Industry Talk: Eldbjørg Hemsing’s manager, Matic Gajsek

Matic Gajsek has a broad professional background that includes both artistic and management experience with various international arts organizations. Gajsek also works as a consultant with conference programming for Norsk Publikumsutvikling / Audiences Norway. He runs Pyr Management, and after several projects in Scandinavia he began working with the Norwegian violinist, Eldbjørg Hemsing, as her manager in 2017.

“We have just shifted towards a rather different business model, where my role is managing the overall artistic portfolio as well as business development structured under the umbrella of a new company Hestia Arts AS,” Gajsek says.

After working closely with Hemsing for almost 3 years, they felt confident on taking a step forward and decided to build a bigger structure that can facilitate her artistic vision.

“What has been on your to do list lately, and what takes most of your time?”

“My priority list has been rather long as we are just finishing the first month with a “new structure” in place, so there is a lot of communication between our team – from General management in London to PR teams in Norway and Germany, labels and our media partners with whom we are at the moment in development of several international projects.”

“The most important piece of advice you have ever received?”

“It was most definitely to follow your passion and listen to your intuition – a rather non-pragmatic approach that I love to keep in mind in contrast to the very fact-driven decision making process.”

“Any helpful tips and tricks for a way around the industry?”

“I think we need to be passionate about what we do and particularly in the classical field, which is still going through rather big changes in the way of doing business. The ecosystem is demanding a different profile of artists, and at the same time, the management side should be thinking how we can be ahead or at least in sync with the other business settings. But being able to translate the passion of your artist to even a random person on the street, this is at least in my opinion the key.”

“Why Norway, why now? Where are we going?”

“In my case, it was a big coincidence to come to Norway, but at the same time it could not be a better place to start building a new idea. I think the interest and investment towards the arts is in the peak and with some of the big international successes from both commercial to the core classical artists, we can really learn a lot from each other.”