs bring humorous figures to life and speak to themes that children are confronted with in their daily lives. Some of her songs animate to shake and dance, while others lead to a poetical dreamworld.

There are songs for toddlers and songs for older children as well. These new songs are meant for all children who speak Alsatian, and, importantly, also for those who wish to learn to understand and speak the dialect.

Isabelle presents Alsatian as a gateway to neighboring languages and draws as well parallels to German and English.

With Jean-Pierre Albrecht
Isabelle has developed her repertoire of children’s songs together with singer-songwriter Jean-Pierre Albrecht. They have already jointly written and composed more than 80 songs and produced four CDs: „Kinderspring“, „Kindergarte“, „Kinderzitt“and „Kinderwelt“.

Isabelle and Jean-Pierre give workshops for children to teach them new Alsatian songs. They offer as well a bilingual production, the Spectacle Kinderspring, which they have performed at the Festivals Summerlied and Rheinfest, among others. (For current information, see the section Infos Pro.)

With Gérard Dalton
Gérard Dalton is a French singer of children’s songs. He invited Isabelle and Jean-Pierre to take part in the project „Les Alsa’comptines”.

« Les Alsa’comptines » is the name of a combination double CD and book with songs and rhymes for children in French and Alsatian. It is also the title of a performance that has been staged since spring of 2014. (For current information, see the section Infos Pro.

In Schools
Under the auspices of her mandate Langue et Culture Régionales, Isabelle visits the schools in Alsace every week to teach the children songs in Alsatian and to help them prepare for school festivals.

In collaboration with the festival Summerlied, Isabelle accompanies school classes to the performances of „Summerlied fer d’Kinder“. In 2012, these took place in Schweighouse-sur-Moder and at the Alsace Regional Council in Strasbourg. although in 2014 in Sélestat and at the Ecomusée in Ungersheim.

Kika video clips
Isabelle has also produced a couple of videoclips with the German television network KIKA. These have featured the songs “Tannebaum verziere mir” and “E Prinz kummt ùf sim Ross” and were broadcast on the program “Singas Musik Box”.

Lullabies CD
The singer-songwriter took part in the competition sponsored by the Office pour la Langue et Culture d´Alsace to produce the CD “Liedle zuem traïme”, an album of lullabies in Alsatian that were written and sung by musicians from Alsace. The OLCA has produced the album and now distributes it as a gift to newborns.