Helen Svoboda is a double bassist, vocalist, composer and nature-enthusiast.
Born of Finnish/Australian heritage, she draws influence mainly from vegetables, flowers and the genres of minimalist neo-classical music to folk and experimental jazz.
Following her recent return from two years in the Netherlands and Germany, Svoboda was recently awarded the 2020 Freedman Jazz Fellowship and named the 2020/2021 Pathfinders Associate Artist for the Australian Art Orchestra, based in Melbourne. She has released over ten albums across her own projects to date, and as a composer her work has been commissioned for a variety of ensembles both locally and overseas.
As an ‘indispensible part of the Australian jazz, improvised and experimental scenes’ (Erik Griswold, AUS), Svoboda has toured across Australia, Europe and the USA at festivals/venues including Make it Jazz (Tilburg, NL), Stadtgarten (Cologne, GER) and MONA (TAS). Across her work she has collaborated with a diverse range of artists including Kristin Berardi (AUS), Sebastian Gramss (GER) and Cory Smythe (NY).
I consider myself to be a genre-fluid artist: defined only by my sonic direction in a given moment… Everything that I create from here on is merely an audio snapshot of that particular period in my life, as it always has been.
