she describes herself as a "neo soprano", exploring, with her angelic voice, a repertoire at the crossroads of medieval chants, baroque arias, french chansons and ambient music. she wears original haute couture futuristic costumes reminiscent of man ray's avant garde glamour and metropolis, blade runner and fifth element stylized science fiction. she sings in french, english, italian and german.

nicole was born in paris in 1967, but spent her early childhood in algeria, moving later to normandy and paris. she got herself a master in business while studying performance and singing, first in paris at "le petit conservatoire de la chanson de mireille" a famous performing school for french chanson, then in new york in the 90's, where she pursued her vocal studies with canadian soprano, constance lambert.

nicole renaud has performed extensively in the new york music scene (joe's pub, knitting factory, galapagos etc...) as well as at international events and private affairs thoughout world, in the us, italy, france, japan, switzerland, china, lebanon... she has been featured at the davos-world economy forum, fashion shows for jean paul gaultier, betsey johnson, cristiano fissore, the merce cunnigham dance company's 50th anniversary, the philadelphia's museum of art ... for the past few summers, nicole has played in capri, at the luxurious capri palace hotel. she has given numerous recitals on the island including at the villa san michele/axel munthe foundation. in 2004, internationally renowned fashion photographer iris brosch invited her to be part of her venice biennale exhibit "divinita", a tableau vivant.

nicole has been regularly featured live on frédéric mitterrand france culture french national radio's show "ça me dit l'après midi" and on the french/german national cultural channel arte in their show "die nacht/la nuit". david byrne chose her song "tu crois au marc de café" (produced in 2002 by laurie anderson's keyboardist, peter scherer) along with 30 other of his favorite tracks, to launch his internet radio station, radio david byrne.

nicole's voice was chosen for the volkswagen commercial "big day" (also known as "the wedding commercial") which premiered during superbowl 2001 and was later nominated one of the top ten television commercial scores of the year. she has scored and recorded music for films by oscar-nominated cartoonist bill plympton, including his current animated feature "idiots and angels" recently awarded at the annecy flm festival. nicole also sang on french star keren ann's album, nolita (emi/blue note) and worked with ryuichi sakamoto and towa tei (formerly of dee-lite).

in 2003, she self-produced a maxi cd "les amants solitaires" based on the melancholy poetry of a french aristocrat living in capri at the turn of the century, and shot a music video in super 8 film with art photographer karine laval.

she just now released "couleurs" a full length album of original music. "couleurs" is a love story seen through colors where each song is a color. it is produced and arranged by uli geissendoerfer, ex-pianist of ute lemper and cirque du soleil and mixed by ryuichi sakamoto's sound engineer, fernando aponte. a tour is planned with multimedia concerts, projecting the translation of the songs live onto a transparent screen above the stage (dates to be announced).