Biography

BIOGRAPHY
When I first saw Rebekka, I found myself faced with someone raw, not in a raunchy dirt-infused sense but someone new, fresh, open, unbudding. Somebody naked of pretension. And then some six months after first seeing her, I saw her for real – on stage – a creature in her true element. The rawness was highlighted, the ruby red of her lips stained with the tales of past hardship, past truths and an aching for the present tense. This is not a woman offering a shield behind which to hide. She demands honesty, as she presents you her one and only life tale through the most crystalline tones I’d heard in a long long while, and you’d be a cold-hearted fool to deny her your musical ears.
Rebekka’s early tale is one you might read in a romanticised travel brochure, her parents the ultimate free birds wandering the world barefoot and open-hearted, making it back home to northern Norway from southern Europe just as Rebekka’s mother’s waters were breaking to deliver her into a world of idealism, of love, where the sometimes harsh Scandinavian coastline was as loud a musical voice in her upbringing as the rest. And music there was: from the noble age of five, Rebekka was trying her tiny hand at the violin and piano, soon after creating her very own melodies. For such a hippy child adept at packing up and moving home with the agility and grace of a soft sand dune, the technical side of creativity somehow managed to stick to her like the glue from one of her family’s craft projects. From 13 she was recording her own demos – on her own – spurred on by an acute interest in the possibility of creating her own soundscape through the use of mechanical devices. And she was off!
Her talent did not go unnoticed – quite the opposite. Signed to a multinational label at 17, even from that impressionable age she was unable to bend and twist to the restraints put on her by those in positions of power. ‘What? You want me to make that kind of music? Sayonara!’ She spent the ensuing five years crafting her sound and reached the end of that time with a finished album, confidently approaching a label which was quick to grab her and release ‘Neophyte’ in 2003, a simultaneously symphonic and electronic debut. Two years later she was ready to go with her second album ‘Good or Goodbye’, according to her more of a pop journey than the experimental escapades of her debut. Both albums were met with critical acclaim, rave reviews and even a Grammy nomination or two. Are you as winded as I am trying to keep up with her? As if these accomplishments weren’t enough, our fairytale protagonist was searching world cities (New York, Paris, Stockholm) for a place to lay down her waterlily roots, singing all the while and even acting along the road. Oh yes, she is an accomplished actress as well, but I am here to extrapolate on her musical pursuits alone. Stockholm won the place-to-rest-her bones award, and work on her first truly ‘solo’ album, ‘The Noble Art of Letting Go’, began there in the dark early months of 2009, as she wrote herself clear of heartache and one fear in particular, a rather private one I am told. Armed with a harp, a piano and that magnificently otherworldly voice that graces her vocal chords, Rebekka snatched up a few close friends and recorded in the city and woods surrounding her adopted Swedish hometown.
‘The Noble Art of Letting Go’ has truly taken on a life of its own. Since its release in late 2009, sound clips from this fantastically original album have been featured in films, TV series and commercials, which all pale in comparison to its being adapted as the soundtrack for the highly acclaimed Cirkus Cirkör’s new show, ‘Wear It Like A Crown’, named after one of the album’s tracks. As Cirkus Cirkör director Tilde Björfors so prettily posed, ‘(When I heard Rebekka’s songs for the first time,) it was as if someone had created the music for what I was all about.’ Rebekka is both composing a soundtrack based on her third album for the circus to carry with them on the road, and will be performing the album live in its entirety with them in Stockholm.
As one reviewer said, ‘(Rebekka’s voice is) both powerful and strong, yet vulnerable and fragile.’ And thus is the journey of life and its many demands, my dears. These very days, Rebekka carries the soles of her magic-dipped feet to her Stockholm-based studio, which she shares with fellow Norwegian songstress Ane Brun, with whom she has also spent the last two years on the touring road. Within the somehow delicate-seeming brick and mortar of those studio walls, beyond spinning musical tales of a personal nature, Rebekka also composes for film, theatre and modern dance companies across Europe and the UK. Recent productions include for The Royal National Theatre in Stockholm and Oslo, film scores in France, Norway and Sweden, and both national and independent theatres throughout the continent.
If your ears have been touched by the raw Scandinavian clarity of this Nordic belle, and your eyes have been fortunate enough to witness her unravelling on stage, then you know what I mean when I say: ‘Without Rebekka, the world we inhabit would be that bit colder and crueler than our lucky bones have it now.’
Sarah Parthemore Snavely
Stockholm, Sweden
25 March 2010