Reykjavík Grapevine - sep. 2020, Síða 12

12 The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 07— 2020
Gy"a Valt#sdóttir could be at once
described as a cellist, composer, artist
and mystic, but categories are some-
thing she feels are divisive. Over the
course of our conversation, this is
a recurring theme: not only has she
evolved a great deal since her musical
career began in the iconic Icelandic
indie band múm, but the world as she
sees it is evolving to a point where old
barriers are disappearing.
"The idea of division of anything,
categorising in any field, is something
that I feel that we as a collective are
dissolving,” Gy"a says. “It's just a
pattern I see through everything,
dissolving these boxes. I think the
change is happening in our brains. It's
making more neurological connections
to all the rooms in our brains and then
you see it expressed in reality."
Good
vibrations
Those who are familiar with Gy"a’s
oeuvre are likely familiar with her ever-
present cello, her mastery of which she
describes in terms of magic.
"I didn't really know the instrument
before I picked it,” she says. “My older
sister told me that the cello was deep
and mysterious and that resonated
with my seven-year-old self. It didn't
just come naturally; I wasn't super
gifted or anything. I had a love/hate
relationship with it, and I did quit for a
while, but mastering any instrument is
so much a conversation with yourself
as well. For me, at least, it was that way.
I thought it was highly spiritual, like an
esoteric magic school. But that came
from my connection to my teacher,
Gunnar Kvaran.”
Gunnar’s tutelage would prove to
have a deeply positive impact on Gy"a,
in some ways changing her outlook on
music itself.
"He really understood me and he
took me right away into the world
of vibrations. I was very sensitive to
energies and this was the first time
someone was giving them names,
talking about them as a true thing—
something tangible. He talked about
how you put energy into the notes and
how you shape it; it was like learning
how to navigate reality."
Gy"a is very sensitive to energies,
to the point where “when people talk,
there's a certain energy that fills the
words. A lie to me is like a void of
energy and it's so obvious but as a child
you just get very confused because
there are so many empty words.”
Getting “a
Master’s
in self-
destruction”
After Gy"a departed múm, life would
take her to many places, from Russia
to Switzerland. It was a transformative
period in Gy"a’s life and not always an
easy one.
“The next years in my life were a
labyrinth and, to be honest, I was often
completely lost,” she recalls. “For some
reason I kept putting myself in these
odd places that I didn’t feel I belonged
to. I did not find a teacher again that
understood me—at all—and it was
nothing like a mystery school. To study
classical music is a bit like getting a
Masters degree in self-destruction,
because you train your brain to be
incredibly critical to the point where
it's damaging. I wasn’t going to be a
classical musician; I just wanted to be
fluid on the instrument.
“Music is my mother language, I
used to get so frustrated with words
and I couldn't understand why we
aren't using telepathy more.”
Alchemy
The times that followed were difficult
ones for Gy"a; even if in retrospect
they proved positive for her, it was not
a perspective she held at the time.
“I see it as an alchemical process,”
she says. “You undo yourself, into pieces
and burn it, vapourise it and solidify
it again, put them back together but
everything has changed. Today there
is no discipline in my life to be honest.
You don't really need it if you are truly
invested, curious and loving what you
do. It is called ‘blissipline’. I find it
kind of difficult to talk about the past,
because in different times in your life,
you view it in different ways. I wasn't
seeing this as an alchemical process at
the time.
“At one point I even just wanted to
give up. I was 33 and I felt as if I had
jumped so often off some sort of a ‘train
of fate;’ avoided my calling in a way. I
was sure I had just completely failed
at life and I just wanted out, I couldn't
see any other way. But I chose life and
I stopped everything, forever, if that is
what I needed. I took all expectations of
myself and had only one dream: to have
good human connections, starting
with myself.”
“It was the most precious, pain-
ful and beautiful time in my life,” she
continues. “Even though I did almost
nothing but learn how to be a human
for a whole year, in the five years since
then, everything has been flowing
faster and with more ease than I could
ever have imagined.”
The magic of
interpretation
Part of the problem with classical
music, from Gy"a’s perspective, again
goes back to divisions; “between
composer and a performer, the division
of the classical world as opposed to
‘pop-music,’ between intellect and
creativity. We need the whole spectrum
for a healthy balance.” In the spirit of
dissolving boundaries, Gy"a would
stretch her wings and begin a new
phase in her life, one marked by the
magic of collaboration.
"You have to be very open and sense
the other person's approach, which are
all very different,” she says of collabo-
ration. “But you also get to expand
yourself; others can pull out a side of
you that you cannot reach by yourself.
For example with [composer] Úlfur
Hansson, we go to a place that feels so
right, so strong and actually so much
myself, but it is a place unique to our
connection, I can’t go there myself.”
Likewise, in a way turning the
classical concept of interpretation
on its head, or inside out, is 'Epicycle
I', a collection of Gy"a’s interpreta-
tions of compositions from the past.
Consistent with her vision of dissolv-
ing boundaries, the artists she chose
to interpret are incredibly varied and
wide-ranging.
"What I'm doing on that album is
taking a lot of freedom of interpreta-
tion,” Gy"a says. “It's a very personal
approach." This shows, as she covers
artists ranging from Schuman,
Schubert Prokofiev and Hildegard von
Bingen—"a 12th century witch-nun
who downloaded her music from God,”
as Gy"a describes her. “Creating the
Epicycle records is about giving myself
freedom to approach any music the
way I want. Freely, but with respect.”
The easy birth
of Evolution
The album that followed, 2018’s 'Evolu-
tion', saw Gy"a not only bringing origi-
nal compositions to the fore, with such
haunting songs as "Moonchild" and "Í
annarri vídd"—a song she describes as
“the mother potato of the record”—but
also marked a new stage in her devel-
opment as an artist.
“This record was a very easy birth
in a way, but only after years of not
finding how to do it in an easy way,”
Gy"a says. “I think it's because I was
coming from these 10 years of classical
training, I had to have the opposite.
Being very much in flow, so that I
wouldn't be using this perfectionistic,
critical part of myself. The process was
very intuitive. I let everything come to
me, even the name or the album art. It
didn't make sense to look for a name
because I knew it would come … when
it did, I found it took me by surprise
but I knew not to argue and I started to
love it.”
Following 'Evolution', she would
return again to interpretation with
'Epicycle II '—an album she has
described as “genre-fluid”—only this
time with the added magic of collabo-
ration. Once again, we see Gy"a empha-
sising the need to dissolve boundaries,
as evidenced by the artists she chose to
collaborate with.
Collaborations
and a syncretic
horizon
“Epicycle II is an ode to collaboration
and interconnection,” she says of this
work. “I wouldn't be who I am without
the people I’ve met along the way. The
eight musicians on Epicycle II have
all been in my life to some extent for
the past 20 years. They have inspired
“The eight musicians
on Epicycle II have
all been in my life to
some extent for the
past 20 years. They
have inspired me
and shaped me as a
human and artist.”