DESCRIPTION:
Helena Espvall started to play electric guitar as a bored teenager in northern Sweden, and went on to take cello lessons and was never bored again.
After having played in rock bands, a silent movie orchestra, an Arabian ensemble and being inspired to play free improvised music by a shocking Eugene Chadbourne performance, she moved to the US in 2000,where she spends much of her time collaborating with dancers, playing with folk psych band Espers and singing bossa nova and Swedish traditional songs.
Helena has performed several times at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, twice at the High Zero Festival of improvised music in Baltimore, MD, at the Improvised and Otherwise Festival in Brooklyn, NY, at Big Sur experimental festival in California and at Terrastock 2006 & 2008 among others. Espvall has received grants for artist residencies in Mojacar, Spain and at CESTA in Tabor, Czech Republic, and was invited to play at OpenCircuit InterAct, an international festival for improvised music in Hasselt, Belgium, last May where she performed with Chris Corsano, Paul Flaherty, C. Spencer Yeh, Daniel Carter and others. In 2006 she released her debut solo album Nimis & Arx on Fire Museum/Pax records. She has worked with Lukas Ligeti, Fursaxa, Damon & Naomi, Bert Jansch, Masaki Batoh (Ghost), Vashti Bunyan and many more.