THEY SAY:

"The most prolific and courageous artist in the Israeli music industry, excelling in her wickedly brilliant lyrics, free spirit and superb songs."

“She’s brutally honest, a crazy combination of Tom Waits and Joni Mitchel with a Janis Joplin edge.”

"Emotionally perfect, Hadara is a one-woman cultural steamroller. She's pianist who plays rock music, a determined iconoclast who’s at once playful and dark-humored—think early Bruce Springsteen meets early Alanis Morrisette."

BUT REALLY SHE IS:

Hadara is a multifarious singer/songwriter, a poet, an author, a spoken-word artist, a columnist and a painter - known for her iconoclastic themes and her unique style of combining intimate honesty, social commentary and heaps of heart-breaking irony. Madly prolific, Hadara released 17 albums (English and Hebrew) and published 3 books (prose and poetry in Hebrew). Elegantly and with a taste for the absurd, she's at once playful and dark-humoured. A determined iconoclast, she's a firm advocate of free speech and free exchange of ideas, challenging dogmas and notions of the current era. 

She lives in Jerusalem. She graduated from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts with honors in Film & Television. At 24 she wrote and directed an independent feature film and single handedly raised her son, Adaam James (a writer, podcaster and journalist living in NY). She kick started her music career at the age of 37 without any relevant experience, fusing genres (folk, funk, blues, indie-pop, jazz, soul and hip-hop), garnering countless accolades. Hadara authored 3 books and received the Smith Awards for best first prose for her book "Rage Against the Eclipse".

Red wine in her hand, wearing her heart on the sleeve - her shows are a venturous journey into her lab of ideas, soul and mind. Brainy and funny, she zips between crushingly personal ballads to astute and cleverly humorous spoken word. She has paved her own niche, juggling different languages and media with sagacity and eloquence.  Coming to her shows, you get the tears and sweat of a true artist. Her piano is drunk. Her mind is wild. There's not knowing what's going to happen, each show is different and unique. She might talk, sing or read a piece she'd written a night before, a spoken word, a poem, a tweet or a few lines from her recent op-ed, anything about anything, politics, religion, identity, science or sex. No taboo excluded. She lets the audience into her most intimate rooms of the heart, and all she asks is that you come as you are and have a drink with her.

For further info, you may E-MAIL here or here: hadaranews@gmail.com

SOME REVIEWS:

"The most prolific and courageous artist in the Israeli music industry, excelling in her wickedly brilliant lyrics (I'm the androgynous lover, I never loved another, but myself, still I need you to love me like nobody else), free spirit and superb songs."(Pnai Plus 2009)

"Coming with her sweet-rough voice and vocal melody gritted with her Dylanesque twist, Hadara effortlessly portays complex emotional situations. The splendid traits that make Hadara an artist with unmistakable personality of her own, and one of the most impressive musicians in the Israeli indie scene, are very much apparent in this album. All her vitues - the free soul, the emotional intensity, the dark humor, the uncensored honesty, the mellodic skill, the agile shifting between black and white, between the world of Soul and R&B and that of the singer songwriter,- are all present and make Hadara's album, like the whole body of her work, a highly soulfull event...with one of the best songs of the year". (Haaretz 2015)

“She’s brutally honest, a crazy combination of Tom Waits and Bob Dylan with a Janis Joplin edge” (Tony Paris, x-editor of Creative Loafing, US, May 2000) 

"Emotionally perfect, Hadara is a one-woman cultural steamroller. She’s a secular Jew living in Jerusalem, a pianist who plays rock music, a determined iconoclast who’s at once playful and dark-humored—think early Bruce Springsteen meets early Alanis Morrisette. Hadara is part of a clique of Israeli artist-intellectuals. She’s carved out a niche for her own art-pop music. With her new hip-hop project, Hadara grows ever harder to label, but the music itself feels like a natural extension of her musical personality— smart and subtle, sleek and smartly produced. (Tablet Magazine, New York 2009 ) 

 “Daringly, with a heart-piercing voice, sharp lyrics, and a gut-shot, superb performance, no one, I’m repeating, no one in Israel sings anything like Hadara. The comparison to Carol King, Joni Mitchell, or Randy Newman is now left behind, for Hadara has established her own individual voice, fresh, sweeping, more accessible than ever.” (HA’IR )  

"Once a singer/song writer in English, she has re-invented herself now as a Hebrew singer/song RAPPER. This is a brave, almost suicidal decision. Listening to her songs, however, one cannot but wonder why she hasn't done it before. Her writing in Hebrew is superb, groovy, sensuous, and accurately observant of the heart and the street. Her new album presents Hadara as a charismatic lady, very direct and complexed, hard and soft, experienced and full of fantasy, one that can wear rappers' glitzy bling-bling while quoting & corresponding with the best of literature; an excellent singe/song-rapper and a real-thing woman, the lioness of the indie scene". (Ha’aretz 2008)

"She owns the very deepest of wisdom on one hand, and the will to fool around on the other. She has a voice that fills you completely, and the honesty and child-like craziness that make you feel that every thing is possible" (Shlomi Shabban,  musician 2008)

 "Every little move of Hadara shines with soul and vitality. In a meaningful and wise decision, she has let the Hebrew language into her amazing pool of ravishing sex-appeal. She has become the first soul singer in the holy language, always searching herself in unknown places, taking the roads less taken. Her Hebrew is outstandingly rich, effortlessly sharp, and is here to stay". ( Walla! 2008)

"In addition to her unique voice and deliverance, Hadara establishes her individual identity through her enhanced self-awareness and self humor not too many musicians own. She's got magic that cannot be denied. Super interesting artist, her album can be fun and easy on the one hand, but it can also take you on a wild and curious journey into the labyrinths of a brave artist, willing to twist and risk" ( Nana 2008)

 "The reason I assumed MOS DEF must have died is that I can't see any other way for him to get reincarnated into a skinny white chick in Jerusalem…I was just surprised by the transition from her predominantly folks-y-ish-esque English material to...umm...This?!  Excellent music; Catchy as hell, impeccably arranged, intensely fun to listen… but above all the real shocker was in what can only be described as the "Bling Quotient."  You simply must appreciate the juxtaposition; on the one hand was a diminutive Jewish woman, dressed like all those former hippies who at one point or another adopted a more refined sense of style but still liked to keep their appearance "real" by strategically accessorizing and adding a few unexpected flashes of color, whereas on the other hand… blasting was a Semitic version of Mary J. Blige's & Gwen Stefani's lesbian love-child - as remixed by DJ Shadow using Bran Van 3000 samples. Weird shit, I tell ya...This album isn't just catchy, it is also excellent music by any definition. This is not the work of a white girl pretending to be ghetto; The music is inspired, the lyrics mellifluous and meaningful and the production is almost perfect. I hate sounding like a raving sycophant, but I can't find the words to describe how much I liked what I heard….For obvious reasons she won't let me keep a copy - she even had the audacity to tell me that I can buy it once it's released. ( Capitalist whore. I thought we were friends?!)  But until then, dearest readers - since I'm one of only a select few to have heard it - you'll have to take my inebriated hearsay evidence as gospel on this one..." -Oren Goldschmidt (Shakin' that ass End of 2007)

 “The rebel girl…HLA is the closest thing here to a real rock-n’-roll girl, in the Joplin-Mitchell-Sixties sense of the word. She’s got a hippish sort of sex appeal and a voice that ranges from whispering through sexual fondling to a scream. She doesn’t recall her own provocative lyrics by heart. She sings and writes about sex, relationships and quirky love. A kind of Feminism mixed with Chauvinism; girl power mixed with a tremendous need for love”. (Yedioth Acharonoth, weekend magazine 5 OCT 2001)

 “Hadara is loaded with a rare sort of honesty, sweeping emotion and magnetizing charisma. She knows how to touch all the right places with precision, grabbing the self-conscious neo chick-chic feminism by its very heart.  Her sexy, be-spelling manipulations justify the appraise she receives.”   (Kol Ha’ir  15, Febuary 2002)

"While flying real high, fully self-aware and wickedly witty of expression, she writes the critique's criticism of her own work, responds to it, and flirts with the audience all at once. She is indeed an Olympic word swinger, and the champion of the heart." (  concert review, YNET 2009)

“She blends her Israelis roots with a wealth of American influences, from Bob Dylan (to whom she pays homage in several songs) to Barry White…She confesses that she prefers to ad-lib while singing, giving her songs a rough, unpolished edge. She has a bluesy, husky voice - at odds with her girlish good looks - as she alternates barely-audible whispers with despairing wails.” (Jewish Telegraph 20/2/04 Glasgow)

 “Hadara is just like Joplin. She may come from Jerusalem but her music is steeped in the western tradition. Sitting at her piano, songs flow effortlessly from her finger tips with a bohemian, bluesy rock style. Everything about Hadara is genuine and honest. Her revealing lyrics give her music an intimate quality, like having a private conversation in a secluded local.”  (Sunday Mail  UK November 3 ‏2002–11–04)

"Hadara has her own, individual and independently unique way of managing herself, continuously refusing to comply with the old rules of the music industry, or rules in general. When you come to her show, you never know what songs she'll play, and even if you know the songs, you might not recognize them in their current version. You never know, too, when the show would end (a good bet would be, when they close the doors). There's a good chance you'd hear a song Hadara had written just a few hours earlier, and that a few of the songs' heroes are on stage, or sitting just next to you, and that Hadara won't hesitate to name names. The surest thing is that Hadara would finish at least one full bottle of wine while at the piano. Conveying a giant artistic and emotional truth, it's impossible not to be totally taken by her great magic. She soars to heights where the best international icons have, in their best moments. She has a unique voice, wisely used. She’s all at once, stormy and soothing, girlish and mature, harsh and vulnerable, cynical and so loving. The most beautiful music around” (Ynet 2005)