Elias Olivera Graversen is a second year Songwriting student at BIMM Berlin from Rome. We caught up with Elias to find out more about his life in music.
WHO are you listening to at the moment?
I’m always listening to a lot of different music, but recently it’s been earlier material by Bright Eyes frontman Conor Oberst, particularly his ‘Upside Down Mountain’ album. His lyrics always seem to have a twist that, when combined with his shaky voice, always catches me. I recently listened to Tom Waits’ ‘Closing Time’ album and concluded that the title couldn’t have been more reflective of its sound. At a library I recently came across an album by Dinah Washington, as well as the amazing Romanian brass band Fanfare Ciocarlia’s ‘Queens and Kings’ album, which features Esma Redzepova, among others.
WHAT do you love about Berlin?
I really like the contrasts there are between different parts of the city, the type of people living or passing through here, and even between buildings standing beside each other. On the street beside my house, all buildings are more or less renovated except for one, which is gradually falling apart, and just kind of sits there as a stubborn reminder of the fact that Pberg was once East Berlin. I like that. Some areas remind me of my city of birth, Copenhagen, while others of Rome, where I lived before Berlin. You can find super posh and pricey areas and then there’s Neukölln. As a good friend would describe it, I’m a bit of a cultural smoothie and, therefore, feel quite at home in a city that’s one too.
WHY did you choose Songwriting?
Before seeing the BA in Songwriting on BIMM’s website I wasn’t even aware that this was something you could study as a degree. It caught my eye because that was exactly what I wanted to do with music. I chose BIMM because it was in Berlin, right in between the two countries I’m most connected to (Denmark and Italy), and because classes were in English.
To find out more about studying with BIMM, order a prospectus.
Photograph: Elias performing with Ritzy Park.
