Origins: Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir

I was born in Iceland. My parents had me very young and didn’t always have the funds for babysitters, so my mom, who played the violin, would take me to rehearsals and all that stuff. She tells me she was practising some contemporary piece and the E string on her violin kept whistling. She changed it, but it didn’t stop – until she realised it was me! I was making these super high-pitched noises to imitate her. I must have been a year old or something. Anyway, music has been ingrained in me for as long as I can remember.

When I was older my family moved to Iowa. I couldn’t speak English at first but through playing the cello, I discovered how much music was a form of expression and communication. It was a hugely influential experience. Today, especially through my teaching, I see so many young musicians coming to music from a place of execution, like, I’m up on stage and I’m playing the notes as well as I can. And while that’s important, I think there’s always got to be a deeper feeling behind what you’re doing. Maybe that’s what has carried me through because the point of performing is connecting and expressing and learning something about yourself that you didn’t know before. The other thing my experience in Iowa gave me was playing music with kids the same age as me, so I never felt outside the norm. It wasn’t like I was the only kid in school taking music seriously.

At one stage I remember my mom asked if there was anything else I’d like to do, because she knew I was going to have to be great and lucky and make some major sacrifices. But in my mind, there was no other option. In the end, my parents have been super supportive, and I feel very lucky in that way. 

I did my undergrad at the Cleveland Institute of Music, and then six months at the Paris Conservatoire, which was amazing, and then I did a master’s at Juilliard in New York. I did a two-year fellowship program called Ensemble Connect which was an outreach program of Carnegie Hall, the Juilliard and the NYC Department of Education. It was life-changing, and out of it a few of us established Ensemble Decoda. We just loved playing together and we wanted to do more work in places like prisons and schools. In fact, I’ve recently done a songwriting workshop in a prison in Connecticut. 

I have just started as the New York City artistic director for Tertulia, which is an organisation that puts on concerts in restaurants. It’s all about taking music to where people actually want to go. We bring people in with great food, and then in between the courses, we have put on a great concert. It’s not one of these – you know – background-music kind of things. It’s chamber music and when we perform, the kitchen goes silent, everybody sits down and listens, and then we enjoy another course together. What I love about it is that the musicians sit with everyone, it’s not like they’re hidden away in some other backstage area.  

saeunn.com; tertulianyc.org