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Who or what inspired you to take up the saxophone, and pursue a career in music? 

Naomi Sullivan: Heather Sullivan (my mother). My family all play music, although I’m the only person who pursued it as a career. My mother gave us recorder lessons, then I played flute until I got irritated that it felt so quiet compared to the brass band playing we all did. I tried a friend’s tenor saxophone, which seemed more cathartic and I’ve stuck with it. I still uphold that my siblings are far more talented than me, but they are possibly a little wiser, (as to finances).

Neil McGovern: The sound of the saxophone was something that really struck me as a young child. It really drew me in and appealed to me though I hadn’t actually heard it very much. Pursuing a career in music felt like the right decision for a long time. Performing became very normal and pursuing excellence in this was always a great aim for me.

Who or what have been the most important influences on your musical life and career? 

Naomi: Jim Muirhead taught me at Chetham’s and suggested auditioning at the Royal College of Music. Which is why I ended up studying with Kyle Horch who is still hugely influential in both my teaching and playing. I spent a year at Northwestern University and studied with Fred Hemke. His sense of fun, knowledge and presence is ever so powerful. I can’t imagine a better list of teachers, three very different but all brilliant, kind and inspiring musicians.

Also, all the music I listened to growing up has to be an important factor. I suppose it builds a strong sense of musical connection that becomes a lasting and positive part of your essence or sense of self, if that’s not too whimsical.

And as I get longer in the tooth, my students constantly surprise, challenge, motivate and amuse me. I’ve been very lucky.

Neil: All my teachers – Kyle Horch, Alistair Parnell, and those who gave me so much in the early years too. My parents provided the material and financial means to study music, but primarily they were relentless encouragers and supporters. The interests, and often the intensity of certain fellow students significantly shaped my own musical goals and directions.

What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far? 

Naomi: Other than paying the bills? Not giving up or running away from being so regularly out of one’s comfort zone. The unrealistic expectations you can put on yourself and the self-criticism that can go with that.

Neil: I feel very blessed to have been able to work in music since the day I finished Music College. Not everyone in life will like you or how you play, that’s fairly obvious. Sometimes fatigue or illness can hamper performances, other times it can strangely help them! I think learning to say no to certain things is hard, often musicians idolise the gig, the concert above anything else, no matter how poorly paid or uninspiring it actually is. Trying to maintain some values and purpose in what you’re doing is probably the hardest thing. There’s an awful lot of cynicism and jaded feeling around which is easy to slip into.

Which performance/recordings are you most proud of?

Naomi: I am quietly confident that the ultimate Syzygy performance is yet to come… Away from the quartet, I have really enjoyed playing with duo partner, Masahito Sugihara and am proud that we always managed to find energy to play despite always being on a demanding schedule. We’ve had some good adventures. I am grateful for his friendship, musicianship, generosity and patience.

Neil: I’ve come away from the majority of performances happy with the overall impact. Unusual performances stand out, such as Syzygy’s concert in a National Portrait Gallery room playing music specifically related to the artwork there. The Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival was a wonderful surprise because we were on so early in the day and were expecting a couple of enthusiasts only in the audience, but the place was packed and the atmosphere buzzing. Recordings can be very difficult, with the tyrannical expectation of perfection looming over every session, but Syzygy’s Maslanka recording has been a really great experience for me personally, because of the exceptional talent of my friends in the quartet and the mastery of the producer, Simon Hall who made everything come together so well.

Which particular works do you think you play best? 

Naomi: Speaking for Syzygy, I think we all like playing extrovert, intense pieces and when we’re all on the same wavelength in regard to energy and enjoyment, I do think it makes for better chamber music.  But the saxophone is a remarkable instrument in it’s potential to create such an extreme range of sounds, colours and voices, it’s quite difficult to pick one genre or particular work.

Neil: Syzygy really is at its best with involved and cutting edge repertoire. The group really got its teeth into the Xenakis quartet (Xas) early on and this sort of set the precedent for playing difficult and substantial music. The concentration and connection involved when playing together is quite remarkable – I remember this feeling especially during intensive rehearsals of the Andriessen quartet ‘Facing Death’, but also with the Maslanka’s ‘Songs…’.

How do you make your repertoire choices from season to season? 

Naomi: It normally comes from either a new commission, or finding a theme we feel works. And can vary, depending on who has asked us to play. I like concerts or projects that have a theme or offer the chance to draw on and learn from other art forms – literature, art, architecture. This is particularly useful when playing so much contemporary music.

Neil: I think we’re always looking for something new and unusual, trying to contribute something of note to the canon. Hopefully over time there will be more and more great works for saxophone quartet. We make decisions based on the music we really feel is worthwhile.

Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in and why?

Naomi: Performing in informal or unusual venues currently seems popular way of engaging with wider audiences. I definitely feel more at home in informal environments (especially those with a flattering acoustic), where people are free to listen or not. Such as the National Gallery or Royal Academy of Arts. Syzygy played at Proud in Camden once, that was an interesting night.

Neil: I think the soon to be demolished Adrian Boult Hall will always be a special place to me, it’s where Syzygy first performed live and where we recorded the Maslanka.

Favourite pieces to perform? Listen to? 

Naomi: I’m not sure I have a favourite as it depends on so many factors, i.e. what one is doing or if one needs to have a mood brightener or a good wallow. I suppose one of my favourite aspects of music (listening/performing) is its ability to trigger extremely powerful memories, emotions and connections through abstract sounds. Or performing when you feel fully immersed in a feeling of energised focus, full involvement, and enjoyment. It makes things better. If you’re cooking, you cook better with Dr. John to listen to.

Neil: To perform: probably Joe Cutler’s ‘Screaming 229a’. To listen to I would say Alex Buess’ ‘ata-9’.

Who are your favourite musicians? 

Naomi: Again, it’s very hard to be specific but the first musician’s that spring to mind include: Flaming Oh, John Cage, Robert Wyatt, Margaret Price, Nick Drake, Frans Brüggen, Archie Shepp, Horovitz and all my chamber music friends.

Neil: I love a German avant-garde jazz group called ‘Der Rote Bereich’, and also harpsichordist Elisabeth Chojnacka, but really there are too many to name.

What is your most memorable concert experience?

Naomi: With regard to Syzygy, a few years ago we played on the Southbank as part of the Park Lane Group Young Artist’s Series. The programme was challenging (Xennakis:  Xas  and David  Bedford’s  Fridiof Kennings) and called for us to use 13 saxophones and a tambourine. There was a full audience, which is always a refreshing surprise at saxophone concert. I remember feeling the best sort of nervous – when you feel as prepared as you can be and excited about the music you’re playing.

Neil: Having finished a soundcheck for a gig, walking out of the venue’s front door only to be greeted by Animal Rights protestors chanting “Blood, blood, blood on your hands,” at us. Quite bewildering.

What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians? 

Naomi: Find your own way and try to work out what part of the music industry suits you and how you can contribute something. However, try not to say ‘no’ to any opportunity as I suppose we find our own voice from our experiences. Be proactive, communicative, curious, don’t loose energy and don’t always take things too seriously. You really can’t please everyone; you can only do your best. But try to be honest with yourself as to what your ‘best’ is.

Neil: Work really hard and keep going. Develop good taste and play music that has some substance to it.

What is your idea of perfect happiness? 

Naomi: Finding my house keys when I believe they are lost. Especially if I think I’ve left the oven on.

Where would you like to be in 10 years’ time?

Neil: As a group, I’d like Syzygy to have made a number of recordings and had some great new music written for saxophone quartet. I think we’ve scratched the surface of what the group is capable of, but there’s potentially so much more.

What do you enjoy doing most?

Naomi: Playing chamber music.

Naomi Sullivan is Soprano Saxophone in Syzygy Quartet.

Neil McGovern is Baritone Saxophone in Syzygy Quartet.

Syzygy Quartet’s album Songs for the Coming Day by David Maslanka is available to buy from Amazon now. Read a review here

Syzygy saxophone quartet were formed after playing together at the 2009 World Saxophone Congress in Bangkok with the London Saxophone Ensemble. The quartet was established with the aim to promote and perform established contemporary works, alongside new music written especially for the ensemble.
Syzygy’s debut performance was in the Adrian Boult Hall, Birmingham, as part of the Frontiers & Andriessen Festival, where they performed Louis Andriessen’s Facing Death. Since then the quartet have gone on to perform at major chamber concert venues across the UK, including performances at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, and at the Purcell Room as part of the Park Lane Group Young Artists New Year Series. They made their debut at St Martin-in-the-Fields in July 2012 and have performed at the National Portrait Gallery and the Royal Academy of Art. They have also conducted workshops and performed at Chetham’s School of Music, Trinity College of Music, and Birmingham Conservatoire.

They recently recorded their debut CD, being the only ensemble in Europe to be awarded the performing and recording rights for David Maslanka’s ‘Songs for the Coming Day’, a captivating work which will be released in the near future. They were supported by the Help Musicians UK (formerly MBF) from whom they received an Emerging Excellence award.

http://syzygyquartet.co.uk/wp/

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A lively debate is developing over on the Music Haven blog in response to an article by conductor/artistic director Tom Hammond in which he questions the usefulness of reviewing concerts when it seems that the main focus is on “big name” artists and venues in the big cities (i.e. London) and scant attention is paid to out of town or smaller scale and amateur performances.

As a reviewer myself, for this blog and also for a major concert and opera listings site, I regularly question the value of reviewing concerts, and it troubles me that certain reviewers seem to focus an undue amount of attention on the big names and almost none on lesser-known or more unusual artists and ensembles. Personally, I see my role as an “enabler” – enabling artists, audiences and reviewers to connect, engage and communicate via my blog and my reviewing. As the British pianist Peter Donohoe said in his own earlier article on music critics, ultimately we should all be on the same side – that of the music – and I feel we have a responsibility as reviewers and music bloggers to support the rich musical landscape we are so lucky to have here in the UK.

Read Tom Hammond’s article

And read my response to Tom’s article

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Stress testing (sometimes called torture testing) is a form of deliberately intense or thorough testing used to determine the stability of a given system or entity. It involves testing beyond normal operational capacity, often to a breaking point, in order to observe the results (Source: Wikipedia)

Performing in front of others is stressful, whether it is to a group of friends at an informal gathering or to a full house at Carnegie Hall.

In order to prepare ourselves for such performances, particularly important performances such as an exam, audition or formal recital, it is crucial to “stress test” our repertoire by playing the entire programme in a variety of situations. This process is commonly used by professional musicians, who may choose to play a programme at regional venues before performing at an important venue such as London’s Wigmore Hall. Each time we perform, new things are revealed about our music which inform subsequent practise sessions and help us make our music more refined and, more importantly, secure, thus protecting us against errors, or at least allowing us to skim over slips and minor mistakes so that the “flow” of the performance is not disturbed.

This last week I and a friend have been “stress testing” our respective programmes for forthcoming concerts. I am fortunate in that I own a very beautiful antique grand piano, which piano-playing friends of mine love to come and play (and I love hearing the piano played well by others). Playing for a couple of friends, in a relaxed atmosphere with cups of tea and cake, allows one to play in a “safe zone”. In these situations, we know that our friends are not judging us, they listen attentively and offer encouragement and applause afterwards. Of course, it can be difficult playing to other pianists – but it can be a sympathetic experience too as we all understand how very hard it is to play the piano!

I played three pieces, by John Field, Schubert and Schumann, which form the solo element of a longer concert which I am giving with a singer. In practise, the pieces felt secure and well-known, but, interestingly, weak spots were revealed when I played to my friends which subsequently  enabled me to practise with care and focus.

In addition to helping us focus on practising, “stress testing” our repertoire allows us to gauge aspects of our performance, from our concert attire and stagecraft to the vibrancy and expression of our playing (and yes it is important to do a “dress rehearsal” to make sure clothing and shoes are appropriate and comfortable). It also enables us to better understand and handle anxiety and stage fright: and the more times you practise performing a programme before The Big Day, the better you become at recognising and accepting the symptoms of performance anxiety.

Of course this preparation for performance presupposes that one has done all the careful, detailed work learning the music, including being able able to work both too slowly (a musical challenge) and too fast (an efficiency challenge), one hand thinking the other and using the wrong hand (see Graham Fitch’s useful article on symmetrical inversion), working with and without the metronome, studying the music away from the piano and in one’s head, and creating a vivid, perfect interior model of the music, while all the time guarding against routine and a lack of mindfulness. It’s hard work: there’s no getting around the fact that playing the piano is very difficult, regardless of one’s ability – as Graham said to me the other day, “if it was easy, everyone would do it!”.

Returning to the subject of practising for a performance, I had an interesting experience with one of my more advanced students recently, a teenage girl who was preparing to take her Grade 6 piano exam. I have done a lot of work on confidence and stagecraft with her, and at the last lesson before her exam, she wanted to run through her pieces. After three false, frustrating starts to the C P E Bach ‘Solfeggio in c minor’, with me sitting quietly next to the piano, I suggested we try something different. I told her about the Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt whose stage presence suggests someone who loves performing and who can’t wait to share her music with the audience. “Channel your inner Angela Hewitt!” I suggested to my student, and then asked her to leave my piano room, wait in the hall (as if backstage at the Wigmore) and then “come on” to the “stage”. Meanwhile, I moved away from the piano and sat “in the audience” on my sofa. The transformation in her performance was remarkable: she was confident and poised and she made a wonderfully vibrant sound. She was thrilled with her performance, and when she saw me after the exam, she explained that she had done the same visualisation/acting exercise in the moments before she went into the exam room. I am delighted to report that she passed her exam with a high Merit and received very complimentary comments from the examiner about the communication and expression in her playing.

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Angela Hewitt (photo Medici TV)

As performers, we have to be actors, partly to enable us to cope with the feelings of anxiety, but also to allow us to step into the character of each piece we play. All these aspects need to be practised and tested before the The Big Day. Curiously, the more of this work we do in the weeks and days leading up to the important performance, the better able we are to “let go” in the actual performance, to play in the moment and to allow the creative and artistic side of our personality (often called “right brain thinking”) to take flight.

 

 

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(Photo: Georg Aufreiter)

Who or what inspired you to take up composing and performing and pursue a career in music?

I remember asking my parents for a keyboard as a child and never looking back.

I’ve wanted to be a writer since my teens, but I decided that I wanted to spend a great deal of time perfecting my musical craft first. This would give me something interesting to write about later, a topic with which I would be not only intimately familiar but also passionate about.

Who or what were the most important influences on your musical life and career?

My musical influences include but are not limited to Beethoven, Yann Tiersen, Philip Glass, Dolly Parton, Lana Del Rey, Edith Piaf, Leonard Cohen, Fever Ray, and Bach. My mom is one of my role models because she is the quintessential creative woman: she works as an engineer and is also a visual artist (halinamontrey.com). Tom Plaunt, Wolfgang Dosch, Anne Wieben, Karlheinz Essl, Barbara Lueneburg, and Suzana Stankovic are artists with whom I’ve either worked or studied (or both), who have helped shape the way I approach creativity.

What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?

I believe that the greatest challenge for an artist that strives for authenticity is remaining true to oneself while surrounded by various sources of pressure. For me, this means time, resources, and the opinions of others. Not only have I been true to my own musical and artistic intentions; I have defined my own voice as an artist. I continue to speak with that voice every day and strive to communicate from the heart with my audiences.

Which performance/recordings are you most proud of? 

I am always proud of a performance in which I reach someone. If I make you laugh, cry, or ponder, I feel that I have accomplished a part of my continuing mission to connect with the people taking the time to listen to my work.

Which particular works do you think you perform best?

I’m told that my solo piano compositions both with and without electronics, such as Raven Dress (https://soundcloud.com/clio-em/raven-dress) or Serge’s Song (https://soundcloud.com/clio-em/serges-song-piano), make quite an impression when I play them live. I personally love performing my folksy favourites such as Orca Smile (https://soundcloud.com/clio-em/orca-smile-banff) because I can convey so much emotion, and I often get a very positive audience response.

How do you make your repertoire choices from season to season?

It depends on what I’ve recently written! This year, and, I suspect, for much of next year as well, my set is mostly about GRAVITY WING, a science fiction concept album written in various musical genres and styles. I describe it as folktronica/classical crossover. You can read more about it at this link: clio-em.com/gravity-wing

In preceding years, I focused more on contemporary classical repertoire I’d composed, and on classical pieces by other composers. Some favourites by others include song cycles by De Falla and Rodrigo. The longer I make music, however, the more I enjoy performing my own compositions. This way, I can convey a certain intention that I carry from beginning to end throughout the entire creative process.

Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in and why?

I’ve performed in venues across a wide range of spatial arrays and sizes, from the Vienna Musikverein and the Austrian National Library (in the Hofburg Palace) to jazz bars, coffee houses, and, one time, a cupcake shop called Brass Monkey. Every venue can be made magical. I just need to find the right recipe of sounds and songs! It’s like casting a spell, and when it works, the venue breathes with the music.

Favourite pieces to perform? Listen to?

Where do I begin? There are so many. I’ll focus on what’s been on my mind recently.

I absolutely love to play Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in Bb minor (book 1).

Lately I’ve been listening a lot to Apparat [Sascha Ring]’s fantastic work. He strikes a wonderful balance between classical, new music, and pop. His songs pull apart my emotions and put them back together.

Magdalena Kozena does a beautiful interpretation of “Connais-tu le pays?” from Thomas’ Mignon that I just keep listening to over and over again (with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra under Marc Minkowski).

Who are your favourite musicians?

I really enjoy listening to Owen Pallett. He’s completely down-to-earth when performing live and his music speaks to my soul. Tanya Tagaq’s music is full of joy and pain and both raw and processed energy, really so much of what it means to be human. Her powerful live performance makes you redefine the term “force of nature.”

What is your most memorable concert experience?

Singing the Carmen Habanera on the runway of MQ Vienna Fashion Week 2013! Fellow operetta singer Anete (Liepina) and I arranged a duet version for a show put together by Mario Soldo, showcasing a collection by Lisi Lang for her label lila. We walked onto the runway as if we were modelling the clothes, and suddenly we started singing duelling strains of the aria. The audience responded so enthusiastically, it nearly overwhelmed me. It was then that I decided to move more into the world of crossover music.

What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians?

Music gives us a way to experience ideas, emotions, and atmospheres collectively, and so it is a tremendously powerful tool. Fearlessly and honestly share your love for sound with those around you.

Remember, though, that you are a part of your own audience. Be kind to yourself. Perform what you are passionate about. Have passion for what you perform. Learn to love music you may not have liked in the past. Give new pieces a fair chance, but don’t waste time adjusting to others’ expectations of what you should sound like. There is room enough for all our musical ideas in this universe, so express yours.

What do you enjoy doing most?

As much as I love performing and composing music, the act of writing a story is what holds my heart. You can find some of my speculative fiction on my blog (at clio-em.com). I incorporate a great deal of my musical knowledge into my writing, though. Descriptions of surreal instruments and futuristic compositions, that sort of thing. My texts inform my musical work, and vice versa.