{"id":1724,"date":"2013-05-09T17:32:37","date_gmt":"2013-05-09T15:32:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/?page_id=1724"},"modified":"2022-03-09T19:20:46","modified_gmt":"2022-03-09T17:20:46","slug":"helen-sjoholm-i-go-by-feeling-not-credits","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/press-clips\/interviews-2010\/helen-sjoholm-i-go-by-feeling-not-credits\/","title":{"rendered":"Helen Sj\u00f6holm: \u201dI go by feeling, not credits\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dagens Nyheter 101012<\/strong><\/p>\n

By: LASSE GRANSTRAND<\/p>\n

With the character \u201dKristina from Duvem\u00e5la\u201d Helen Sj\u00f6holm was transformed from an \u201dunknown find\u201d to a musical star. Now she\u2019s on in triplicate – at Stockholm\u2019s City Theatre, with a new album and in \u201dSimon and the oaks\u201d at the cinema the coming spring.<\/strong><\/p>\n

We meet in a recording studio at Roslagsgatan in Stockholm. Raw concrete in two cramped basement rooms. Unfortunately the toilet is out of order today so Helen Sj\u00f6holm has to refrain [from doing her needs]. She can\u2019t come further away than that from the glamor and standing ovations at Carnegie Hall in New York (\u201dKristina\u201d September 2009) or Royal Albert Hall in London (April 2010).<\/p>\n

Helen Sj\u00f6holm is recording an album with music and translated lyrics of the American singer Billy Joel. Perhaps best known for the song \u201dJust the way you are\u201d. The album is released in November and most of the work is done. Today it\u2019s about deciding which versions out of several recordings that should be used and how they should be mixed together.
\n– This is how you do it nowadays, Helen says with a small smile, you don\u2019t need to be able to sing.<\/p>\n

Well, it all sounds perfect. But Helen Sj\u00f6holm and producer Gunnar Nord\u00e9n hear the nuances.  They listen and cut, change their minds and change them again.
\n– The first take is often the best one, says Gunnar.
\n– Listen, Helen says, here I\u2019m too fuzzy. Sometimes it\u2019s hard to work with us singers, huh? It becomes a mental thing that you have to cut and change even if it\u2019s good enough. A studio disease. In the end one tires of oneself.
\n– No, Gunnar says. It\u2019s easy to work with you.<\/p>\n

One of the songs is called \u201dThe Entertainer\u201d. I point to a line that could be a  summarization of her life: \u201dToday I am a star that no one can pull down.\u201d But her favorite lines come a bit later in the song: \u201dI\u2019m an entertainer and I have not sold my soul. Maybe bargained a bit now and then when I was close behind large catches and a standing ovation.\u201d
\n– My career has not followed a plan, it hasn\u2019t been strategic. I have gone by feelings and intuition, not on the credits. Some thought that doing revue was wrong for me, but it was great fun at The China Theatre with Lasse Berghagen, Magnus H\u00e4renstam, Loa Falkman and Sissela Kyle. I learned a lot about timing and daring to rely on the comic side of me.<\/p>\n

– \u201dYou are my man\u201d is a pastiche of a dance band song. I\u2019m not completely comfortable having that as headline for my entire artistic life. Played with Benny Andersson\u2019s 16-man orchestra it is funny. With a lone pianist it doesn\u2019t get that playful. But the audience always require me to do it. I was surprised that it got so big. Presumably it\u2019s because it\u2019s an unconditional declaration of love for a man.<\/p>\n

Into the studio to polish [the recording]. Helen Sj\u00f6holm\u2019s voice becomes overwhelmingly powerful in the crowded room.
\n– In my voice there is a hopeful clarity that I sometimes want to get away from. I want to broaden the expression.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been eight years since Helen Sj\u00f6holm released an album and she\u2019s been pondering for a long time on what to record. When she was on parental leave with Ruben, now three years old, she tried to write her own songs.
\n– It didn\u2019t work that time. I became too self-critical. If you get offers to sing compositions of Benny Andersson and Stefan Nilsson, it\u2019s difficult to come along with your own stuff.<\/p>\n

She was searching for good material. Ultimately it was her husband David Granditsky, sound technician at Hamburger B\u00f6rs, who played a list of songs including Billy Joel\u2019s from the 70-, 80- and the 90\u2019s. Helen had found her material.<\/p>\n

From early on Helen Sj\u00f6holm became aware of the power of her voice. She was four years old and went with her grandmother to the retirement home to see her great grandfather. Helen noticed how happy the old got. Felt the respons, that it meant something when she sang her sad, dramatic chapbook songs about diseased and lonely girls.<\/p>\n

In her father\u2019s sheet metal workshop home in Sundsvall, she could try the tone and strength of her voice after all the workers had gone home for the day. The resonance was excellent and she spent several hours singing there, while cleaning the workshop on her father\u2019s assignment.<\/p>\n

Helen Sj\u00f6holm soon became part of Sundsvall\u2019s rich choir life. Even though she would rather sing solo. But the question to get an education in music never arose.
\n– Where I come from the law of Jante rules and there\u2019s an attitude that you have to work with something firm. It may seem a bit weird that you work hard and rehearse, but without any visible results until after ten weeks. My father and my mother both have good voices and sang during the time I was growing up, but there was no tradition to engage in cultural expression forms. They thought I should get a \u201creal\u201d education.<\/p>\n

So Helen went to the social science programme in high school. Later on she applied three times for The Theatre University in Malm\u00f6 and Stockholm, but was not admitted. She toured with a band, got parts in plays at Malm\u00f6 City Theatre. She let go of her dreams to have a life as an artist for a while and studied culture at Stockholm University. Then she took part in Enskedespelet and had the lead role in a play by Dickens, \u201dLittle Dorrit\u201d. The music was written by Mats N\u00f6rklit, brother of Mona N\u00f6rklit who is married to Benny Anderson. He was there and heard Helen Sj\u00f6holm sing in the tent in Margaretaparken in Enskede.<\/p>\n

He had his eyes on her.
\n– I was to sing a song from Chess on Swedish Television and he came to the rehearsal at Berns [theatre house]. I almost\/could have wet myself I was so nervous.<\/p>\n

The auditions for \u201dKristina from Duvemala\u201d was a big organisation that was carried out in several parts of the country with thousands of applicants. Helen Sj\u00f6holm was the chosen one.
\n– It was probably the greatest happening of my artistic life, to stand beside the piano in Benny\u2019s home and be there when he finished the role of Kristina.<\/p>\n

It took a long time before Helen Sj\u00f6holm felt that she wanted to call herself an artist.
\n– Sometimes that feeling of not having enough knowledge struck me. I couldn\u2019t say: This is my job, I am good at this. For a long time I just said: Now I\u2019m doing this, then we\u2019ll see. Those of us who don\u2019t have a formal education probably feel a bit like amateurs all our lives. I don\u2019t have the same credentials those who have been to theatre- or music school. I don\u2019t read notes straight off the sheet, but I have a good ear.<\/p>\n

Helen Sj\u00f6holm has grown thicker skin over the years. She has more trust in herself, even if she is still stressed about not knowing if she will suffice.<\/p>\n

When Helen Sj\u00f6holm was a little girl she enjoyed the direct response to her singing. And it has continued that way.
\n– I want an immediate response and perhaps that has made me lazy sometimes. It should be pleasurable. If it\u2019s been up hill I have given up on some projects.<\/p>\n

But surely she has tackled tough challenges.  She\u2019s not mainly thinking about when she was fifteen and was the local talent wanting to sing a duet with a moderately amused Tommy K\u00f6rberg, whose Sweden tour had reached Sundsvall. He was the idol that many years later became her co-star in The Oscars Theatre\u2019s adaptation of \u201cMy Fair Lady\u201d.
\n– He was tired of all the girls showing up, wanting to sing with him wherever he went. He had no desire to rehearse and I can understand that.<\/p>\n

No, Helen Sj\u00f6holm wants to talk about The Epiphany Concert this year at Berwaldhallen. There she once again was the local talent. She sang a Mozart Aria, on live television, with perhaps the world\u2019s most cherished male opera singer, Bryn Terfel.
\n– I was such an egg to say yes! I trained hard with a vocal coach and afterwards I was glad I dared to do it, but I could have done it better.<\/p>\n

Helen Sj\u00f6holm didn\u2019t have to worry. As usual she received appreciative criticism.<\/p>\n

There are rehearsals of \u201cAniara\u201d at the City Theatre\u2019s big stage in Stockholm. The theater celebrats its 50th anniversary with the Nobel laureate Harry Martinson\u2019s poem suite from 1956. The music is newly written by Andreas Kleerup, who usually works with Robyn. Lars Rudolfsson who is directing calls the poem a revue of man in space and time.<\/p>\n

Helen Sj\u00f6holm is literally the representative face of the production. Her face in white makeup has been seen by many stockholmers in ads, brochures, on posters and on the theatre\u2019s facade.<\/p>\n

She plays Poetissan. A blind woman whose role grows during the performance. \u201cAniara\u201d is a serious story.
\n– It\u2019s brave of the City Theatre to choose this piece to their 50th anniversary, says Helen Sj\u00f6holm. A timeless story of existence, death, environmental destruction and about creating a meaning while being in the midst of insecurity. Everyone dies.<\/p>\n

Helen Sj\u00f6holm tries on clothes during a break. A simple gray dress.
\n– I usually wear rather un-sexy clothes, she giggles. Homespun and clogs and things like that. In \u201cMy Fair Lady\u201d it begins like that, as usual, but at least it ends up with an evening toilette.<\/p>\n

There are 23 actors on the City Theatre stage. A big ensemble with veterans like Sven Wollter, Ingvar Hirdwall, Marika Lindstr\u00f6m and Claire Wikholm. Now they all dance ecstatically in an attempt to forget their fate in the cold, sterile and empty space.<\/p>\n

But Helen Sj\u00f6holm is in a world of her own while carrying, with an unseeing gaze, a glass box with soil around. All passengers have been requested to bring soil for cultivating during the long journey and the evacuation to a new planet.  Soon the atmosphere turns into \u201copen crying that no one tries to conceal anymore\u201d. The passengers have realized what has happened, the spaceship has been thrown out of course.<\/p>\n

Helen Sj\u00f6holm is restrained with her body language. Poetissan is blind but that should not be evident from the start.
\n– She hears the turmoil and grief in the others\u2019 voices and she comforts herself and the others. It\u2019s exciting to consider the way a blind person moves. How the other senses take over.<\/p>\n

\u201dAniara\u201d will run four nights a week. But after \u201cKristina from Duvem\u00e5la\u201d nothing could be as exhausting.<\/p>\n

Kristina was on for five years. For a long time Helen Sj\u00f6holm did six shows a week.
\n– I sang for several hours every night. It became my school, I expanded my tone range both upwards and downwards. On the Mondays off, I was completely exhausted. Cried, ate candy and mostly wanted to be in bed. Kristina contains a wide span of emotions and many years of her life. It moves you deeply. Eventually the performances per week got fewer. When it was over it got empty. I was exhausted.<\/p>\n

At the end of the first act of\u201cAniara\u201d Poetissan begins to sing and tell her story: \u201cI learned the big scream of Braille in the faces I touched with my hand, now I\u2019m a singer in the third hall and shall never return to my land.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the second act a cult is formed around her. The people have left a destroyed Earth and their spaceship \u201cAniara\u201d is heading towards a certain death. Poetissan stands for spirituality and solace.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the fifth time Helen Sj\u00f6holm is working with director Lars Rudolfsson. But that does not automatic mean safety.
\n– He is fantastic and scary to work with, he keeps everything open. He has no set answers if you ask him. He has trust in our own impulses and our own curiosity.<\/p>\n

Where\u2019s Helen Sj\u00f6holm going after she has left the spaceship?<\/p>\n

Her answer is: maybe to the movies. She wants to do more. The movie \u201cAs it is in Heaven\u201d was a big success.
\n– Many critics thought it was too greedy and pretentious. I thought it was bold in its extravagancy. From the first day of shooting we simply were this choir, welded together. Director Kay Pollak was stubborn, demanding and intense. It made me reach the uttermost limit of my ability.<\/p>\n

One year ago Helen Sj\u00f6holm was contacted by a casting director for the movie version of Marianne Fredriksson\u2019s novel \u201cSimon and the oaks.\u201d Helen did audition shooting for several days. She was casted as the mother Karin and shot throughout the spring, from February to May.
\n– With movies you don\u2019t know if it got any good until long after when you see the result. It\u2019s unfamiliar and a bit nervous.<\/p>\n

Another answer to what Helen Sj\u00f6holm\u2019s future looks like can be found in the executive\u2019s corridor on the 7th floor of the City Theatre. After the rehearsal she is summoned to the CEO of the theatre Benny Fredriksson. Before she disappears into the manager\u2019s corner office she says:
\n– Maybe it\u2019s something new going on, but you never know if it will happen. That\u2019s the way of this business.<\/p>\n

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Dagens Nyheter 101012 By: LASSE GRANSTRAND With the character \u201dKristina from Duvem\u00e5la\u201d Helen Sj\u00f6holm was transformed from an \u201dunknown find\u201d to a musical star. Now Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":1620,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1724","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1724","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=1724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1724\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helensjoholm.nu\/_eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}