Rebecka Törnqvist

Rebecka Törnqvist (born 26 April 1964 in Uppsala, Sweden) is a Swedish jazz and pop vocalist. Her debut album A Night like This was released in 1993 and sold over 100,000 copies. She was nominated for five Swedish Grammis in 1993. This was followed by Good Thing in 1995, which got a platinum record and got her a Swedish Grammis Best Female Pop/Rock Artist of the Year in 1996. Most of the albums by Rebecka Törnqvist are sung in English, with the exception of Vad jag vill (2001). She also appears on the Swedish Christmas compilation Jul i folkton (BAM, 2005) in the song Det är en ros utsprungen (III), and on another Swedish compilation Dubbeltrubbel (EMI, 2005) with Resan hem (together with Eldkvarn) and Vad tänker han på. Rebecka Törnqvist was one of the more important artists in raising the interest in young female jazz vocalists in Sweden in the 1990s, though her solo albums weren't pure jazz, but rather pop with heavy jazz influences. Apart from getting a number of followers in this style, she also revitalized the interest for the whole genre. In 1996 she was awarded the Ulla Billquist Scholarship. Rebecka Törnqvist grew up in Africa where her father worked for the Swedish foreign aid organisation SIDA.