Biography

Tori Sparks is: a Road Warrior

Tori Sparks originally hails from Chicago; she later lived and recorded in Nashville, but has always spent most of her time on the road. Since the age of 18 she has played an average of 150 concerts every year, and has toured in a total of 24 countries. A force of nature onstage, Tori walks the line between intensely soulful and stand-up-comic-style hilarious, winning over audiences with her personal warmth, quirky wit, and powerful voice. No two of her concerts are ever alike.

From Nashville to Barcelona

From 2007 to 2011, Tori put out four albums on her own label, Glass Mountain Records, featuring some of Nashville’s top musicians: Viktor Krauss, Will Kimbrough, Fats Kaplin, Matthew Burgess, others, as well as guest artists such as Grammy Award winner Mike Farris and Grammy Nominee Shawn Mullins.

In 2011, Tori Sparks moved from Nashville to Barcelona, and in just a few years had already left her mark on her adopted country. In 2018, rock magazine Popular1 put Sparks on the list of the five most important female voices in Spain; in 2019 she received the award for Rock Artist of the Year by No Solo Cine magazine; her voice can be heard in series (Criminal Minds, Félix, Sky Rojo, Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations, Lost Girl) and in various commercials (Marcilla Coffee, Kids&Us, Festina, ING).

American Roots Meets Flamenco Fusion

Tori’s fifth album, El Mar (Glass Mountain Records, 2014) was her first collaboration with Barcelona-based flamenco fusion trio Calamento and electric guitarist El Rubio. Their bilingual mix of blues, rock, folk, and flamenco started out as a side project, but quickly grew to international success, called "adventurous, pushing the envelope" (Rolling Stone), and “pure art” (Los Conciertos de Radio3).

In 2016 Tori and the band returned to the studio to record their second album together, La Huerta (Glass Mountain Records, 2017). Smashing traditional concepts of genre, the band continued to experiment without sacrificing the unique sound that won them fans the world over with El Mar. They toured in Portugal, Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria, Poland, and beyond, headlining their own tours as well as opening for artists as diverse as guitar legend Joe Satriani, indie rock icons Eels, revered Brazilian musician Gilberto Gil, and Latin Grammy-winning flamenco divas Las Migas.

Their strength as live performers lies in their ability to seamlessly blend musical genres and to connect with audiences of all walks of life, be it playing for 100 people in a small club, or for 30,000 people at prestigious festivals such as Montreux Jazz Festival (Switzerland), Bele Chere (USA); Festival Jardins Pedralbes (Spain); Su La Testa (Italy); others.

Wait No More: The Live Album

Their last full-length album together, a double live album titled Wait No More, was released on Record Store Day 2019. It was Tori’s seventh album — her third since embracing the rock-blues-flamenco fusion that has become her signature sound, and her first recorded live onstage. Praised by the press and the public alike, the album perfectly showcased the unstoppable energy of their live performances. “A flawless live album… an extraordinary fusion of styles,” said La Vanguardia in its review.

Love in a Time of Quarantine

While Tori and the band had to put their tours in support of Wait No More on hold, they put their time in lockdown to good use and released a single and music video while in quarantine, a version of David Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold the World.”

Throughout the rest of 2020, Tori stayed busy. She lent a hand on the production of the new albums by artists such as rock band The Mothercrow, rumba ensemble Alma de Boquerón, and bluesman Richard White. She made international headlines from Thailand to the U.S. with her “Balcony Concerts," a series of weekly of free concerts that lasted throughout the first several months of the pandemic. Tori was also one of three artists selected to represent Catalunya/Spain in Global Music Match, an international music export initiative between 17 countries on four continents connecting artists around the world.

And in response to the impact of the quarantine on the musicians in her community, Tori spearheaded the solidarity project and compilation album Amor en los Tiempos de Cuarentena (“Love in a Time of Quarantine”). The limited-edition album, released on Glass Mountain Records, featured songs by various artists, each of a different musical style, and raised money for musicians affected by the global pandemic.

The song “The Man Who Sold the World” was later included as a bonus download in the new, limited-edition color vinyl version of their album El Mar, released in on Record Store Day 2021, in belated celebration of Tori’s 10th anniversary in Barcelona.

El Mar Electric + Roots Music Revival

In 2023, Tori debuted her new live show, El Mar Electric, along with a live EP of the same name, in a series of sold-out concerts. The project was recorded the previous fall, and was an homage to the mix of cultures and musical styles —  Spanish, Catalan, American, Arabic, Latin American, and more — that have marked Tori’s 20+ year career. She and the band took the show on the road in tours in Germany, Spain, and Morocco, before their travels were cut short by an unexpected injury to her vocal cords, compounded by a severe case of COVID.

As a result, Tori (who can usually play through anything) lost her voice completely, and had to go through nine months of vocal rehabilitation before finally returning to the stage in March 2024. Even after getting back on the road, the following nearly two years continued to be an uphill battle towards full physical recovery.

In 2024, she and the band presented their second, separate live project: Roots Music Revival. The repertoire drew on tunes from Tori’s Nashville and Chicago days, and reflected a return to her musical beginnings. It was a musical “revival” to be sure, in the sense that the style of music was pure Americana, but it was also a personal revival as Tori paid tribute to the music that inspired her in the first place. These high-energy concerts showed off a different side of the band, whose roots and blues sensibilities run deep. Tori was busy on the road presenting both projects throughout the rest of 2024 and 2025.

New Album 2026: Cabinet of Curiosities

Now, she's in the process of releasing her new album, Cabinet of Curiosities. On Friday, April 17th, 2026, Tori Sparks released the first installment of this new musical project — one that’s very different from anything she's done throughout her career so far. This is the American singer, songwriter, and producer’s eighth full-length album, and her first studio recording since 2017.

As you might expect from a project that has been in development for almost a decade in the mind of an artist known for breaking barriers, it's not a traditional album. Cabinet of Curiosities is a multifaceted project, divided into five parts: five “volumes” or mini-EPs of four to five songs each, which together form a fascinating whole. The five volumes are currently being released one by one over a period of several months, and each pack of songs trends towards a different musical style: blues and gospel, folk, noir country, rock and soul, trip-hop and nu-jazz. Each has its own distinct character and sound, distinct elements connected by a common thread.

The album contains a total of 21 new, original songs. The recordings feature collaborations with musicians Francisco Guisado “El Rubio” (guitar), Ramon Vagué (bass), Carlos López (drums), and special guest artists, including gospel singers from the world-renowned Tennessee Mass Choir from Memphis, soul singer Nuri Thunder from the band BigBlack Rhino, Latin Grammy-nominated rock singer Carlos Mendoza, and violinist Fats Kaplin, who has collaborated with Jack White, Beck, Elvis Costello, John Prine, among others.

Music magazine Ruta66 says: “Sparks, one of the most versatile artists on the scene today, demonstrates yet again how her talent and interpretive strength allow her to master diverse musical styles, bringing them into her own territory and building incredible albums.” Rockdelux calls Cabinet of Curiosities “ambitious and unorthodox, music that mixes sound with sensation.”

And Dirty Rock magazine has said of the live concerts: “The songs sound even bigger live. There's something about the way Sparks works within the space… those calculated silences, those guitars that come in at just the right moment… her voice has not only come back [after her health challenges in 2023], but sounds with a new maturity, transformed each song into something more than music alone. It’s the proof that there are still artists out there who will never let anything stop them."

Why “Cabinet of Curiosities”?

The album title was inspired by the collections of natural specimens popular in Renaissance Europe that bore the same name. These collections of strange, absurd, mysterious, beautiful, unique specimens were meant to provoke wonder and curiosity. It was how people hundreds of years ago tried to explain the natural world, and life in general: by constructing a miniature representation of it. 

This is the concept behind the idea of a traditional cabinet of curiosities, and also behind Tori Sparks' ambitious new musical project. Cabinet of Curiosities is an album for our times, a collection of songs that reflects the complicated world around us: the fractured era in which we live, with all the good and bad, the light and the darkness. The lyrics explore themes such as societal expectations, religion, family, technology, depression, death, politics, the fight for justice and against fascism, family, love and heartbreak; in other words, everything that shapes our complicated, painful, beautiful lives.

Cabinet of Curiosities, Vol. II was released on Friday, May 15th, and Volume III on June 12th. Volumes IV and V are coming September 18th and October 23rd.  Also on October 23rd, Sparks will release the entire Cabinet of Curiosities album on CD, and Volumes I-III on limited-edition vinyl. Volumes IV and V are coming Record Store Day 2027. Stay tuned for more album news!

Activist, Businesswoman, Public Speaker

Sparks is also known for giving back to the community through music, and has organized and performed at numerous benefit concerts for local, national, and international nonprofit organizations.

She is also a sought-after public speaker at universities, schools, and professional conferences such as South by Southwest, International Folk Alliance, WOMEX, PrimaveraPro, Desert Women Summit and many others, and regularly presents talks at the Santako School of Rock (Santa Coloma de Gramanet, ES) and audiovisual production school SAE (Barcelona, ES). She is a mentor through the online music business education program Dotlinesdot, and also works with emerging artists on a one-on-one basis to help them grow their careers.

Sparks is also known for her work as an activist; she was the Secretary of the Musicians Union of Catalunya until 2020, has frequently been a spokesperson for the Spanish freedom of speech movement No Callaremos, and is a strong proponent of social justice and music education.

Tori Sparks is proud to be endorsed by D'Addario Strings since 2007, and by Thembe Fashions since 2016.