Welcome Innsbruck - Winter 2019

W E L C O M E 64 K U L T U R Ich dachte mir, wo sind die ganzen Frauen an den Instrumenten?“ Izzy erzählt von einer Konferenz für Kindermedia-Inhalte, die sie besuchte. In einem Vortrag fiel der Satz: „If she can see it, she can be it“ – was sie sieht, kann sie sein. „Darum geht es. Es ist wichtig, dass wir zeigen, was Frauen sein können. Wenn wir als achtköpfige Frauenband auf der Straße spielen, inspiriert das andere Frauen und Mädchen. Stell dir eine Band vor, in der ein Mann singt und Frauen die Instrumente spielen – eine schräge Vorstellung, nicht wahr? Mein Wunsch ist, dass das eben nicht länger schräg ist.“ Eine Botschaft zu haben, ist Isobel wichtig. Insbesondere in ihren Texten. Die Songwriterin schreibt über sehr Persönliches, über Erlebnis- se, Empfindungen oder auch Ideen, die sie mit Leidenschaft erfüllen. Unter anderem hat sie einen Song über die Bögen geschrieben. „Kurz nachdem ich nach Innsbruck gezogen bin, haben meine neuen Freunde entschieden, dass ich die Bögen unbedingt kennenlernen muss. Also haben wir einen ‚Bogen-Crawl‘ gemacht. Wir waren in so vielen ver- schiedenen Lokalen, dass ich am nächsten Tag keine Ahnung hatte, wo wir überhaupt waren! Jahre später habe ich mich daran erinnert und so entstand der Song ‚Wo bin i da‘.“ Fasziniert zeigt sich Izzy von dem Mitei- nander, das in den Bögen gelebt wird – zwei Welten, Tag und Nacht – „ich mag, dass die Bögen irgendwie ‚their own mad world‘ sind“. W I f you want real mountains, take a trip to Austria.” This advice from a friend was the reason why Isobel Cope, an enthusiastic climber, went to the Tyrol. Three weeks were the plan, now it is more than four years. Climbing brought her to Innsbruck, the people, the mountains and not least the way she can live her music here made her stay. “When I came here, I met so many nice people in such a short time, including my now best friend. When I should have gone back after three weeks, she said: “No, Izzy, you have to stay. Winter is coming and you have to learn to ski. We have to go spring skiing and tobogganing, “ she remembers. In fact, there wasn’t much to draw her back to London. “I got frustrated there - about life in the city, about the lack of free- dom and adventure.” So she stayed. Innsbruck and the Tyrol have given Izzy a kind of freedom she had never known before - the way of life here is quite different from London, she says. And, in the end, she also experienced this freedom in her music. Music was always a part of her family, which is why the path for the 33-year-old was also marked out to a certain extent. When she was 15 years old, a recording studio was set up at her school, so she experienced sound technology for the first time. That inspired her. At university she finally plumped for this “technical” side of music and got into the field of film scoring. Sound mixing became her pro- fession, but music remained her big hobby. For six years she worked as a sound engineer in a big post-production film studio in London. In the course of her work she got to know a film composer and final- ly started to work for him. This was a stroke of luck in two ways - on the one hand the new job brought more music back into her life, on the other hand it was no problem for her new boss that she worked from the Tyrol. Izzy has been self-employed for two years now. She runs a sound studio, makes film scores, composes jingles and much more. And besides that, there is plenty of time for her music. “The Tyrol is so full of creative people who also have time, that’s what’s missing in London. The people there are motivated, but they don’t have any time. Many spend a few hours a day commuting. Here I don’t know anyone who does that.” It didn’t take long before Izzy met musicians in Innsbruck. Now she plays and sings in different bands. Her “male” band, as she calls the men’s group, consists of professional musicians, the women’s group maafiiar, named after the initials of the members, is a project from the heart. “They are friends, all very different, but none of them are full-time musicians. I formed this band because I feel that the scene is very much dominated by men. Of course, there are plenty of women, but often it is a woman, mostly on the microphone, in a band of men. I thought to myself, where are all the women on the instruments?” Izzy tells of a conference she attended for children’s media con- tent. One sentence in a lecture made an impression: “If she can see it, she can be it”. “That’s what it’s about. It is important that we show what women can be. When we play on the street as a band of eight women, it inspires other women and girls. Imagine a band in which a man is on vocals and women play the instruments - a strange idea, isn’t it? My wish is that it’s no longer weird.” Having a message is important to Isobel. Especially in her lyrics. The songwriter writes about very personal things, about experienc- es, feelings or even ideas that fill her with passion. Among other things, she has written a song about the arches. “Shortly after I moved to Innsbruck, my new friends decided that I had to get to know the arches. We went on an “arch crawl”. We were in so many different places that the next day I had no idea where we had been! Years later I remembered it and so I wrote the song “Wo bin i da”. Izzy is fascinated by the community experienced in the arches - two worlds, day and night - “I like that the arches are somehow ‘their own mad world’”. W