After a two-year residency at the Théâtre de Saint-Quentin en Yvelines, where she was associate artist, singer and composer Isabel Sörling is once again experiencing the vertigo of freedom and leaping into the void. From this new stage, nuggets are sure to emerge, for Isabel Sörling traces a singular path of great integrity. One thing is certain: this musician's French career has not dimmed her attachment to Sweden; Scandinavian culture is always ready to bubble up at the turn of a song!

Isabel, you've been living in France for five years, but you still have deep ties with Sweden?
Yes, my country is still there in my head; it's a bit of a sentimental link! In reality, I didn't choose France. The first time I came here was as an Erasmus exchange student. I thought it would just be a one-year interlude, to try something else. But in the end, I stayed, and ten years went by, at first going back and forth between the two countries. Today, I still wonder how things could have gone so far in France. Because I'm still attached to Sweden and its culture; I listen to Swedish radio, for example! But at the same time, I feel like a stranger. I hear new words, I get lost in conversations.... When I go back to Sweden, I hear new words: I can easily get lost in conversations! The same goes for politics. I can't vote much in Sweden anymore! So I ask myself: what makes you part of a given society at a given time in your life? It's an interesting question.

Do you ever feel like going back, or are there too many disconnection points?
I can only dream of going back! Someone close to me once said to me: " Actually, it's in other terms that it's happening for you: it's not a question of "going back home", but rather of "moving in " ("you will not move back, you will move to"). He's right; that's exactly it! If I go back to Sweden, I'll have to rebuild my life there.

Your Erasmus year was the year you attended the CNSMdP jazz department, wasn't it? Did you also take part in the generative improvisation class?
I only had to go to two or three sessions. I would have liked to have taken the class all year round, but I didn't understand how it worked. Long before, in Gothenburg, I had taken an improvisation course, but much less in the jazz idiom than in France.
At the CNSMdP, it was much more in the jazz idiom, and the courses were very practical. As I couldn't sing in French, I did things differently.

Did you sing in English?
Yes, and often without words too.

Swedish too, I think?
Sometimes... but rarely! I'm trying a bit at the moment. I love singing in Swedish. It seems to me that when you sing in your own language, you really touch other levels of meaning. There's a big difference.

On many of your albums, you sing in English. What is your relationship with this language?
I remember translating Céline Dion's "Mon coeur survivra pour toi - my heart will go on" into English when I was ten: it was the first time I sang in English! Most of the artists I listened to when I was twenty sang in English. It was the pop-folk songs of Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell: all that culture! All three of them are also magnificent writers, expressing themselves in the most profound English, and using this refined language to express very subtle emotions and sensations. It's undoubtedly this love for them that led me to write in English; I love writing in this language!

Do you always write the lyrics of your compositions yourself?
Yes, for the last fifteen years or so, because I like the fact that the voice - an instrument that came into my life somewhat by chance - also has this dimension. Composing a song is only half the job for me!

You say you came to the voice "by chanceby chance "Can you tell us a little more about that?
Yes, I started out playing piano and guitar. Until I was seventeen, I wanted to be a pianist. I did a bit of choral singing, but I didn't pay much attention to it, especially as there were so many real singers around me at school. In Sweden, there's a whole choral culture. Everyone has the right to sing: the voice is accessible to all. I think it's a bit different in France.
And then, when we were seventeen, there were three of us who were interested in jazz and improvisation. It was easier to make this kind of music with our voices than with the piano! That's how it all started. However, after school, I wanted to enter a piano class at a music conservatory. But then a friend of mine said, "No, Isabel, you've got to sing, it's your thing!So for me, singing is still a bit of a coincidence.

Can you tell us more about amateur music-making in your country?
In Sweden, there's a tradition of musical gatherings between villages in the countryside, which has existed for at least a hundred years. Everyone brings their instruments (accordion, fiddle). We get together to sing traditional songs. It's not really a concert, it's informal; it's just a sharing between amateurs, it's not about doing something perfect. It's a tradition that's still very much alive!

Where you grew up, was there music in the street?
I grew up in a small town with a population of 9,000. If you wanted to listen to music, you really had to look for it. The commercialization of culture had already damaged a lot of things, but I had a lot of musician friends. For years, we played together: I played guitar, there was also an accordion, a violin, and the nyckelharpa (a traditional bowed string instrument). We mostly played at parties. All songs are transmitted orally, with slight differences from region to region.

Was there music in your family?
Not at all, but both my grandfathers loved music and my mother's grandfather was an accordionist. I met him when I was fifteen, and was able to share my love of music with him a few years before he died.

What kind of music did you play on the piano?
Classical music from sheet music. I also played by ear what I heard on the radio, or what I composed in my head.

And guitar?
Mostly folk.

So you worked on your voice afterwards?
Yes, but as I sang for quite a long time without any technique - until I was seventeen or eighteen - I developed a voice that was outside the norm, and that counted a lot in my evolution: a voice that escapes codes, and with which I can play. Anything but a perfect voice, or one that tries to please. When I started taking singing lessons, it was in an experimental spirit!

Isabel, how did the transition from classical and folk music to improvisation come about? Was it jazz that made the transition?
I think it came naturally, because I liked trance, the idea of being crossed; it was already there in my way of making music.
There was also a short period at school when I played jazz with others; we played the standards. I discovered the music of Nina Simone, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holliday... Someone like Avishai Cohen was very much loved in Sweden! And then there was a whole active scene in Gothenburg; jazz students who were starting to make contemporary music. These musicians played harmonic music, a form of jazz, but very open. Among these musicians, there were several singers older than me, who proposed a very free form of singing, melodic and offbeat at the same time, and which influenced the whole younger generation; singers like Erika Angell, Mariam Wallentin, Lindha Kallerdahl, and also Sidsel Endresen, Maja Ratkje. At the same time, I also discovered the work of Meredith Monk and Laurie Anderson.
When I was 21, I attended an improvisation master class at my music school, led by a female singer. What a shock! I couldn't believe it: I was lost, but it really resonated with me. From that moment on, a door opened: I felt this was my path.
I immediately started experimenting with a singer who sang with pedals, and I did that too. We formed an experimental music group, Soil Collectors, with a mix of improvisation, writing, theater and video. There were collaborations with dancers, video artists... Sometimes we even filmed ourselves. The doors were wide open to experimentation!
We were supported by the European scene, which wanted to help emerging musicians; we played at festivals such as Twelve Points. I learned a lot from that band.

Soil Collectors - The making of Tah-tay Leet' -kah lah (official video) from SOIL COLLECTORS on Vimeo.

In Sweden, you also formed another band: Farvel?
Indeed: it was a ten-year adventure, very important to me, which has just come to an end after one last concert. Farvel is the band that really created my identity; I realize that now! In ten years, we rehearsed so much, searched so much... It was a group in permanent ebullition, six musicians from very different horizons: Balkan music, musical comedy, and also rock and grunge, traditional Swedish music, jazz, all these influences!
We tried to be a real collective: we took the time to try out each other's ideas, with improvisation as our guiding principle. It was a great school in terms of equality and democracy: we tried everything. There were long moments of discussion. We also gave several workshops in schools to share our ideas with students, and that's where we learned even more!

Why did the group stop?
There were a number of reasons: geographical dispersal, life changes (some became parents or went into teaching). Also, the context of professional life has changed a lot in Sweden. Grants for experimental music in Sweden, which used to be generous, are now awarded to groups that have at least ten concerts in a year: it's terrible, it's killed a whole sub-culture!

You talk about improvisation and free vocality, but melody is still very much present in your music?
It's true, I love melody! Beautiful harmonies can move me, it's so beautiful! In my life to date, I've never encountered anything as moving as music, but even though harmony moves me a lot, I also love noise. I can go and listen to noise, a wall of noise for over an hour: it moves me just as much as a melody. Everything that's SOUND is equally important to me.

Can we now talk about the groups you've initiated in France, and your future projects?
After ten years as part of a collective - or as a guest musician - I'm now in charge of my own projects: it's a big change, it's a different job! As a project leader, I have to develop social skills and build trust with my playing partners. It's a challenge, but I've learned a lot from my other experiences!

Do you want to talk about your experiences as a guest artist withAnne Paceo and Airelle Besson, for example?
Yes, I do! In fact, I still play with them. They were very intense years, punctuated by many concerts, and in very different aesthetics, because I've always liked contrasts. In 2014, Airelle Besson invited me for the first time. Thanks to her, I've been able to play in many concerts in France.

Did these collaborations start right after you graduated from the CNSMdP? Did these musicians come to you naturally?
Yes, but already during my year at the Conservatoire, one or two groups had formed. A collaboration with Ibrahim Maalouf came about, which enabled me to stay a little longer in France to work on my 2013 album Something came with the sun. I was then able to bring other projects to life. I was still living in Sweden, so I had to go back and forth between the two countries a lot!

There was also this wonderful adventure around the music of Moondog with Cabaret contemporain? Do you remember the beginning of this experience?
The musicians of the ensemble invited us, Linda Olah and me, both Swedes from Göteborg active in France. Strangely enough, that's when we got to know each other - we'd never met before.

Did you know Moondog's music?
No, I just discovered it! What a wonderful experience! For me, Moondog is a genius: I love the minimalism of his music and his lyrics. Everything is chiseled, precise and humorous. It was very physical vocally; sometimes we had to sing the same word for five minutes... It's a beautiful memory; I must say I feel very comfortable with these musicians.

You have also collaborated with COAX, on the Bribes 4 album in particular?
Yes, with Julien Desprez, there was the creation of the "t(r)opic" ensemble in connection with the Bridge, Alexandre Pierrepont's series, and Julien Desprez's meeting with Rob Mazurek. The idea came up to create a larger group, around Julien and Rob; nine musicians, many of them Scandinavian(Mette Rasmussen, Ingebrigt Haker Flaten, me ...) and also musicians from the USA and Brazil like Susana Santos Silva. It was a rather special experience for me, playing all of a sudden in a French project with Scandinavians! The music was totally improvised.

In these collaborations, you were a guest musician, but soon enough you were composing your own music, writing your own lyrics?
Yes, but it took time for me to find my voice. For example, I don't think I'm quite myself yet on the 2011 and 2013 albums.

Did you find your identity on the Mareld album, released in 2020?
Yes, I consider it my first album. First of all, I "heard" all the music on this album in my head before making it. I had a very clear idea of what I wanted artistically. Nevertheless, it took me five years to write the music and the lyrics.

What is Mareld about?
The starting point for this album was the book Homo Sapiens by Harari Yuval Noah; a singular vision of our species, which highlights, for example, the fact that the human species has lived much longer as a nomad than as a sedentary one, and how this has affected the course of our lives, right up to the present day. This book had a major influence on my way of thinking. I was suddenly able to understand certain forms of automatism in human behavior, which were opaque to me. I was also able to better analyze Sweden's political evolution: the success of the far right, of populism... This book helped me to answer the questions I was asking myself about the way our societies are evolving. There are several allusions to these questions on the album.

What idea are you working on at the moment?
I'm working on a new album with a very clear theme: the moon. The starting point was a series on on the Apollo program, which I discovered by chance: the attempts to get close to the moon, the trials over ten years, the failures... I was fascinated by the moon, I read a lot! This coincided with the desire for a solo, which I first imagined for piano and guitar, until I realized that there was a strong connection between the moon and the grand piano, because of the great space and the incredible sound possibilities of the piano. So I chose the grand piano. Then the title came to me: Sea of tranquility, in other words, the place where Apollo landed on the moon. A wonderful metaphor!

Then I wanted to add some space sounds. I went online, and saw that Nasa had a whole bank of sounds available free of charge - storms on Jupiter, for example, which really impressed me. I downloaded it all, spent two months listening to it all, and turned it into a sound library. It was a tricky business! It's not easy to record sounds in space; the frequencies are different, because of the weightlessness! Nasa recordings are full of parasite sounds.
My idea with this album is to create a kind of moon music - let's say music that sounds like you're on the moon - with lots of space. There will also be a ten-minute track in Swedish, a way of reconnecting with my roots; it's precisely the moment when you begin your journey to the moon!

Isabel, how do you make a living from your music?
For the last two years, I've been lucky enough to be an associate artist at the Théâtre de Saint-Quentin en Yvelines. It was the first time I'd had such an experience. I loved the fact that I had space and time for experimentation, research and laboratory work, things that aren't so common when you're a musician. The way the big live music machine works in France often means that you're rushing from one project to the next, without having the time to get to the heart of the creative process. The system doesn't leave room for experimentation. This may be different in theater and dance, but in music it's all too often the rule! I was able to work on several creations during this residency, which was a great source of inspiration. Today, I'm going through a new phase; I need to take on my own projects. I need to refine my knowledge of the field and how things work.
The system in France is complicated. A few musicians emerge (or are chosen), while others remain unjustly in the shadows; this kills creation, and it's even worse in Sweden because of the commercial system! I don't want to be a prisoner of the machine; I feel I must escape the automatism that consists in systematically linking an album to the search for concerts, to sell the album... Each project commits me completely. I want to see things through to the end.

Do you listen to a lot of music?
I listen to a bit of everything, especially folk, but I need the vibe of a concert, so I go to my friends' concerts!

Interview by Anne Montaron

Article photo © Viktor Freidlit
Photos © Maxim Francois