You went to Amsterdam to study ancient music.

I've lived in Amsterdam for 14 uninterrupted years, and in the last year and a half I've lived in Hernani, traveling when I have work, because I work for projects, and maybe a project can last for two weeks or months.

Why have you come back?

I lived for many years in a kind of community. These Woongroep (life groups) are all over the Netherlands, and they are called because they don't call the bathroom, because, if you say the bathroom, people represent free sex and I don't know what. After 14 years we left there and finding a house is very difficult in Amsterdam. In addition, if you’ve lived in a luxury home (cheap social rent, amazing space, a garden, a basement…), it’s almost impossible to find something like that without changing your lifestyle. Grandma left a floor here and I thought I would come here while I thought about what to do ... And I'm still in it.

How do Woongroep work?

In the Netherlands, occupation has been legal until four or five years ago. People occupied many of the government’s houses that were empty (our house, for example, had been a police station). Now, if you get busy, they send you out, but in the '80s it wasn't. In the case of our house, promoted by a group of women, it was one of the first feminist Woongroep, and in the end they reached an agreement with the City Hall: we will pay you the rent so that we can live in this house, but we are the team of this house and we will choose who to go and to whom to go. This house has to continue to socialize housing, that is, we have to share life, create a kind of family.

How did you get there?

I had two friends in that other Woongroep, and they told me that the woman at the bottom had to leave and that whatever came instead would not enter until three months later. At last he decided not to go, they all accepted me and stayed.
When I got there, Woongroep's idea was a bit lost. On the first two floors lived more mature people, from the time of occupation, and on the top floor, three musicians. The group was a bit broken. I had no ideal, I had gone to study music; I went in and flipped. When I walked in, a lot of new people came in and then we started learning a little bit, mixing the top with the bottom ...

Did you easily decide to go abroad?

I knew I wanted to go abroad to study music. The experience at the San Sebastian Conservatory was not very good, and I knew that in Germany there was a great tradition of classical music.

What was your experience at the San Sebastian Conservatory?

I felt that the music was going through a funnel and I was coming out of you that it had no place. This has happened in many of these conservatories, not only here, but also in academicism. Many abandoned her, but since I was innocent, I continued.

In Amsterdam, again…

Here were two or three ways of looking at music, and there, 57.5 paths to making music, seeing and understanding; for me it was a great discovery. In addition, I had an excellent teacher and I knew how to guess what could be taken out of me. He tried to take me to ancient music, though at first I didn't want to.

Why?

Because I thought it was going to be like the other musicians I'd seen around me. I would finish my studies, then I would run oppositions to enter a conservatory or a symphony orchestra, and that would be my life: in the same orchestra every day, from 10 to 10, I don't know what time, forever, once I got the job. These posts are well paid and then you can do all the things listed: buy a house, marry... I didn't know it might not work for that, but the professor guessed it.

And so, you didn't take that path.

No, not at last. In the end, I was surprised by old music, and when I finished my studies, it didn't occur to me to do auditions to get into orchestras, because they started calling me from old music groups, here and there.

Why this initial stoppage?

Within normal classical music, ancient musicians are the worst, or don't play as well, they're considered hippies. The old music revolution started in the 1970s, and many of the musicians who worked on it didn't fully adapt to the world of classical music. You have to be a little crazy to start asking you about an 18th-century oboe that you've seen in a museum, that has holes instead of keys, to ask someone to make a copy, etc. Of course they are stereotypes: all the musicians of ancient times are not hippies, there are a lot of married people... But from the outside, that was what it looked like. Especially for me, when I came from here.

What's the difference between classical music and ancient music?

The French revolution was a great break in the history of music. In art, in general, they returned to the classics after 1789, and in music they also wanted to do so, but there were no great vestiges of Greek and Roman music. So the composers decided that they would create classicism. It was then that the music halls emerged and the composer became a very large figure, with a body similar to the emperors. From that time they are orchestras, conservatories, editorials...
Before that, it was very different to be a musician. All the middle musicians knew how to improvise at the time. They played more than one instrument and wrote music. Then, all of a sudden, that broke and we began to specialize more and more: now, if you're a violinist, you're just that, and you learn to read the sheet music.

Going back to your journey, isn't it true that you work as a freelance?

The old music circuit is not like the classic. It's more precarious, let's say you don't have it lanposturik.Norbaitek know you, they call you to play, and if you do your job right, they'll call you back. Now, I'm also a member of some groups and I play more in some groups than in others.

What conditions do you have?

I am autonomous in the Netherlands, and I do not know if we are protected, but because I am self-employed I do not pay. You make your bills, you pay your taxes, but being autonomous is free. The Netherlands has changed a lot, it has been very social and less and less, but in theory, they are happy that you create your own company, that is good for the country, because it is from here. In France, on the other hand, they have something called periodicity, and if you're a free musician and you do a minimum of concerts, they give you a small salary every month. But in Spain… I used to play a lot with a group from Zaragoza, Spanish air, and many musicians were from the peninsula, but, of course, most were teachers. They found it difficult to reconcile the two tasks, the permits and they had to ask for them, but otherwise it is not possible to live alone for that.

So far we've talked about your career musical trajectory, but you're also in another musical project. How did Neighbor emerge?

I always liked the song. Also, I think before I played I was singing. I tried to do something with that, I was at the Jazz Academy in San Sebastian, I entered the jazz section in Amsterdam… But I didn’t want to voice the academicism I had lived with the violin, I didn’t want to learn to sing in a way. I then met several musicians from the east, including Miloš Valent from Slovakia. They make music in their own way, they take out an instrument in the bar, and they start playing and singing; they live it. It gave me a lot of envy. However, it wasn't that conscious. I met Josh [Cheatham] and we said in jokes that we were going to make a musical group and that we would play as we want, not as they tell us.

So the difference between work and Neighbor would be that one is marked and the other is free?

The ideal would be that. Then the reality is that you already have the other's fingerprint and the ear made in one way. In a way, everything is confusing.

In 2013 you published your first album and received a warm welcome. How was the first experience of singing your songs in public?

When I saw that people knew songs, I flipped. I remember once, in a concert, I saw a girl crying with a particular song, as if she were suffering, and I was also moved. I want to believe that, once the song is taken out, it's not mine anymore, but what you hear, and that the relationship that the one who listens to the song has is yours, not mine.

It is curious, because to me, going to your concerts, it seems to me that people have a lot of fun, there is always a joyful atmosphere…

When I play the violin on the stage, I tend to be in the mass; another has the command and I follow him. With Neighbor, on the other hand… It’s a great danger: giving the microphone to a person and won’t shut up. I laugh at myself. In the classic everything is serious, the music of the composer takes you not know where and has that kind of symbols. And what should I say about my songs? There is nothing to say. So what? Laugh. I used to take things very seriously, and I wanted to break with that.

In September you have published and presented your second album, Hau. How has it come?

Without much thought. We were touching, and people were asking us. When was the next? I thought, if I pick up so many songs, we'll do it, and if I don't pick them up, well, no. It was the first song to emerge. It was like a game, we normally played as a bis. I repeated the word, with different harmonies, to ask the listener if he noticed differences, or that the present is this, and this too, and this… Then, I have continued to make songs. I started playing other instruments, to have more possibilities live, and that's where the songs have emerged, and, of course, also from the voice. I've gotten into a forest, not knowing what would come in, and I'm there, I don't know where to get it from...

The second disc is often considered decisive. Haven't you felt pressure?

I feel the greatest pressure. I make songs that I would like. Of course others think, but I try to get in one ear and out the other. If there is something that resides within me, I try to consider it.

And the pressure on yourself has asked you to change something from the first album to the second, to help you dig deeper into something?

I'm learning, and I think I'm very quadriculated. There are many songs by Ura patrikan: they have a measure, a symmetry, so many verses… With that I wanted to break in the following songs, not be so demanding, see if things could sound differently, because others get it, and I also wanted to do it. Maybe the most prominent example of this is the song Invisible threads. I purposefully decided to create an asymmetrical song, a song it takes.
I've changed a few things from one album to another, especially to measure my ability.