Skadi
Spotify Artistpage
Actual Spotify Album
Skadi
I am a pianist from Hamburg and study psychology. I love moving melodies based on minor keys. When I listen to music, I often spin the melody in my head.
Interesting to learn about me is that I am a synaesthesiologist. This means that I “see” sounds in colours and shapes. Until I was 22, I thought this was perfectly normal! Through my studies I learned that synaesthesia even seems to be relatively common among artists. Every song has soul and character for me and every melody describes a very specific scenery. I am sure that synaesthesia helps me to find inspiration because I make associations very quickly. May 2021 I will release my debut album.
Corona has changed the publishing policy of JARO Medien. Finja Skadi Vollbrecht is the first artist we signed up for the new JAROdigital department, and we only planned to publish the pieces digitally.
Within a short time, the piano tracks achieved more than 100,000 streams on Spotify alone, so that the idea arose to release the album as a physical sound carrier for the 40th anniversary of JARO. Finja Skadi Vollbrecht’s music belongs to the category of the young generation of “neo-classical” performers and composers such as Hania Rani, Nils Frahm, Joep Beving or Peter Broderick.
She says about herself and her music …
I am a pianist from Hamburg and study psychology. I love moving melodies based on minor keys. When I listen to music, I often continue to spin the melody in my head. Interesting to know about me is that I am a syn- aesthesist. This means that I “see” sounds in colours and shapes. Until I was 22, I thought this was perfectly normal! Through my studies I learned that synaesthesia even seems to be relatively common among artists. Every song has soul and character for me and every melody describes a very specific scenery. I am sure that synaesthesia helps me to find inspiration because I make associations very quickly.
The songs on the album were written over a period of 12 years. Some were first composed with other instruments (mostly orchestral) and later rewritten in piano form. When composing, I always have a special atmosphere, mood and/or environment in front of me. It feels to me as if I am pulling out of the “ether” of infinite possibilities a melody that fits what I have in my head at the moment. Often my songs start out as catchy tunes.
Lost Paradise
I composed this song in 2011. I had one of my novel characters in mind (Skyfe Blaydow from the dystopian novel “The Shine”), who plays a song from his homeland on the piano. That’s why the song used to be called “Blaydows’s Song.”
Evanescence
In May 2012 I found an injured rabbit on a country lane that someone must have abandoned. I managed to catch it and bring it to the shelter. Its injury made me aware of the transience of organic life. To the keyword “transience” I composed this song while the rabbit was being transported.
Absence of Dawn
In the winter of 2011/12 I composed many orchestral pieces with a music programme, including this one. Unfortunately, everything sounded like MIDI. So many years later I made a piano piece out of it.
Stars
My gaming laptop has a “star sparkle” setting that makes different keys flash random colours. In 2017, that inspired me to write this song.
Lucidity
In 2012, my now ex-boyfriend had the idea to make a short film set in a “Russian” snowy landscape. He asked me to write a song for it. He didn’t like the song and the film was never made, but that’s how “Lucidity” came about.
Aurora
When I transferred “Lucidity” into a new music programme in 2016, I kept stretching the melody in my head, and it became “Aurora”, formerly “Permafrost”.
Heaven’s Dawn
This song is probably the oldest on the album. I composed it “by mistake”. I had the melody in my head when I was about 16, after my school class had watched a western film. I was convinced that the melody came from the film, but I couldn’t find this “sound track” on the internet.
Spring is Here
The song was written spontaneously in 2012, under a different name and as an orchestral composition with MIDI sound. I am glad that it has found a great use.
Heaven
This song came to my mind in 2021 when I played the backing track of “Evanescence” and thought of a new melody.
Echoes of a Battle
I wrote this song in 2011 after watching a samurai film that had a beautiful song in the credits. I couldn’t find the song on the internet and wanted to reconstruct it on my PC. The song sounded different in reality, but so a new song was born.
Memories
This song came about spontaneously in December 2019. While composing it, I had in mind that on a sunny late-summer evening, rays of sunlight were breaking through the dark green canopy of an oak tree.
Prism
I wrote this song this year (2021) when I spontaneously came up with a new melody to the backing track of “Lost Paradise”.