Vanessa Isobel Black (Visobel Black) is an Australian–British composer, singer, violinist, visual artist, and tarot reader based in Oslo since 2017. Classically trained in violin and voice, she holds a Bachelor of Composition from the Sydney Conservatorium — including studies at the Hochschule für Musik, Freiburg — and a Master’s in Music from Western Sydney University, where she also taught and lectured on feminist aesthetics. 

Guided by a relentless curiosity, she has worked across a wide range of styles – from orchestras, choirs, and chamber ensembles to internationally touring doom metal band Lycanthia, folk-punk, and experimental theatre – with an interest in dissolving boundaries between genres. In Norway, her work has included solo performances at the Emanuel Vigeland Museum, composing and performing for Grusomhetens Teater, and co-founding the performance collective, Carnie Cabooze.

Drawing on feminism, trauma, nature, and folklore, she merges sound, movement, text, and visual art into immersive narrative worlds where memory, myth, and magic meet. As a survivor of abuse, alongside countless others, both her art and music aim to tell the stories of lost, hidden and silenced voices, with a particular focus on women, trauma, and abuse. For Black, it’s the process of evolving and shapeshifting through life, as well as the reclamation of power and autonomy that was once lost or stolen. Her compositions and improvisations explore the spatial, physical, and emotional force of reverb, interpreting vibration as a ghost performer — an unseen alchemist unveiling hidden conversations. She is currently creating electroacoustic works, interactive installations, and music for soloists, vocal groups, and chamber ensembles, with recent commissions from NeoQuartet and SISU Percussion Ensemble. 

As a performer, she thrives on letting her interests run wild, inviting worlds to collide. Her visual art practice runs parallel to her music, with a particular focus on life drawing. Working in the immediacy of charcoal, she translates feeling into gesture — a raw, tactile articulation of how she experiences the world. Similarly, while her work as a tarot reader stands alone, it often plays a role in her music and compositions, especially where stories of women of myth are involved. 

Head back to the main page to see how you can book me, purchase from me, commission me, or work with me in different ways. 

Visobel ✨