Commercial Success
Danielsen broke through as a national celebrity and artist in the 1994. He participated and won the national talent competition Talentiaden on NRK television with the song "The Right to Sing" and "Anthem" from Chess and received the first ever Olympic medal that was awarded the Olympics in Lillehammer in 1994. The same year he represented Norway during the international finals of the Eurovision with Elisabeth Andreassen, where they had a sixth place with the songDuet. In 2000, Jan Werner again was part of the Norwegian final of Eurovision and this time alone. He came in second place with the song "One More Time". Charmed won with "My Heart Goes Boom."
Jan Werner debuted as an adult-recording artist in the 1995 with the album All by Myself, which went gold. Inner Secrets, his second album, came two years later in 1997. It sold 14 000 copies and contained some self-written compositions and a duet with Karin Krog. The third, Music of the Night came in 1999 with interpretations of songs from musicals such as Chess, West Side Story, and Les Misérables. His fourth, Singer of Songs (2003) is the best selling with over 120,000 copies and it became his biggest seller to date. It reached second place on the national album chart. The fifth and final album, Stronger, was released after his death on 13 November 2006.
Jan Werner has participated in many musical contexts, from pop to classical, from Christmas carols to musical songs. He has interpreted the classics such as Johann Sebastian Bach (Air), and he has made his own songs and melodies. He has performed with artists such as Benedicte Adrian, Secret Garden, Sølvguttene, Tommy Körberg, Øivind Blunck, Outer Suløens Jass-ensemble, and last but not least the Swede Robert Wells in the Royal Albert Hall in 2003. That was a personal highlight of his career and he was singing "Air" by Johann Sebastian Bach. He also performed that song on the Nobel Peace Prize Concert in December this year. In addition, he toured as the artistic director of Dissimilis.
Elisabeth Andreassen and Jan Werner continued to work after their duet under the Eurovision in 1994. From 1997 they held Christmas concerts all over Norway, and in the summer of 1999 they recorded an album in the Uranienborg Church (Oslo) with selected tracks from the same tour. On the Christmas-concert tour in 2004 he now was a solo artist and the Norwegian Bishop Rosemarie Köhn was with him on selected concerts. Jan Werner has sold a total of nearly 1 million copies in Norway, a country with just 4.6 million people and over one million concert tickets.
In September 2006, only a week before his death, Jan Werner and his manager was in Canada to put business plans in conjunction with Jan Werner's international career. This included a springtour with The Canadian Tenors in 2007. In May 2007, The Canadian Tenors held a mini-tour in Norway, with a concert-tribute to Jan Werner. They wanted to pay tribute to Jan Werner in his own way and they also recorded his version of "Always There" (from "Stronger"), for their CD "The Canadian Tenors" in 2009.
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