{"id":1127,"date":"2013-04-27T06:56:37","date_gmt":"2013-04-27T04:56:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/?page_id=1127"},"modified":"2022-03-13T19:08:39","modified_gmt":"2022-03-13T17:08:39","slug":"a-woman-of-many-surprises","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/press-clips\/reviews-2011\/a-woman-of-many-surprises\/","title":{"rendered":"A woman of many surprises"},"content":{"rendered":"

Uppsala Nya Tidning 110203<\/strong><\/p>\n

By: BJ\u00d6RN L\u00d6VENLID<\/p>\n

REVIEW: Helen Sj\u00f6holm’s debut in Uppsala Concert Hall was a well-balanced mixture of reliable tracks and surprises, says Bjorn L\u00f6venlid.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Many raised their eyebrows in surprise when it turned out that Helen Sj\u00f6holm would interpret Billy Joel on CD. For many Swedes Billy Joel is mostly a jovial hitmaker who bounces around among centerfold photos and wrenches in the video for Uptown Girl.<\/p>\n

In the United States, however, he is a giant of completely different dimensions and therefore it was regarded as a cultural achievement when Helen Sj\u00f6holm on Thursday appeared with classics from Billy Joel’s 47-year career, translated into Swedish by the incredibly clever word painter Tomas Andersson-Wij.<\/p>\n

As artists Helen Sj\u00f6holm and Billy Joel have little in common, it was also an interesting encounter between the earthy natural talent from Medelpad and the musical acrobat from Bronx. The ballad Varje s\u00e5r s\u00f6ker ett s\u00e5r (And so it goes) felt so natural for her that it might as well have been written specifically for Helen Sj\u00f6holm from the very beginning, while the catchy and very difficult The river of dreams became the affectionate and highly rearranged Flodens botten.<\/p>\n

What made Wednesday night concert so memorable was that Sj\u00f6holm was not content to simply perform songs from her latest album. Suddenly she called a string quartet on the stage and performed a combative but tightly controlled version of Elvis Costello’s discharge I Almost had a Weakness. On another occasion, she offered the faithful original version of Nick Cave deeply evocative murder ballad Where The Wild Roses Grow, with Jojje Wadenius in the role of perpetrator. As if this wasn\u00b4t enough, the audience could also enjoy a long and intricate medley, entirely based on hits from the golden years 1984 – 85, interleaved by Sj\u00f6holm’s own recollections of a stormy adolescence. The calm, much loved and trusted Helen Sj\u00f6holm was unexpectedly a woman full of surprises this evening, while she never swerved one inch from her safe and secure singing technique.<\/p>\n

Possibly Sj\u00f6holm has been a bit overexposed at times. Her final number Gabriella’s song sounds a bit worn in my ears. Something from the original has been lost. But that wasn\u00b4t anything that marked the concert evening, a luxurious and generous event in which a vocalist star positioned herself in a somewhat new light.<\/p>\n

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Uppsala Nya Tidning 110203 By: BJ\u00d6RN L\u00d6VENLID REVIEW: Helen Sj\u00f6holm’s debut in Uppsala Concert Hall was a well-balanced mixture of reliable tracks and surprises, says Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":946,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1127","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1127\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}