Roni Alter goes wild with new album and tour

Roni Alter has been singing all her life, but the Israeli performer has only gotten around to recording in English now.

By YONI COLLINS
Roni Alter (photo credit: Courtesy)
Roni Alter
(photo credit: Courtesy)
Roni Alter has been singing all her life, but the Israeli performer has only gotten around to recording in English now. The 31-year-old Alter, who rose to local fame following two duets a decade ago with Arik Einstein, will be debuting songs from her first English effort, Go Wild, at two shows in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
“The album really defines me, it’s a collage of my life,” Alter told The Jerusalem Post last week. “If someone listens to it, and listens to the lyrics, they could get to know me really well.”
Alter gets personal on the new record, calling it “an emotional storm.” Despite the mellow sound of the nine tracks, she titled the album Go Wild, due to the emotions she felt while moving away from her home in Israel to Paris, where she’s resided for the past two years.
She said that writing the news songs in English was an unconscious decision.
“I didn’t choose to write it in English, it just came out that way,” she says.
Coming from a musical home, by age 10, Alter was already part of a classical choir and continued her early music career in her high school jazz company, serving as a singer during her IDF stint. Her duets with Einstein included “Pnasei Ha’ir Dolkim Edyon” in 2004 and “Cheyvaron” in 2002; her debut album was released in 2010.
Featured at her upcoming shows at Jerusalem’s Yellow Submarine on January 28 and at the Barby Club in Tel Aviv on Feburary 4 will be a special guest – her father Naftali – whom Alter calls one of her greatest musical inspirations.