Post by JR on Nov 1, 2015 1:54:08 GMT -8
tones sound, and roar and storm around me until i have set them to notes
Full name: Isla ( silent `s` ) Svandis Byrne
Goes by: Isla - Her mother calls her Svana, a pet name meaning ``swan.`` Professionally known as Isla Edelstein.
DOB, current age: April 14, 27 years. Born in Reykjavik, Iceland.
Occupation: Pianist, London Philharmonic Orchestra. Sometimes support for the harpist.
Immediate Family: Mother; Ylfa Edelstein. Father: Alistair Byrne. Four siblings, from her father, none she's met.
Face: Tamsin Egerton
Screen name: wistful tempest
Story: Music was born within Isla Byrne; it was in her blood, in her bones, in her organs. It was fated for her, from before she'd even been conceived. Her father was a man for the music. He craved it, and the people that it brought. Ylfa had been one of those, a concert flautist who rose to fame in the world of symphonies and orchestras; traveling her way from the coastal town of her birth to the great European stages -- Alistair's included. It was such a whirlwind affair, and when it became known within just a few weeks that they'd created more than music together, a bargain had been struck. Neither was looking for a relationship, even with a child between them. Ylfa had been offered a position back in Reykjavik as the principal flautist, and Alistair .. well he was already well taken in matters of the heart. But they'd raise their child together, they decided. Splitting the cherubic blonde daughter that was born between them, in a way that had solidified her lot in life from the moment she'd taken form.
She was the pretty little thing in the wings; romping backstage among the great and talented. A thousand teachers, a thousand voices of advice. "No no, little Ilsa, this is where your fingers go; there, do you hear how well it sounds now?" The orchestra was her education, more so than the exclusive tutors that her father paid for in place of a public school -- her classroom was the theater, her classroom her mother's office, her classroom was a dressing room; all with the sound of brass instruments and percussion, with the tinkling of piano keys, and the whistle of the woodwinds in the background as she learned more conventional subjects. But it was the music she always loved best. It seemed Isla could pick up nearly anything and figure out how to play it, and play it well. It was the flute she excelled in. Using the air from her own lungs to create such beauty, such heartbreaking sounds, and though she shone in her mother's own delights, prodigy's are often territorial things, and Ylfa was no different. It rarely bothered Isla any, the way her mother pushed her to other things, because she loved to trickle her fingers over ivory keys and the music that the piano made, and the feel of those same fingers gliding over the strings of the harp. But it was the flute that made Isla feel powerful in ways that even as she became an adult she was still caught off guard by.
It was the months spent with her father that she learned that she was something more than a musician. From where that power really came from. How the wind was hers to cajole and control, and not just the wind. The other elements would listen too, but stubbornly until she worked at it. It seemed her whole life was spent in practice; from reading sheets of music, to the spells in the Byrne family Grimoire. Isla was more of an adult than she'd ever been a child; quiet and stoic and devoted to the lines of her crafts. At sixteen she was given a supporting chair in the Iceland Symphony Orchestra where her mother played. At twenty she'd moved on to the symphony in Stockholm, and at twenty five to the Opéra national de Paris, playing in the pit beneath the stage to support Carmen, Romeo and Juliet, and The Magic Flute. But it wasn't just love and tragedy on the stage at the Opéra, but in sheltered Isla's life as well. Swept away by the charm of an older French-born violinist and his oh so talented fingers, Isla let herself be wooed and seduced and it was no one's fault but her own when he broke her heart -- just another in the string of young musicians the man worked his way through.
For a while, she tried to hang on to the life she'd built for herself in Paris, but it grew harder and harder with each passing conquest, and after her father's fourth attempt to bring her back across the Channel, Isla finally agreed. She wouldn't allow him to just hand her a prime spot in his orchestra though, she wanted to earn it. He sat her as a supporting chair at the grand piano on his stage, and situated her back into the childhood bedroom she favored at his and his partner, Eugene's home -- until recently, when she moved into a flat on the top floor of an old Victorian row mansion, with room enough for her own baby grand and a bed that was the thing romances are made from. A pretty face among the Byrne's of the Council, a pretty sound among the keys of the Philharmonic. A wind in the air that was only a faint breeze, just waiting to find the will to gust and blow wild like she should.
o wild west wind, thou breath of autumn’s being,
thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,