Allers 110224
By: ANNA-KLARA FRESK ASPEGREN
When Helen Sjöholm was three, she went around the corridors of long-term care homes and sang chapbook songs to pensioners with tears in their eyes. As an adult, she enchants a whole world with her amazing voice. Now she’s in the spotlight with an album and a tour.
Every day a downfall. That’s how Helen Sjöholm has lived the recent months. But only on stage at the Stockholm City Theater, in her role as Poetissan in Aniara. 2010 was a year filled with hard work and new experiences for the star-spangled mother of a toddler living in a villa suburb. For that she is, too. And right now it´s perhaps that part that’s the most important one for her.
– Having Ruben has opened a new space in me. I’m present in life in a way that changes everything I’ve known before. For me it´s important to provide him with basic security and that’s what I have in mind every day. Helen smiles and continues:
– He is three years old and he’s like both David’s and my family in several ways. It’s comforting that he has inherited traits of those I loved and remember. It’s like a beautiful journey of souls.
Helen herself has the power of a loving childhood and the strengthening bit of Jante that she carries with her to thank for many things. Despite fame and fortune, it’s an extremely unremarkable girl sitting at the cafe close to her home. Dressed in jeans and cotton blouse and without makeup she moves freely among the shoppers in Nacka without anyone raising an eyebrow. It’s not long before she uses her favorite expression. She sipps on a Dufvemåla mineral water – no, she has nothing to do with it, that the cafe serves the beverage here. But it’s funny, she laughs, takes a seat – and says:
– Here we go!
Benny in the audience
Helen has reached the top without any real strategies or goal-oriented plans. Sure, she chose the jazz- and pop vocal program at Kulturama and knew it was in music and theater she wanted to continue. But when she took the tube out to the suburbs one spring day to act in Enskedespelet’s performance of Little Dorrit, she didn´t know that it would lead to her receiving standing ovations at Carnegie Hall nineteen years later. Because in the audience during one of the many performances in the small circus tent was Benny Andersson.
– I’ve never really had long-term plans. I’m pouring everything into what I do for the moment, like let’s-do-it-now-damn-it! says Helen.
– I have good self-esteem too. Mostly by emotion, but still. But it was only five or six years ago that I started to say I’m an artist. That was nothing I had identified myself with. Until then, everything just rolled on, happened a little bit by chance and worked out well. Sure it may look like it follows a thread if you look back, but that´s a retrospective design.
It all started when she was went with her grandma to work at a long-term care home in Sundsvall. There she walked between wards singing heartbreaking chapbook songs to a grateful teary-eyed audience.
– I was three years old and sang “In a room at the hospital” with a heartwarming child voice! No wonder that the response was tremendous. She didn´t understand the magnitude of it back then. But the massive response made her early on feel the power that music possesses.
Inspirational women
The thoughts unsought go to ABBA’s Thank you for the music when Helen talks about her career, of course also because of her close collaboration with Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson. But that her voice would touch people all over the world and win many hearts is a fact. The fascination for the songs, theater and storytelling was probably born already there.
Both grandmothers were strong women who came to characterize Helens upbringing and personality. Under their wings she was brought up to stand with her feet firmly on the ground. The law of Jante was ever present. Helen tells us that it wasn´t easy for them to praise her even after the premiere of Kristina from Duvemåla. Both had lent traits of themselves to Helen’s role interpretation and both also got to experience their grandchild’s success before they died.
– They were each other’s polar opposites in almost everything. Yet they are my strongest role models, very eccentric, and I loved them both. Grandma [on my paternal side] was a young, fancy city woman who took me to Paris when I was a teenager. She was energetic, it was easy for her to let go of things and move on. It was very much “forward march” in her ways, Helen says and smiles at the memories.
The bleached winter sun hits her like a spotlight through the large glass windows where we sit, but she continues, practised and unconcerned: Grandma [on my maternal side] was a true farmer’s daughter and lived all her life in almost the same place. But she was a book lover. She was studious and well-educated, so there was still room for the world on her little spot. The character of Kristina was equipped with the human warmth, the strong loyalty towards men, but also with a strong judging and a loving bigotry that was characteristic of both grandmothers.
Being Kristina for five years was both amazing and exhausting. It was a “once in a lifetime” chance career-wise but very stressful for private life.
– It was a long phase of development, five years of my life, between twenty-five and thirty. I was totally exhausted when it ended. I felt completely empty inside. The role, the travelling and all the work around the whole show had devoured all possibilities for family life, friends and leisure. Suddenly I didn´t know what to do. My boyfriend of that time was amazing, he had been with me through all these years. Suddenly came everyday life and we had to fill the time in a new way. And there I stood with my doubts.
So what do you do? Helen’s practical advice from her childhood was an obvious solution and in the moment a rescue. Helen bought a house and renovated it from foundation to roof. There she could roll up her sleeves and use both hands and head. She carved and painted and kept herself busy. But the day came when it was finished. The relationship ended. Despite all the external evidence of her talent, showers of awards and full houses at numerous venues over five years, a double perplexity appeared.
Found love at a party
– I reached a turning point in life when I had to re-evaluate everything. I was brought up by strong women, encouraged by bearded men – yes, Björn and Benny – you have to write that so everyone understands that I say it tongue in cheek! And then … what? Who was I without Kristina? What was work worth? What do I really want and what can I do? Everything was so performance-oriented. I went back to Sundsvall for a while. I was homesick in some way, for the security I knew was there.
It was sorted out fairly quickly and has continued steadily since then. All of us, who sometimes turn on the radio or look at the movie- and theater ads, know that. Most recently, it´s in the CD shelf Helen Sjöholm’s name pops up. The album Euforia is a bunch of lesser-known Billy Joel songs translated and processed into Swedish. That it turned out to be Joel in particular is her husband David Granditsky’s achievement – and a coincidence, of course.
– I had longed to make a record again. It was eight years ago. I had been looking for material, but not until I heard Billy Joel it felt right. My husband David did music trivia with me – he loves it because I’m not as good as he is. When he played She’s Always a Woman, I remembered it from an old playlist and felt “wow” all over my body! My vocal cords were delighted when I tried singing his songs.
Helen met her prospective spouse for the first time at a fifty-year celebration of a mutual friend.
– We were on totally different levels at the time. He was completely different from me. And that was good. It made me think about myself. Both knew immediately that we had something to build on. We didn´t want to lose that feeling. If it happened fast? Perhaps – well, when we had decided there was nothing left to ponder. Here we go, kind of, Helen describes in broad terms how it happened when they became a couple. That was seven years ago.
It may be that she now is longing for a year off. The life-affirming impulse which is Helen’s hallmark has a downside. When everything is fun, it’s difficult to set limits.
– I work hard and I´m completely present in the moment. It has happened that the body simply said stop and I can’t get out of bed in the morning. That’s among the toughest things there are. I´m brought up in a “roll up the sleeves”-mentality and am used to work hard. So when the strength runs out I dont know what to do. It´s something different to feel mentally fragile. I have no problems with that, I can talk about it and then I feel better. But I’m terrified of being weak in body. I can not handle that.
Enjoys the silence
Relaxation for Helen is to take a jog, go and get a massage every now and then, and to enjoy the silence at home.
– No, I would rather not listen to anything at all. I need to rest my ears. But I recommend cleaning up while listening to fado music (Portuguese folk music, full of lamentations ), she laughs.
These days it’s okay to take a step back and let the calendar have empty days. She knows for sure that she stands on her own feet. Maybe it’s age, maybe it’s that she had a child.
– I have a greater sense of peace. Now I look more determinedly for things I want to do. I search my own fires. That means in plain language that I contact directors I like, and musicians I want to work with, brainstorming for my own ideas, Helen says and thinks for a moment.
– Often, things are still very spontaneous. Someone calling with an exciting proposal that I cannot resist and “oh, what fun this was!” Something like that. Here we go! I´m guided by gut feeling more than brain feeling.
PERSONAL
Name: Helen Sjöholm
Age: 40
Family: Husband David Granditsky, son Ruben, 3 years old
Lives: House in Nacka Motto: “Anything works” Currently: The album Euforia, Swedish interpretations of Billy Joel songs. In April, she goes on tour alone and in July she will perform together with Benny Andersson’s Orchestra and Tommy Körberg in various places in the country.
EITHER OR…
Morning – EVENING
Comedy – HORROR
WATER – WINE
Easy-going – MELANCHOLY
FAST DECISION – Reflection