My name is Ylva Bentancor and I was born in Stockholm, Sweden in 1967. There I stayed during my years of studying composition at The Royal Academy of Music, until I took my diploma. After that life took me to different places, mostly because of work, and during that way I started to discover how sounds could help me tell the stories I want to tell, what a fantastic instrument my hand recorder is. In a radio interview I did in Berlin I by mistake talked about a football match I recorded as a ”concert”, which says a lot about how I listen to sounds, they are often, or always, music. After some years in Berlin, Germany, I’m now sharing my life between a little island in the Atlantic Sea, Berlin and Stockholm. I would definitely call my sound art political, there is soo much that we need to think about, soo much that needs to be changed…

I’m Gustavo Bentancor, born in Uruguay from where we fled in the beginning of the eighties during the dictatorship. We landed in Sweden. There I stayed for many years, exploring music through my guitar, cello and bandoneon. In Malmö I founded the quintet Cosmopolitango, and for many years we played Piazzolla all over the world. Besides working as a musician I started to compose, and went with my instruments to Gotland and the School of Music Composition. Soon after Gotland I moved with my family to Berlin where I started a workshop renovating bandoneons. During this time i also started exploring the sounds of different materials in my workshop. It was the almost not audible sounds that captured my interest, and using contact microphones I discovered new sound worlds in there. Today I live on one Canary Island, doing farming combined with music projects.

My name is Cecilia Gelland. I grew up in Sweden and studied the violin there in Stockholm then in the US and after that in Germany. Martin and I met while working in an orchestra in Copenhagen, Denmark. We started to play together and that became our life and our livelihood. I think music is my favorite way of meeting people. Music starts up talks about things one can almost not talk about. I like that. And I love to experiment, express and be creative and have lots of ideas. Some people find it a bit exhausting that I never seem to get tired of that, though I also do love to listen and to ask lots of questions. One life is a gift, and yet too little to learn enough to become wise. When people share with me about their thoughts and feelings, their experiences and their imagination, I feel rich, almost like having more than one life.

I am Martin Gelland, a violinist with a past in Munich. Now I have a home in northern Sweden where I treasure the mountains, the woods and the lakes, just not the cold and the darkness. I somehow crave to be in the sun.

I like to catch the moment and feel what happens just now, this very tiny second.  It is unescapable, unexpected, an inspiring calling for immediate attention, for immediate action – take it – get involved with it – it will start a process. Value the moment I would like to say!