Geoff: 0:00

Hello podcats Gascoyne here, hope you're well. It's a beautiful, blustery spring day. I'm in Muswell Hill in north London and I'm on my way to see a wonderful cellist. I haven't had a cellist on this podcast before and I don't think I've ever interviewed a cellist before, but this is going to be special. Her name is Gabriella Swallow. I've seen her on various sessions, never really sat down with her before, but I'm looking forward to having a little chat with her, hear what she has to say from a classical musician's point of view and improvisation, so here we go.

Announcement: 0:51

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Geoff: 1:02

Hi Geoff. Hello, I'm at the top. Ok, coming up.

Gabriella: 1:12

Hello, hello, nice to get you set up in here. Oh, lovely to see you. So nice to see you.

Geoff: 1:18

Thanks for inviting me round. It's great to be in your lovely. t feels like a loft up here it is. It's the penthouse, Which is, what can we see out there? We can see a lot of treetop houses, amazing yeah a lot of London like the best bits. Fabulous. We've met a few times, haven't we, on sessions, but we've never really sat down and had a little chat before.

Gabriella: 1:37

So I want to know how you started in music, And so my parents were both dentists. I wasn't expecting that. People sort of look at my teeth and they say, gosh, you've got great teeth, and they were sort of the business card for my parents, maybe growing up. Yeah, and my father used to base dentures on my teeth when I was younger back in the day, but my father was practicing before the input of American cosmetic dentistry into this country, really. So it was at the time that Brits were known for having terrible teeth, so having my teeth, which were not as terrible as everyone else's, was a complete upgrade, wow.

Geoff: 2:16

So it's just a coincidence that your parents were dentists and you had great teeth, yeah exactly. Wow, that's amazing.

Gabriella: 2:22

So my parents were dentists but my father was a big music lover. He often told me he slept through some of the greatest concerts of our time and he looked very much like Sir Colin Davis, the conductor Right, And they were often mistaken for each other. And I remember my father, people coming up to him, especially back in the 70s and 80s where people wore full tux to go to posh concerts and it was quite sweet and they would sort of congratulate him for his concert and he would take it being a dentist. He thought this was great and I spoke to Colin Davis before he died and I said you know my dad, you know he looks just like you. And he was so sweet. He grabbed my hand, my hand, he goes no, I look like your father. I always remember that. I thought it was such a beautiful way to um return a compliment. Um, sadly both have died now but um, you know, I have very fond memories of my father being unbelievably encouraging. My mother was also a dentist and she, um, was an amateur harpsichord player, so there was music in the house from a very young age, and we're talking 1980.

Gabriella: 3:30

I was born in Belfast at the height of The Troubles, so it was a very strange time to be in that city, which I've subsequently toured in and gone back to and even done competitions as a teenager, but at at the time it was a very dangerous place to live. My father ran the dental school and where we lived, Sans Souci Park, was a target for bombs because everyone from the university, guest lecturers would come and lecture there, so people of influence, really. It was just a sort of unrest and my father didn't want mine and my sister's education to be determined on religion. So they decided to move over to Lincolnshire in the mid 80s where they set up a practice in Spalding. Time was a very, very quiet, sort of sleepy um Fen town, not much going on, quite dark. The landscape was pretty bleak, from what I remember. Um, there was a great need of dentists and they bought this big house which had gone bankrupt. It was going to be a hotel and so they bought this big Georgian house for sort of pretty much nothing and installed a dental practice there which had a music room opposite which had two harpsichords in it. It was a very distinctive sound of my mother playing this instrument all the time, which was her respite between, you know, filling teeth, my father listening very dutifully.

Gabriella: 4:58

You know I remember the soirees of the 70s and 80s and you know we were definitely the generation where parents' lives didn't stop for their children, so there were sort of dinner parties throughout the week, my mother entertaining these parties. My father was an amazing cook. Spalding Music Club was in full force so my father hosted all these great musicians. Wow, that's amazing. So I remember that love of looking after musicians and the meal afterwards. It wasn't a case of bandwitches and sandwiches, you know, like we have at gigs now, it was like a proper spread and I think being in a house which valued musicians which was a very good start.

Gabriella: 5:39

So I was handed a recorder, I think in 1987, and my first feeling that this could be for me was taking the recorder literally into my bed every night and not wanting to stop reading the next page of the book. You know how you sort of got set homework I always took it next level and that felt really sort of like I knew something felt different and exciting and I could read music very fluently from a young age eally. rom that I got upgraded to the senior recorder group and then played a lot of my mum. I could do kind of crazy things like circular breathe.

Gabriella: 6:18

Really? At sort of six, seven years old. You know, you just worked that out for yourself. Yeah, absolutely, and I had a very lovely recorder teacher, but it was all group lessons and it was all kind of just this natural instinct. And I was a little performing monkey. You know I do a lot of concerts very young and idolize people like Michala Petri.

Gabriella: 6:39

And you know, in the 80s there was a huge big baroque scene and it was a very sort of exciting time. I think the purist had slightly gone to bed and everyone was allowed to make baroque music in their own way again, although that disappeared later. And my parents had worked in Amsterdam also a university before Belfast and a lot of their friends were baroque musicians and they would come over and do concerts and get their teeth done for free. And one of them suggested that I probably should start a string instrument and my father said you know, which one do you want to play? And I simply said I just want the biggest one and the car was too small for a double bass, so I ended up with cello. They lied to me and they said the cello was the biggest for sure.

Gabriella: 7:22

And again, we're talking 1988 probably, and Jacqueline Dupre had just died, and it was the beginning really of a boom of young women and young girls taking up the cello. Because we saw someone do it and it was just. it must have been on kind of in the water at that time and people were talking about her and I remember listening to a recording of her Elgar cello concerto very early on and really could you know, feel in tune with the way she moved and the passion. And so I started the cello, with not much success early on. It's a very hard instrument to start but I had a wonderful teacher, Glenis Malkin, who had been at Guildhall and I still can't quite work out the reason why she moved to Lincolnshire, but she did, and again in a demographic where there was no culture, let alone good teaching.

Geoff: 8:14

I was just very, very lucky. It only takes one teacher, doesn't it, to inspire?

Gabriella: 8:18

Absolutely and to really know how to teach beginning strings, because I do it myself now and it's so hard and I really value her teaching even more now. So I studied with Glenis and then, around about sort of 89, 90, I started feeling different really at my primary school and started applying for, I suppose, independent schools to have a change in the area. And somehow my parents had heard about Cheatums and so I went to audition there really as a recorder player and I remember distinctly the director of music saying you're great, but I think you might run out of things to do. Is there anything else you play? And I said well, I've just started the cello, it's in the boot.

Gabriella: 9:04

Shall I go and and get it? So I literally just got this cello and played a very simple piece. Yeah, and that was the last time I played the recorder. You know it all started from there. So I went to Cheathams in 1990 and that was my sort of beginning of my relationship with with the cello and my career, because when you go to specialist music school at that age you know you're not going to be an astronaut Well, chisholm is a very special school, isn't it quite an elite school certainly.

Gabriella: 9:35

I mean, I definitely wasn't a prodigy, certainly not on the cello.

Gabriella: 9:39

They saw a potential yeah but I was around, you know, extraordinary gifted children, yeah, and that was quite a thing to be in that environment at a young age where you've been the only person that played music really in a small town to one of 250 that very much played um, and also coming into an environment where most kids were musician's kids and my parents simply didn't understand, they didn't know and they live maybe a little vicariously, being two medics, you know, through this sort of oh wow, your daughter's one of five that's been accepted. It must have felt really amazing, but there's definitely it was a sense of just handing me over to the professionals and, again, that probably started a different relationship with my parents, which often happens when you get sent away at that age and, yeah, especially in the 90s, without the kind of contact we have now with our kids with Face Time or anything I mean. It's a boarding school, obviously.

Geoff: 10:38

Yeah. How old were you when were you left? I was nine. Would you do that with your, with your children, okay? So yes, I mean it was a.

Gabriella: 10:45

this is a thing, but it's very hard because, of course, when you have a gifted child yourself, you have to go through a lot of the potential trauma that you went through and you have to do the work on behalf of your child. But also, my child certainly didn't have a great experience at school, um, at state school. She went to um, the school over the road where my son still thrives but it wasn't for her and she's got a very good voice. But again, me and her father, my ex-husband, certainly didn't particularly desire a career in music for her and we still are very open-minded about it, but she was five years older than when I went and.

Gabriella: 11:26

I do feel nine probably wouldn't be for my children because of my experience. But I think again for her it was the right time because she's known a time before when she was at a school where she was unhappy at. I never had that experience, so for me there's always. I've always been left wondering what would it have been like had I stayed in Lincolnshire and had a closer relationship with my family and had those kind of fundamental building blocks that being raised by your family rather than someone that's being paid to, gives you? And there's lots of things about my school in the 90s which are now out in the press and it was a not the best time and they've definitely changed their policies. I mean, we weren't regulated our school till 2001 by the independent school body, so there was a lot of stuff going on and luckily the people that were in charge, who let our generation down and before, have been reprimanded and been put in prison, which is exactly what should have happened.

Gabriella: 12:30

And we're left, I think, a lot with that trauma and make peace with that, and we've done our work, and talking about not just me but lots of my colleagues and friends and friends um, the two very good things that have happened throughout that time is my, my wonderful friends, who are colleagues and friends still now, and also the damage that had been done in terms of maybe our relationships with adults and authority, never impacted my relationship with music. I'm very grateful for that because a lot of people did give up and it's the hothouse thing.

Gabriella: 13:07

You know you can burn out very young and I think I've had my relationship with music reinvented a lot, but I've never lost that obsession with it and desire that that's what I want to do with my life.

Geoff: 13:20

It's interesting that you say that, because I know in my experience as well whenever there's been difficult times, music is therapy. Yes, I was divorced. It was an awful, low time, you know. Yes, you play a concert, nothing else matters does it Completely.

Gabriella: 13:33

It's your safe space, I think.

Geoff: 13:34

You're talking about trauma, but was the music sort of a sanctuary for you? Was it somewhere to go, sort of to get away from bad stuff?

Gabriella: 13:42

Yeah, I think in lots of ways. I think first of all in terms of people. You know the people that you're spending time with. I mean, as I said, at Chetham's. I mean Gwilym Simcock was my first friend, jazz pianist, and we were again, you know, in this environment at nine, ten years old and I think those relationships that you've met then, as soon as you walk into a working environment and you're having a tough time and you see someone that you've known 30 odd years, you immediately feel amazing because they get you not just as a musician but as a human being.

Geoff: 14:21

Yeah well, you've grown up with them, haven't you?

Gabriella: 14:22

You've grown up with them, yeah, and we've experienced sort of everything together. Really, It's the other colleagues and musicians. I always find musicians just extraordinary people because, again, you know what they've been through. They know what you've been through. And there's this.

Gabriella: 14:38

I mean it's kind of a cliche now, but this universal language, but I find that amazing, like when we're on tour, like we'll often pop into, like the local pub for a jam session or whatever, me and friends, and we can't speak the language, but we just get it.

Gabriella: 14:53

And again, nothing gives me more joy and I've always found communicating through music although I like talking, I'm not bad at it, but that's my go-to and in terms of the making music, for sure, I mean doing my very difficult divorce and separation and all of those things.

Gabriella: 15:11

Putting bow to string was the bit that I could control still, and I felt safe and I had incredibly young children when I was going through that time and it was a very long process to even leave the house and not be covered in baby sick, you know, just to sit down. But I knew I needed both in my life and playing made me a better mother and motherhood made me a better musician and I've always embraced both, really, and not ever felt I had to pick, which I think is um, thanks to the generation I was born in, but also thanks to my friends and colleagues for making sure that I didn't have to give up by offering, you know, crazy child care help and all sorts of things, you know, but we all made it work. We're a bit of a village really.

Geoff: 15:57

Yeah, fantastic as it a difficult choice to send um Bam Bam, yeah right? Was it a difficult choice to send her away to Chetham's? How was that decision for you?

Gabriella: 16:07

it was hard, but again when she was so miserable. It becomes. ou know, a case of if you've got a very miserable, unhappy child, you don't want that. And and again she got into every music school as a singer um on a lot of potential, because she was only sort of 12 when she was auditioning 11 or 12 maybe. But again, I remember dropping her for the kind of trial board and she had to sing Belshazzar's Feast at the Bridgewater Hall at the end of the week and I wept when I left her because it was basically in my old house, you know, with all the old smells and everything you know.

Gabriella: 16:45

it was called Victoria House and I just said to her look, if I get to the end of the corridor and you want to come home, that's fine. You do not need to do this. This is completely up to you. And she sort of told me to go. And then, three days later, she called and said these are my people. Wow.

Gabriella: 17:04

And I said OK, well then we're okay, because it is finding your tribe. And again, I think, in terms of music or human beings, when you find your people, that's when life can truly start. And actually, isn't that great to find that early, because so many people I know who got into music late or didn't have those opportunities only felt that they could really say what they wanted musically later in life. Yeah, and even if she doesn't become a professional singer, I like that feeling that she's with people, she can be herself with that's. Yeah, that's the happiness I want for her really yeah, amazing.

Geoff: 17:41

Yeah, Well, I'm sure you're an excellent parent. Thanks, we're all trying. It's the hardest job ever, isn't it to? be a parent I know, I mean, I have four kids.

Gabriella: 17:51

Yes, I know what that's like, I know. I've got two step kids as well, and again, you know I became a step parent at 22, and to be a parent for over half my life now and still only be 44, I feel like it's such a privilege yes because, you know, you're just in your 20s where everyone else is sort of going out and partying. Yeah, I was organizing birthday parties with party rings and you know all sorts of things. Okay, so let's talk about the cello.

Geoff: 18:24

So you're primarily a classical musician? Yeah, s this true?

Gabriella: 18:28

I would sort of say I mean I was definitely raised that way, yeah. And then things sort of slightly turned in my I'd say, mid to late 20s I mean I was always being in Manchester in the early 90s we were exposed to lots of different sort of exciting times. I mean it was the time of Oasis and you know it was definitely a buzz of indie music and I always had a desire to seek out different kinds of music. I mean, Gwilym and I used to go to Band on the Wall and I mean it was very free. Our school, we just went to gigs a lot and hung out with people that ran local record shops. You know Chick came over and played at Bridgewater Hall and we all went and kind of watched that and he, you know, hung out with him afterwards. I mean it was a really exciting time and Jazz FM was taking it off and we'd listen to that on our radios and and I think because Chetham's was a diverse mixture of musicians in terms of instruments and Les Chisnell started teaching there and there was a bit more of a jazz scene, I was naturally inclined to certainly hang out with the jazzers. I'd probably started maybe doing a little bit later, and I would sort of, you know, just go through standards and things, which I was very grateful for, and then really, when I was at the Royal College of Music, I had to start my technique again.

Gabriella: 19:53

It wasn't the greatest first year, I'd say. I was taken out of orchestra and chamber music and was told really that I just had to practice studies and scales, which was a very hard thing to do, coming from a music school environment where for nine years I just played concerts all the time. So it was the time of Loop Magazine and there was adverts asking for a cellist to join an indie band. So I did and went to a very dodgy part of Finsbury Park every week to rehearse with this guitar band and transcribed all their songs. And they couldn't believe it. You know, they have this sort of quite sort of you know, middle class cellist who really was really desperately keen on what they did and took what they did as seriously as I did with everything else at the Royal College, which I always did. You know, I always found it interesting that they were surprised. So I learnt their songs and then I met a wonderful guy called David Ben White who was Ed White's brother, Ed being the songwriter for Adele.

Geoff: 20:57

Ed White is a genius, sorry.

Gabriella: 20:59

Yeah, absolutely, he's a a genius, sorry, yeah, he's absolutely genius the stuff he's done, the broad range of stuff he's done. Absolutely um, so they were obviously brother beyond and Dave and I sort of started collaborating really early and such a nice guy and Dave and I played at Ronnie's and I would have been about 19.

Gabriella: 21:18

And that was the first time I played, but this was completely under the radar of the Royal College of Music, who didn't know anything. Certainly my teacher didn't. I think once you start working in that scene, other musicians start trusting you, yeah, and you sort of get passed around really, because you learn the language of the crossover, which is a horrible word. But I literally had to cross over from a very classical side the way that we learn notation and that kind of technical side to working with singer-songwriters who couldn't write music or read it and who very much could write music, but not necessarily on paper, and it was about learning that technique of making them feel safe and respected, which is a really hard place to straggle because you realise that they are dealing with a lot of lack of confidence.

Geoff: 22:11

I've come across this a lot, where there's a kind of hierarchy between musicians the ones that write the songs, who can't read the music, and the slightly more educated ones. That's what you're talking about.

Gabriella: 22:20

Yeah, massively For me. I'm in awe that they can do all of this stuff without doing all of that, and what they don't always appreciate is that I'm learning way more from them than they are from me. But it's a really difficult one because if you don't play that right, you can do yourself out of a lot of work actually, because it is about reassurance and about respect and just getting that relationship right. So I I had a first session actually with Sade when I was 22 and I think I probably learned more from that session than ever because I kind of went into it a little bit casually, sort of not really knowing her, because she was a generation above people probably in their 40s and 50s, being very excited, and I sort of listened to a couple of tracks.

Gabriella: 23:08

I thought, of course she sings a bit flat, you know, and I went into this session and Robin Miller was producing. Yeah, um, this extraordinary man you know, who's done so much awareness for for blind and, you know, disabled musicians. And Robin, again, you know, was an amazing first producer because before I sat down he was quizzing me about, like, my favorite works by Berg and Shostakovich and I was just like he's a pop producer. How is he even like, knows this stuff and of course he did.

Geoff: 23:40

Those kinds of guys are the guys that you can bond with.

Gabriella: 23:43

Their tastes are so broad it was the sort of snobbish elements of me that just thought well, I've got this incredible legacy behind me, but he knew way more than me, of course, he did you never know.

Geoff: 23:54

Do you, you never know?

Gabriella: 23:55

And I learned so much. And then Sade, love her was the most critical anyone's ever been about my intonation, like wouldn't let me go, like she was so really tough on me and I think having those early experiences just puts you back in place and it sets you up for that whole thing. As you say, you just never know.

Geoff: 24:19

Typically on a session like that, would they write out music for you, or would you just be making your own part up? How does it work?

Gabriella: 24:24

Yeah, it's always a mixture, but I mean, in that session I think I probably wrote it out with Robin and she was singing. So again, you know I thank goodness for Mr Hatfield. You know who was the person that taught and Gwilym. You know very young dictation. You know that was a really good skill to have and you start tapping into those skills that you did have very young, that we were taught all of that stuff.

Gabriella: 24:49

And I studied, you know, composition as well at the Royal College as a joint principal, but never kind of had the ambition to write my own music professionally. I just loved the process of it. So it was between me and the two of them that we did my part. And then, yeah, but of course in lots of sessions it's provided for you. And then you have sometimes those sessions where it's not written out particularly well, so you have to find a kind of a way to not make someone feel put out but, also recompose it without them knowing we've all been there, you know there's there's our techniques of doing that yeah but that session yeah it was.

Gabriella: 25:27

It was really a good start and and then I started meeting people like Ian Shaw and Claire Martin, and you know I and I started this whole career working not just with singer-songwriters from pop and indie, but in jazz as well. Let's talk about improvisation.

Geoff: 25:48

How much improvisation have you done in your time? Yeah, that's kind of a very broad question. But well.

Gabriella: 25:53

Again we were very lucky at Chetham's because Steve Berry taught us from, you know, Lucid Tube's fame. Okay, he did info of classes, yeah, but my God, we didn't take it seriously. I feel awful for that poor man. We were so naughty and there was always someone sent out and of course anyone now working in education. You know, you just look back at the horror of how people behaved in those classes. That's tough. It was really. It was a tough gig for th him, but again we were very lucky because it got those chops kind of just going and certainly the interest. But again, we are the classical musicians of the generation of teachers who didn't necessarily improvise in their careers.

Geoff: 26:37

Most classical musicians don't improvise.

Gabriella: 26:40

No, I'm afraid to it's terrible and it comes from that really. Yeah, I think things are beginning to change, mainly because we're seeping into the next generation, where we don't have the luxury if it is even a luxury some people would consider it a luxury just to play the music in front of us written in a certain era in orchestras and have that kind of sort of staid classical career, which has never been for me anyway, but that's kind of you know, if you think about general classical musicians, that's the tradition they're coming from. So, improvisation for me, I was just lucky we had Steve at Chet's and then, when was 21, I had this great cello teacher who basically started every lesson with no music and made me improvise. And he did it because he said I want you to play and remember the reasons why you play the cello, and that was fantastically liberating. Also, being a composer, I mean everything started as improvising, mainly on the piano actually. But cello it's a tricky one because it's been natural to me. I've loved the freedom, but also I know my libertations and I try then to work with people who push me and to give me the space to get things wrong. Giacomo Smith has been brilliant because I've done lots of things with him and he sort of sat down there with me and sort of talked to me about the harmony and what I should be listening out for. And it's hard when you get later in life to sort of take that instruction and not feel fearful and not sort of stick to the kind of like world music element that I feel safe with or drones. And I do try and push myself.

Gabriella: 28:24

But then I suppose the big education really about improvisation was working with Hiromi. So I've toured with Hiromi for nearly well on and off for three years and I got sent the parts and I was absolutely terrified because it was basically a jazz bass part and let alone improvising. We're not taught to pluck like that, like the pizzicato element at music college. We do probably about maybe half an hour in our whole four years. And so I went for jazz cello lessons to Shirley Smart, who was absolutely brilliant, and we looked at the videos of the previous cellist who had recorded the album with Silver Lining Suite, which Hiromi wrote for her, and string quartet, and we both went a bit quiet when we saw the cellist doing the walking bass and she just looked at me and she said, Gabby, he's a bass player, he's definitely played bass.

Geoff: 29:23

I'm like, oh god, yeah you do see a lot of bass players that play cello, don't you?

Gabriella: 29:27

oh yeah, Reggie Washington, yeah you know I met Reggie early on and he was you know, Dave Holland was a cellist but there's just a complete different dexterity and more so sense of time, which I'll talk about in a minute. But my god, just to actually do that amount of work with two fingers before a gig and not bleed because it was 40 minutes, show you know of relentless a there there a bass player as well? No, oh, no drummer, no bass player. I had to be both.

Geoff: 29:58

I see.

Gabriella: 29:59

And then we're talking, you know, like possibly one of the most scary but like completely inspirational musical times of my life, because I turned up to this gig very, very prepared. I mean I did a lot of practice just with standards, just trying to get the walking right and trying to sort of, you know, just really feel it and feel the chord changes. I mean some it was written out but there was definitely, you know, variety there for me to kind of make you know how I wanted it. Anyway, it came to the first rehearsal and we were in Czechoslovakia, I think, and it was a big gig. I mean, all of her gigs are sold out five, six thousand people, and the rehearsal wasn't amplified. So I really had to dig in with my hand. It was tiring and everything, but the big takeaway was she couldn't quite hear me.

Geoff: 30:51

Welcome to my world.

Gabriella: 30:52

I travel playing double bass as well, it's a nightmare.

Gabriella: 30:56

It is a is a nightmare. I mean, just to be very clear, I was on the cello but there was night, absolutely no sound, so then she hadn't really heard what I was doing. So it came to the first gig and it was a lot of people and I was then obviously, you know, amplified, and so I I got through it. It was hard. I wasn't on iPad at that point, so just even the page turning and then what she was doing on the keyboard, I mean it was just extraordinary. I mean it was pure Hiromi, complete fireworks it was. She took no prisoners. We were all given big improvised sections so I could do a big solo for as long as I wanted. She was really encouraging about that. And that bit actually I found fine, you know, because she said just be you, which was brilliant, and I could use kind of a lot of my sort of passion for quite sort of discordant sort of 20th century inspired music and sound effects and that kind of thing, and I really went for it. But then I came back to the hotel and she was sitting there quite silent. It was not a good vibe.

Gabriella: 32:05

And then the next day I had to do one of the most painful train journeys, ever going to Germany with her, where she was listening to the show taking notes and every couple of minutes I'd hear the space bar being smashed and she would write something down. And then we got off the train and she basically pulled me aside and she said it's just not good enough. And I was like what do you mean? She goes, Gabby, it's just not in time. I was like what bit? Like she had all of it.

Gabriella: 32:36

And then it started. So I said okay, well. Well, I knew from the jazz world that I could easily be sent home at this point and replaced. So I worked and I worked with her and every day for between five, six, seven hours I was in her hotel room with a drum machine and a laptop, a lot of paper music on various sofas being propped up by cushions, and Yamaha would always send a keyboard for her and we called it funk school and I literally signed up to learn everything. I think now I'm beginning to understand about time, Because that was it for me. I mean learning from someone who was on the road with Ron Carter yeah, Chick, everyone you can imagine.

Gabriella: 33:26

Yeah, you know, I just thought this is the time I've got to do this and she taught me everything that you would do, so naturally as a bass player, about the stresses on two and four and the matching with the snare, the whole thing that you've never think about. I had to literally learn from scratch. Yeah, and it was the most extraordinary education and I was so grateful for it. But to give you an idea, after two weeks of that and a few gigs, she said to me we're about 10% there.

Gabriella: 33:55

Oh, I was like oh my god, and then on the next tour.

Gabriella: 34:00

First of all, I got asked back, which was a blessing and then I started having fun and then I could see what she meant, and it was because a lot of the way that the piece is structured was string quartet, me and Hiromi. For 10 minutes string quartet comes back in, so I had to hold down these bass lines while she was just going crazy, and the joy that me allowing that to liberate her, that she didn't have to keep playing the left hand as she would at the early gigs, was just such a blessing.

Geoff: 34:30

I was speaking to Alan Barnes last week and he was talking about playing the baritone sax and playing in a big band and how, the bigger the instrument, the earlier you have to put the information into it. Yes, for it to come out, I thought about that, and that's actually true. On a double bass, it takes time for the sound to develop, doesn't it? So true, I never thought of it like that. So when you're playing, it's that movement. Yeah, you have to play ever so slightly ahead, Completely have to play ever so slightly ahead.

Geoff: 35:00

Completely, yeah, but you know again, you've got years of experience just to move your fingers, just to realize that.

Gabriella: 35:03

Come to that, yeah, but I couldn't even move my fingers that fast. Yeah, I mean I was coming into it from just honestly, like I could have been given anything. I mean it could have been like me playing with a fishing rod. It was that crazy, yeah, to use the two fingers in that way, yeah, and it was really hard. But again, you know, to learn those skills post 40 years old, yeah, oh, my god, it was. It was the biggest present she could have given me. Yeah, and when you work with an artist like that and you have to learn to let go of everything and leave your ego firmly at home, which obviously is session musicians we do pretty much every day- anyway, but, I just thought, god, that's quite something and I cried.

Gabriella: 35:44

I mean I was properly upset because it was really. It felt quite shameful being told I wasn't good at something.

Geoff: 35:51

And.

Gabriella: 35:52

I didn't like it, but I responded well to it, I think, and I thought I've got a choice here ... Either I give up, but she believed in me, as these great musicians did, and a bit like Bowie giving his rhythm guitarists massive solos, he wanted that energy for someone to feel outside their comfort zone, and that actually brings great improvisation. And that's exactly what she did with me. She made me do something. I wasn't comfortable and then she got better results than if it was like oh, paint the bow and play Elgar like elgar.

Geoff: 36:23

You know that's not exciting Because your communication was so good. You know the fact that you were keen to to get better. Yeah, another musician might have just shriveled into a corner and just not being able to cope with that, you know. You know I need to improve this. How do we do this? You know and I think that's a. that's That's

Geoff: 36:39

a really big thing, isn't it?

Gabriella: 36:40

yeah, it was a big learning curve and actually the rest Quartet the string quartet Tom Gould was playing, raki Singh recently. megan Cassidy, um Shalemi Dabrinsky we sort of switched up a couple of violins throughout it, just because it was sort of covid times and not everyone could commit to it. And again the support from colleagues who all looked at me and said you know, gabby, of course you can play the cello. It's not about that. And I loved, like walking through the hotel corridors and hearing everyone practice, like being back at music college, that everyone was really committed to this and that was again an inspirational thing that she gave to us. I loved that work ethic.

Geoff: 37:19

Fabulous. Geoff I asked you about improvising on one of my quartet app tunes. Yes, so you downloaded the app recently I did. What's AIR your Lyndhurst experience of it?

Gabriella: 37:35

Oh, geoff, you know I'm a big fan of this app. I loved it because we first talked about it, I think, at Air Linthurst, probably 10 years ago, that's right.

Geoff: 37:44

We were there with Judith, weren't we? Yeah, we were with Judith.

Gabriella: 37:46

Owen and Pedro Segundo, all having a lovely time.

Geoff: 37:50

We were.

Gabriella: 37:51

And you know, and it was brilliant because I think people like you and Peter Erskine actually I always love the fact that you are confident enough to experiment with technology and I think that's really, really important. And again, something I always learn from jazz musicians like you know way more about classical, contemporary music than most of us and you was on know what's going on and also you really embrace technology I'm like you I I love Music all Apps, sorts of music I like like every music.

Geoff: 38:20

I play with a lot of jazz musicians that only have one genre on their iPod. Yes, but, I'm not like that you know, I've always done lots of different things. You know, electric bass and so on. You know, Quartet the technology thing it just happened, totally by accident actually, that I got into this tech world I on a session with with the guys that, um, now I'm in partnership with in UK music apps yeah it was a very early iteration of the jazz play along and it was one very small part of it and I said to Paul this is rubbish, this is rubbish.

Geoff: 38:51

If you want to do it properly, let me know. And he did. He called me up and then we started planning the very first session band apps and now we've 12, 12 or so session band apps and four volumes of quartet. So it's just been an ongoing technology learning curve, you know.

Gabriella: 39:10

Yeah, but it's great, it's been fantastic. It's not going to limit it either to your usual jazz instruments. It either to your usual jazz instruments. Yeah, because, as I said, you know, the world is changing and more people like me now are in situations where you have to learn the standards and to improvise and I'm creating my own solo show now and a lot of it is now thinking as the lead instrument, not the bass player. Yeah, and I think that's.

Gabriella: 39:39

You know, I'm certainly going to be using the app. You know, I'm not just promoting it. by the way, listeners, I will be actually needing to use the app for work purposes and I think it's going to be a really handy thing to have, you know, rather than just sort of fiddling around with a recording and just hoping for the best.

Geoff: 39:56

It's great, Fabulous, so I asked you to pick a tune and just hoping for the best. It's great, fabulous. So I asked you to pick a tune, and which tune did you pick?

Gabriella: 40:02

I chose Smile, actually Smile. Make it with your lovely smiling oh, that's not nice, it's also that, and also there's it's slow and I don't want to shock people with shoddy changes. Oh, come off it, Which I appreciate that everyone else can do, but I also know my limitations and I love just playing a really good melody.

Geoff: 40:26

You're aware that we're not actually playing the tune. Oh, aren't we? No, so tell me all about your cello.

Gabriella: 40:36

Oh, 1820, built in Oxford, more expensive than me.

Geoff: 40:43

Surely you're priceless, Best of my price range.

Gabriella: 40:47

But, yeah, I'm very lucky and it's gone up a lot because the maker became very well known, but it certainly didn't cost what it costs now in 1996. But very beautiful and very lucky, and I've got a beautiful five-string electric as well, which is really fun. So I've got the best of both worlds, I think Amazing. So, no tune at all.

Geoff: 41:19

No tune, there's a four-bar introduction.

Gabriella: 41:21

Yeah.

Geoff: 41:22

We're in the key of F.

Gabriella: 41:23

Yeah.

Geoff: 41:26

All right, here it comes.. Oh it's so beautiful.

Geoff: 42:20

Thank you, , thank you. Beautiful major seventh on the end.

Gabriella: 43:23

Thank you, Geoff, Very lovely yeah.

Geoff: 43:26

Are you thinking about the chords or are you just thinking about the melody? How are you constructing your improvisation?

Gabriella: 43:31

I'm thinking about both. really. I'm just trying to sort of keep the sentiment of it. The simplicity of the chords is really really lovely. Yeah, it's beautiful and then those kind of scrunchy notes which I, which comes very naturally to the cello, I think yeah, I think we're kind of built to make people cry, sure. I'm nearly crying now oh well, that's my work is done.

Geoff: 43:55

Yeah, I was reading on the way up here that Charlie Chaplin based from one of his movies, wasn't it? This composition? Yes, but it was inspired by Tosca. Played Tosca a lot.

Gabriella: 44:06

It's a great piece. Yeah, so there we go.

Geoff: 44:08

I like both Interesting 1954, Nat King Cole was the first version of that tune. Amazing. Yeah, that was gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous.

Gabriella: 44:17

Thanks, I need to do this more often. It's not a usual instrument to do this. Yeah, I mean again, I've worked with Nigel Kennedy for many years and watching Nigel just have the facility on and the freedom and the freedom, yeah, yeah, just have the facility and the freedom. Yeah, on the Gershwin stuff he did. And when we toured with Mike Stern doing Hendrix, which was amazing, yeah, that was a great gig me and Ed Richardson would just like lurk outside Mike Stern's room a lot, hoping he'd come out so we could chat to him. I'm amazed we ever got asked back. We just wanted stories all the time.

Gabriella: 44:54

So, working with Nigel and seeing the fluidity on the violin and recently I went to Lyle Lovett's gig and the violinist who's a bluegrass violinist, you know again just seeing those guys chops, because actually, where the classical music, music We we always think, well, we've got the sound production, we've got the vibrato, we've got all of this stuff. Ok, they can improvise, but this guy and Lyle's band had everything like way more than any of us could ever imagine. I think string improvising is just getting really exciting now. Yeah, and we're all learning from each other.

Gabriella: 45:30

So, I think we should all do it more especially.

Geoff: 45:32

Can I hear you play some pizzicato? Yeah of course how does that, how does that feel on your fingers on your right hand?

Gabriella: 45:48

well, now I'm building it up. Yeah, I'm getting the the um changing between the fingers, because normally on pizzicato we get taught one finger and repeat yes, yeah, and you just can't do a walking line like that as I've learned, yeah so I'm just, you know, I anytime I have to do it, I have to build it up again, but I'm sort of getting there, so that's great. Yeah, I went to see a lot of bases and watched and weep really, because again, you do it so naturally and we just don't.

Geoff: 46:23

Yeah, yeah, what I find about students I've had with walking bass is the sustain on the note. Yeah, so so if you just play one, two, three, four, and actually to get those notes connected is a really basic thing that people don't get together.

Gabriella: 46:42

Yeah, I never even thought of that side of it. Yeah, so just try it, just try it. It's not a lesson no no, I love it.

Geoff: 46:50

Just a scale there we go, there you go yeah it's better, already it's better already. My analogy for that is the crotchets are like footballs and they're all touching.

Gabriella: 47:07

Ooh. I'm going to use that today. That's perfect yeah.

Geoff: 47:10

When you see the waveform of a bass line, for example, there's the spike, there's the attack and then there's the decay. But the decay needs to not completely fade out, and that comes from the left hand.

Gabriella: 47:21

Yeah, absolutely, it's all of those things. And I think now I'm not in front of 5,000 people in the concert house, or you know a really scary venue, feeling terrified, I in the concert house, or you know a really scary venue, feeling terrified, I think it's kind of something I want to play with more, I think now.

Geoff: 47:43

To finish off, I've got a few questions. Yeah, of course.

Gabriella: 47:45

That's okay, don't put my cello down.

Geoff: 47:46

Yeah, what's your favourite album?

Gabriella: 47:49

Ooh, probably Kind of Blue.

Geoff: 47:52

Ah, excellent, a favourite musician, alive or dead. You would like to play with.. ?? Stevie Wonder?

Gabriella: 47:59

No, hesitation there, that's easy it is.

Geoff: 48:02

Has there been a highlight of your career so far?

Gabriella: 48:04

Gosh, I mean Hiromi was up there, that's for sure. I've had such an amazing variety and I could probably pick something in each sort of genre. But there was one gig I did at the Festival Hall, playing We Are Family with Sister Sledge, Whoa, and it was just one of those moments and I remember they all high-fived me at the end I was sitting in principal cello and it was so much joy in the room and it was exactly what music should have been for and it just felt like, oh, this is one of those pinch me moments. Yeah, you know, it was really beautiful because it wasn't really about I mean, I was a minuscule part of it, so it wasn't sort of like my big career highlight, but it was definitely something I was really proud to be involved in.

Geoff: 48:46

Being part of an orchestra is a special thing. It is actually the orchestra is a special thing.

Gabriella: 48:50

It is actually and again, it's not something I do a lot, so I really enjoyed that?

Geoff: 48:54

What was the last concert you attended?

Gabriella: 48:56

Last concert I attended was probably Curtis Stigers' at Ronnie's. He's a mate and I went to support him and I know every song and I've heard that show a million times, but I'll still turn up.

Geoff: 49:08

Fabulous. What would you say is your musical weakness?

Gabriella: 49:11

Fabulous what would you say, is your musical ? ? M My musical musical weakness, trying to not lose interest sometimes when it's not my favourite kind of genre to play. Try and take something from every sort of gig I do, but there's definitely some things that I'd rather not be playing. Anything kind of backgroundy I find sort of soul-destroying. These days I find repetitive music very hard, not because I don't like it, but I had to play a lot of Philip Glass and that gave me a ganglion on my wrist which needed an operation and I find that really, really hard.

Geoff: 49:51

But that's hard on the double bass too. It's just a repetitive holding. That left hand up there for sustained period is very difficult.

Gabriella: 49:58

So maybe what I should say with those those two sentences, then, is not try not to look grumpy when playing Philip Glass. I never played Philip.

Geoff: 50:07

Glass but uh, maybe one day. Do you ever get nervous on stage?

Gabriella: 50:13

Rarely, but it definitely happens. I'm always prepared to feel nervous and I tend to be the one that's known for not getting nervous so I can throw my energy into supporting nervous people and that can be a great cover-up for when you're feeling nervous, if that makes sense put it onto somebody. Yeah, make it feel really special but that covers up your own fear.

Gabriella: 50:37

Um, I definitely had a terrible incident with bow shakes when I was 23 at the Royal College and that's the only time it happened really. After that I worked a lot on nerves and thought I've got to find ways that this is never going to happen again. So I've definitely give myself a talking to and a lot of it's psychologica l s . that that Is is that thing?

Geoff: 50:59

bow shakes?

Gabriella: 50:59

I've never heard that expression before, big time yeah, literally you can't stop the bow from bouncing and it is the most terrifying thing to happen to a string player and it happens frequently and that's why string players start taking propanolol and all sorts of things, because it stops that muscle from shaking but yeah, pretty awful and if it happens to you once, it's enough to make you never want to go on stage again.

Gabriella: 51:23

So I was kind of happy it happened to me then in a room of 500 colleagues because it was so terrifying, but I dealt with it What's your favorite sandwich? My favorite sandwich will involve chicken and avocado.

Geoff: 51:38

Okay and a favorite movie favorite movie, Sleepless in Seattle. Oh oh you old romantic you always you you're like a rom-com, do you?

Gabriella: 51:50

oh, I love a rom-com absolutely fantastic.

Geoff: 51:55

What about a favorite venue?

Gabriella: 51:59

I love Wigmore all all. That's great for dynamics. You can play super quiet, really nice. And then recently played Jess Gillam gillam in um in Concert House house in Vienna, which was absolutely stunning, yeah, and every hall in there is just extraordinary. We Hiromi Harami there as well. So I love those kind of grand European Liberace-type concert halls they're always special.

Geoff: 52:24

Great, what about?

Gabriella: 52:27

a favourite country or city. I love America, despite what's going on there, so I'd probably say Seattle. I always love going to Seattle.

Geoff: 52:35

Yeah, do you go to the fish market?

Gabriella: 52:37

Yeah, I love the fish market Absolutely. I think it's fabulous.

Geoff: 52:43

And a final question what's your favourite chord?

Gabriella: 52:48

Ooh, you know what I'm going to go out there. I like a really discordant atonal cluster.

Geoff: 52:54

Okay.

Gabriella: 52:55

It's always made me feel really, really alive. I have a very different ear to a lot of people, so give me kind of notes that shouldn't be together and I'm all over it.

Geoff: 53:05

Fantastic. Well, Gabby, thanks so much for your time. It's been fantastic.

Gabriella: 53:10

Thank you, Geoff.

Geoff: 53:14

Thank you for asking great questions. I hope we can play together soon, and maybe not on a session or something, maybe outside of the.

Gabriella: 53:19

Yeah well, you know now I play walking bass lines, Geoff I don't know if we'll be in the room together anymore I know you've got that safe, you're fine, thank you all right, thanks a lot. thank Thankyou you you thank you for making it to the end of another podcast.

Announcement: 53:33

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