Helen Svoboda
Helen Svoboda is a double bassist, vocalist and composer. Her work explores the melodic potential of the contemporary double bass, intricately weaving extended techniques and overtones with vocal tessiture amidst abstract song-writing and vegetable-themed compositions. “A musician who absolutely defies categorisation” (Andrew Ford – The Music Show, ABC), her performance practice emits a childlike, quirky energy, with a flair for “allowing difficult ideas to sound whimsical and free” (Kristin Berardi, AUS).
With Finnish/Australian heritage, Svoboda lived and studied in the Netherlands and Germany between the years of 2018-20, specialising in soloistic double bass composition. Driven by the spontaneity of improvisation and the novelty of large wooden instruments, she emits a carefree, quirky energy into all aspects of her artistic practice. Her inner being channels facets of childlike playfulness and raw intensity amidst a “purposeful storm” (Charlotte Haesen, Jazz Maastricht), her music combining “soaring vocalisations … twisted with intense displays of double bass” (Scott Murphy, Heavy Blog is Heavy 2020), with the sole aim of honest, soulful sentiment.
Fuelled by strange sonic frequencies, Svoboda has released albums across a substantial number of her own original projects to date: her solo releases I Heard the Clouds (Made Now Music, November 2022), dormant, I lay. (January 2021) and Vegetable Bass (Made Now Music, June 2020); Ambient, environmentally-themed alternative rock band/2019 QLD Jazz Music Award Winners The Biology of Plants (Vol 2– Art as Catharsis 2019); Two albums with MEATSHELL, her experimental-folk duo with saxophonist Andrew Saragossi (winners of Maastricht Jazz Awards 2020: Since Subito – Earshift Music 2021; Afar – Made Now Music 2019); minimalist chamber trio Helen Svoboda’s SPROUT (Sleep Architecture – SuperSonic 2019); AHA Trio’s debut album Against All Odds (2019), and two EPs with Moon on Fire, duo with Finnish vocalist Selma Savolainen (Banff Sessions 2020, The Function of the Eye 2021). Most recently, she released The Odd River – a large scale collaboration with filmmaker Angus Kirby, depicting genetically modified produce through sound and film (commissioned by the Freedman Jazz Fellowship 2020). In early 2024, she will tour and release ‘Lava’ on Room40 with new trio Panghalina, in collaboration with Maria Moles (drums, percussion, synth) and Bonnie Stewart (percussion, drums, vocals).
She is currently studying a PhD in composition under the tutelage of Cat Hope at Monash University and is a Musica Viva Australia FutureMaker for 2023-24.