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Josefine Cronholm - "Gardens and Paradises"
Josefine Cronholm is an extraordinary Swedish singer, age 32, and lives in Denmark. With her solo-debut-album "Wild Garden", she already received broad recognition; her latest release "Hotel Paradise" followed in winter 2003. An equally strong performer as she is a songwriting talent, she also is a very warm and humorous person. Never acting like a star or with any manirism, she posesses a natural charisma.
Josefine
Cronholm
Katja Duregger met Josefine Cronholm after the first concert with her group IBIS in Germany at the festival in Schloss Elmau.
Katja: Did you ever expect so much attention with your debut?
Josefine: No, actually! I don´t know…are there so many people paying attention to it? (laughs)
Katja: I do think so!
Josefine: Yes, I know there are some people…(smiles), but if you talk about the international response, I´m still really not sure. Maybe that sounds strange to say but I don´t think about this kind of things. Of course I like to spread my music as wide as possible. And if it happens, I think that´s fantastic. I know that there are some people in Germany who like my music and that I start to get an audience here, which is wonderful. Actually, this concert in Schloss Elmau is my first concert with IBIS in Germany.
Katja: But you´ve been here with other groups?
Josefine: Yes, I did one concert with Marylin Mazur and some years ago with Django Bates - but with this band it´s the first time. But to come back back to your first question: What I wanted to say is, I´m not the kind of person that thinks in terms of success, who does things only to reach as many people as possible. I´m not like that.
Katja: Yes, your music "sounds" like that. It doesn't give the impression of a person who struggles to be liked.
Josefine: Yes, exactly, I never think in this terms. I just do the things as I feel. IBIS started… actually it started with a duo: Me and the pianist Henrik Sundh. We met and we started to play my music, which I began to compose at the time I moved to Copenhagen - about eight years ago. Beginning to compose was a real breakthrough for me. But there was no big intention behind it.
I just met Henrik, I showed him some ideas and he liked it. We didn´t have any gigs in the beginning. At that time I had a lot of gigs with other groups, most of all with Django Bates, which was another kind of breakthrough for me: People got to know me and I had the chance to learn a lot from Djangos wonderful musical universe and travelled all over the world.
Josefine
Cronholm - "Hotel Paradise"
Katja: How did it come that you concentrated more on your own music and put a real band together?
Josefine: First it was this duo and then, slowly, I did put one on one. One day I thought I wanted to have a trumpet player, so I met Flemming Agerskov. His way of creating music, his universe is totally according to my taste. Then it was a trio and later I met Lisbeth Diers and I thought she´s great - so I called her and we got together. Actually we played for quite a while without a bass player, because I wanted to do something without the bass. That was really interesting for a while. But after some time I wanted to have the bass as well and I was lucky enough to find Thommy Andersson.
Katja: What is the connection between you all?
Josefine: What connects us is that we are five very strong individuals, very strong in our own voices. And as a group, none of these persons is saying: "I´m the leader!" We are very dynamic and very open minded, also open in our hearts. We are all very good in listening to each other.
For me, music is a way to reach the nucleus, get into the true essence of a story. Not the story in terms of lyrics, the story in the sense of the feeling of a song, the feeling of the atmosphere, of what kind of story it tells. So we ask ourselves: what do we want to describe? And I write the music, so I have an idea, but after that we meet and we create the music together.
Katja: What are in your opinion the most important skills a musician needs to have so that you like to play with him or her?
Josefine: A good balance between a strong individual is important, a strong ego and an open mind with the ability to listen. An open mind that is willing to discover what´s in there. Not these cool musicians that think: "Oh, yeah, music is cool, this life is cool, I´m cool!"…you know?
That seems very boring to me. A very boring cliche. When I create my music, it´s about finding out the essence. It´s about a strong will of knowing consciously what you want to say. The creativity of listening, being aware of the other one. There´s a big difference between a big ego and being selfish. A big ego is important, it´s not something you need to be scared of. In the end it´s what makes us open our mouths and believe in what we say. And it supports the lust and the passion of doing music.
Josefine
Cronholm
Katja: All this is being transported in your music, it´s possible to get all this in just listening to it consciously! But – where lie the roots for your being so strong by yourself in what you do, being so grounded?
Josefine: I´m not sure... I don´t think that my "being grounded" is part of some kind of evolution. I think it was always there. To me, it´s all about being present. I´m not able to work without being constantly present, being completely into it. That´s why I could never do music as some kind of job, just to make money.
But it´s very hard to talk about presence because: where does it come from? I don´t know. It´s all about the will to be there, like being here right now, not wanting to be somewhere else, also with the music, not thinking like: "Oh, I wish I could do that or this." It´s all about here and now. That´s the most fantastic thing about music. What is happening now and knowing that it could never be the same.
That´s why I chose this kind of music: There´s the room to always create something new! Because doing concerts night after night, doing always the same thing, means death. It´s like the goal seems to be the most important thing and in my music the process is the most important thing. To explain it better: I have a child, a two year old son. And I "created" that child. But as soon as it´s gone from my body, I have to set it free, because then it has it´s own life, it´s own will… (smiles)
Katja: Now you start to get attention, a career. People want to hear you, which means more gigs, more travelling. How do you connect that to your life with a two year old child?
Josefine: It´s hard, really! But I know that if I couldn´t do my music, I would be unhappy. I would be an unhappy mother and this would be bad for my son, too! I want him to understand my world like I want to understand his world. But every time I have to leave him it´s like hell: It´s breaking my heart. But I talk to him, he just learned to say these little words like "mama". And I was so glad because I thought: Wow he has a word for me! (laughs)
Josefine
Cronholm
Katja: Did your son change your priorities in life?
Josefine: Yes! He will always, always, always, always be the first in my life! This doesn´t mean that I don´t leave him – at the moment I´m here, you know – but if he needs me, I will be there. But speaking about him is also a metaphor about creating something. And then letting it go. It´s like a song, creating a piece of music. And then give it to some people I believe in and feel connected to, and feel that they are taking it with love and creativity to their own magic. That´s very amazing, I love that.
Katja: Do you think this way of creating is connected to your home country Sweden, or to Scandinavia? There are a lot of strong individuals coming from this part of the world. Is there more room for living this kind of individuality? Like a "playground" for finding a strong inner voice?
Josefine: An important thing for me was the Swedish tradition – and the space. I can only speak for myself: I grew up with Swedish folk music and jazz, in the middle of a big, wide forest. I will always keep that deep inside of me. To me everything started with the silence, the silence of the nature around me.
I don´t think that you can only find that in Sweden or Scandinavia. If you want, you can find that in other countries, too. But maybe it´s easier there, I don´t know. If I look at Denmark, where I live now and which is a very small country, I realize that in Sweden there is a lot of space. It´s such a big country, with not so many people living there. Maybe it´s easier to get grounded and find your own space in a country like that. You can scream and no one would hear you – that´s wonderful! You cannot do that in Denmark.
Katja: What will be your next step? A new CD with IBIS or something completely different?
Josefine: I´m not sure. My label wants me to record a Swedish composer. One of my absolute favourites, Cornelis Vreeswijk. He´s dead, he was a poet, guitar player and songwriter – and he wrote some beautiful songs. They want me to do that, but I´m not sure. I also want to compose.
I think it´s gonna take a while before I do another recording. I need time and space to start thinking, to get a picture of what I want to do next. Because sometimes, like in this period, after two weeks on tour in Sweden and the last CD, I feel totally dry and empty, musicwise. It´s ok that way, because I cannot really press something new. I need to be in peace with what I´m doing.
Katja Duregger
CD: Josefine Cronholm - "Hotel Paradise"
(Stunt Records STUCD 03082)
Stunt Records/Sundance im Internet: www.sundance.dk
Fotos: Stunt Records
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Cronholm - "Wild garden" - Review (erschienen: 7.6.2002)
