| Country | 🇳🇴 Norway |
| Birthday | 13 May 1986 |
| Zodiac | ♉️ Taurus |
| Origin | 🇧🇾 Minsk, Belarus |
| Contest | 🇷🇺 Moscow 2009, 🇵🇹 Lisbon 2018 |
| Place | 1st, 15th |
| Points | 387, 144 |
| Alexander Rybak | |
| Alexander Rybak | |
| TikTok | Alexander Rybak |
| Youtube | Alexander Rybak |
Alexander Rybak is a Belarusian-Norwegian singer-composer, violinist, pianist and actor.
Alexander was born in Minsk, Belarus. His father Igor Rybak, a well-known classical violinist who was a part of a Belarusian chamber orchestra. His mother Natalia Rybak, worked as a music journalist and a piano teacher. In early 1990s Rybak family moved in Norway in Nesodden and received Norwegian citizenship after seven years of residing in Norway.
It is not surprising that in such a musical family, Alexander began playing the piano at the age of five, but eventually picked up violin as his main instrument. He became a student at the Barratt Due Institute of Music in Oslo at the age of 10. As a result of his success in the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest he took a break from his bachelor’s degree studies at the institute, but in 2011 he returned to his studies and in June 2012 he graduated from the institute with a Bachelor of Music in violin performance.
Though based in Oslo, Rybak extensively worked on television programmes and on tours in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Sweden throughout the early 2010s, held on to a teen idol status in Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, and to a certain extent in Western Asia. His debut 2009 album, Fairytales, charted in the top 20 in nine European countries, including a top position in Norway and Russia. After two pop albums in 2009 and 2010, Rybak desired to be more of a family-oriented artist, focusing on children’s and classical music alongside and frequently performed with youth orchestras throughout the world.
Alexander is known for his extensive involvement in the Eurovision Song Contest. Representing Norway in the 2009 contest in Moscow, Russia, he won the competition with 387 points—the highest tally any country has achieved in the history of Eurovision under the then voting system—with “Fairytale”, a song he wrote and composed. Winning at the age of 23, Rybak remains the youngest solo male winner of the contest and the only Belarusian-born winner.
Since then Rybak has been involved several times in the contest. He represented Norway again in the Eurovision Song Contest 2018 in Lisbon, Portugal, with the song “That’s How You Write a Song”, winning the second semi-final and finishing in 15th place in the Grand Final. He provided as an opening act to the Grand Final in 2010 and as an interval act in 2012 and 2016. Rybak has frequently provided commentary on the contest, working as a journalist in 2011, as once-off judge on the Belgian preselection in 2016 and as commentator on his personal social media.
In August 2020, Alexander announced that he had enrolled in Columbia College Chicago for an MFA degree in film music composition. Prior to that, he already had experience writing songs for films. His interest in the field was solidified after the positive feedback he received from producers for his song “Into a Fantasy” from the How to Train Your Dragon 2 soundtrack. He was convinced to attend Columbia by Kubilay Uner, director of the film music composition MFA program.  He graduated from Colombia in July 2022.
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