PIANIST - ARTIST

ABOUT
Bjørk-Guinevere Kinsella Eide (born 17.03.95) is a freelance pianist, composer and artist. She currently studies live electronics at the Norwegian Academy of Music under the tutelage of Koka Nikoladze. She did her master's in classical piano (2019-22) at the Tromsø Conservatory of Music with Professor Sergej Osadchuk and Yegor Shevtsov. Her studies at the conservatory also include music technology with Jon Marius Areskjold and voice lessons with Berit Norbakken. Bjørk holds a bachelor's degree in orchestral conducting from the Norwegian Academy of Music (2014-18). In the 2017/18 season she was an Erasmus student at the Hochschule für Musik "Hanns Eisler" in Berlin.
In 2022, Bjørk was invited to participate in the mentor programme "Cloud:Exit" hosted by the Insomnia festival and TalentNorway. This included a performance under the festival of 2022 and a collaboration with Tromsø Silent Film Festival in 2023. Bjørk is composing and performing under the stage name Kinsella. Insomnia writes about Bjørk:
"Bjørk-Guinevere Kinsella Eide is a classically trained pianist from Bodø who has produced magical ambient under the stage name Kinsella. It is not difficult to hear Eide's musicality in the beautiful and exciting soundscape and we are eager to hear what else she can create in the electronic sphere."
As a pianist, Bjørk has performed at festivals such as Nordland Musikkfestuke (2018-20), GLØTT (2020) and Oslo Kulturnatt (2017), was a substitute in the Arctic Philharmonic (2018-21) and toured as a soloist with orchestras in Russia and France. She's been a soloist several times, most recently with the Arctic Philharmonic (2022). In the same year she was invited to perform with the Arctic Philharmonic in "The Tale of Beethoven" at the Arctic Chamber Music Festival in Svalbard.
In March 2022, she presented her solo project "A Hidden Place" in Tromsø, where she played electronic and acoustic music in a four-hour performance, inviting the audience to come and go as they pleased to find peace in her sound world. The project was enthusiastically received by the audience and most of them stayed in the room for 1-2 hours.
In October 2019, Bjørk and Mirsaeed Hosseiny Panah formed a duo called Farasoo, an inventive, dynamic and unconventional duo. It consists of piano, electronics and chromatic santoor. The duo has always experimented to find their own sound by combining the diverse musical heritage of the musicians and composing music together. They last performed at Melafestivalen in August 2022.
Bjørk has received several scholarships: "Drømmestipendet" (2010), Gurli og Sigrid Bugges Scholarship (2015), Tom Wilhelmsens stiftelse (annual 2016-20), Bera Evensens legat (2017), Arts Council scholarship (2019), Bodø Municipality Cultural Scholarship (2020), Tvibitstigen (2020-21) and SNN Talent Scholarship (2021).
Bjørk doesn't currently conduct, devoting herself instead to her projects as a composer and performer, but her background includes masterclasses with conductors such as Juanjo Mena, Michael Schønwandt, Vasily Petrenko and Atso Almilla. She's conducted orchestras such as the Berlin Sinfonietta (2016), the Brandenburg State Orchestra Frankfurt (2017), the Arctic Philharmonic (2018) and the Malaga Philharmonic Orchestra (2019). In 2021 she was invited to conduct the ensemble "ARcTic Sustain" at the Festspillene i Nord-Norge. Together they performed the world premieres of works by Mark Adderly, Karstein Brustad and Karin Rehnquist.