The Origins of a Creative Cellist

As far back as I can remember, I was surrounded by music. The small Scottish town of Thurso where I grew up boasted strong musical traditions of fiddling and folk music. My parents met in Edinburgh while they were both attending university. The story goes that my Mum sat down to rest under a piano at a party. There she found my Dad, who was, as they say in Scotland, “three sheets to the wind”.

My childhood experiences heavily revolved around music. My mother was a trained classical pianist and taught piano in our home. My father was an avid singer and loved musical theatre. I was forever going from event to event. My first instrument was naturally the piano. My Mum tells me I was a stubborn student sometimes insisting that notes were not what she said they were.

Becoming a Cellist

When I was 5, a new string teacher moved into town. My mother met her and it so happened that she had a fractional-sized cello. My mother asked me if I wanted to play it. I had no clue what a cello was and I have only a fuzzy memory of the early days of learning.

It was around then that I remember having this feeling that music was a “serious” thing and that I should try hard at it. It was my mother’s work and as a little girl, I remember very badly wanting to do the things my mother did with as much skill and competence as her. I succeeded in the music department. Not so much in cooking and household chores!!

Our busy musical life continued when we moved to Culcheth, England, a satellite village of the city of Manchester. I joined a youth orchestra in a nearby town. Two things I remember vividly from my time spent driving every Saturday with my dad to the orchestra. One was passing a maximum-security prison and wondering what the prisoners were up to, the other was wondering why trombonists play so loudly! This experience and the special time I got to spend with my Dad driving are some of my most fond memories of childhood. We would listen to my Dad’s favorite music as we drove. To this day I remember all the words to Dire Straits, Money for Nothing, and Chris de Burgh’s Lady in Red. I think the juxtaposition of listening to pop music followed by classical training informs my musical life to this day. I remain equally happy playing either genre and have never developed the sense of classical snobbery that often permeates the culture of “serious” musicians.

When I was 11, a big change ripped me from an otherwise idyllic childhood. My family immigrated to Canada. It wasn’t an easy move and the ripple effect of that move continues to shape my life. It was the right move for us, but as an immigrant can attest, uprooting a well-formed life is not something that many families adjust to quickly. The move was especially hard on my mother I think, who needed to build her career from scratch and wasn’t permitted to work until we became landed immigrants. I was bullied a fair bit and music became something that I latched onto as a way to quiet the anxiety that I felt around not fitting in.

We immediately found community orchestras to join and I became a founding member of a string group run by my new teacher. My string instruction became a bit patchy at this point. My new teacher was not a cellist and while a competent violinist, couldn’t help me with some of the finer technical details. I would later study with a cello player and also a viola player. I consider myself partly self-taught as none of these teachers were particularly great technicians on the instrument.

Finding my voice…

In the classical world, creativity is often lauded amongst composers and discouraged among players. For a long time as a music student, I was encouraged to recite what was written on the page in front of me and not much more. While tradition dictates that a classical musician can be a great “interpreter” there is a strong undercurrent of contempt and conceit towards the music of other genres. Music that relies heavily on improvisation or receives popular praise is often considered “lesser”. As a result, it wasn’t until my teens that it occurred to me that I could create my own music on my own terms and I didn’t have to compare myself to the composers of late 19th-century European art music.

I began my journey dramatically, by dropping out of high school to “write”. In retrospect, this was perhaps a little melodramatic. I’m sure I could have written creative works without the need to drop school. However, at the time, it felt like I had to choose between a creative life and an academic one. I still feel this tension when I have to work and all I want to do is be creative.

My first song was a folky number written on my Mum’s classical guitar and sung in a thin high pitched teenage girl voice. After experiencing a great deal of frustration with my Mum’s guitar ( I later understood, it just needed a set-up), I began writing with electric bass. Oh, how I wish I had my early recordings of those funny songs. With the writing of these songs came an intense desire to “start a band” It was the era of starting bands. Everyone I knew was starting one. I was convinced mine would be the best band. There were just a few minor issues to work out. My best friends didn’t play any instruments and I wasn’t the type of person to ask people I didn’t know to play with me. So, I taught them! And so became “Margaret’s Room”, a folky outfit heavily influenced by Canadian artists like Erik’s Trip and Sloan.

As part of this band, I forged an identity as a creative artist and not just an interpreter. I took what I understood from classical music and arranging and transferred it to a spontaneous and sometimes fraught process of experimentation and negotiation. I learned about amps and microphones and repeating vocal harmonies, again and again, to get them just right. I also learned that sometimes, like a pop or folk artist you could “play” in a way that I had never played other people’s music. We were telling our own stories in a way that we had never done before.

I reluctantly returned to high school and then pursued a music degree at the University of Toronto. After a successful first year, I gained admittance to their prestigious performance program. Unfortunately due to some unresolved personal trauma from my teen years, I started to struggle with anxiety and lost a sense of academic direction. I spent large parts of my first year with jazz musicians and my creative output was massive. But my connection with the classical program was weak and I did not enjoy most of my classes.

I had a breakdown between my first and second year which resulted in my taking a year off and working instead. A year later I met an abusive man and together we had a baby. Many of the events of that time period are difficult to describe. I was both intensely creative, productive, and strong at the same time as immensely unhappy, afraid and lost. When the relationship finally came to an end, I was a single mother who had completed 3 years of university and wasn’t sure how I was going to manage the rest.

But I underestimated the support that my parents could offer. My Mum suggested that they could take my son for a while so that I could finish university and find my feet. He ended up living with them for over 4 years. I am incredibly grateful to them for this gift they gave me. It allowed me time to find myself, to grow up, and to have enough meaningful life experiences not to feel resentful of my son.

During this “free” time, I became a professional musician. I graduated and I started working, first as a Kindermusik teacher and part-time cellist and then later as a full-time cellist and teacher. And I loved it. I played with many great bands in all kinds of genres. I played classical music. I wrote my own songs. I worked on recordings. I went on tour across Canada.

Eventually, though, it was time to be more of a mother to my son and I decided to move closer to my parents. I was conflicted about continuing to live a musician’s life. Although I loved the work, the pay, though not terrible, came in waves and was unpredictable. I began to think that perhaps I should try something else for a while. I took courses at the University of Ottawa in psychology and then I moved into my parent's house two hours west of Ottawa and did a year at a local college to learn a trade.

It was near the end of these two years that my epiphany came. Not in the form of blinding light, but in the form of an ad on kijiji.

I was working a dull and tiring job teaching adult recipients of workers’ compensation how to read and do basic arithmetic. There was very little for me to do at this job as the adults mostly taught themselves out of workbooks and I just looked over their work when it was completed. I spent most of my time there surfing the net and chatting on Facebook. It was then that I came across a studio space for rent in the city two hours away. I imagined myself there, soaking in solitude and quiet. Being able to focus, once again on music.

I went to see the space a few days later and quit my job the following week.

For the next two years, I traveled up and down from my parent's house to Ottawa, teaching cello students and Kindermusik classes wherever I could and playing gigs with community orchestras While I wasn’t rich, I was able to provide for myself and rent a small home in a town half-way between my parents and the city.

In 2010, I met my ex-husband at an industrial-music event. He seemed like a fun and talented guy and we were swept up in a whirlwind romance that lasted 7 years until differences, mental health issues, and desires in life became too much for the relationship to bare and we separated.

In that time, I moved my life and my son exclusively to Ottawa and established a successful cello teaching studio, I released various recordings with my ex in the genres of art-rock and meditative music and lent my cello skills to numerous live performances and recordings.

Today. I find myself in transition once again. I am craving new experiences, both professional and personal. My decision to learn more about online business as a way to expand my teaching studio and reach more cellists, especially adult learners comes from a desire to broaden my knowledge of marketing and the technologies that support it and from a need to create an income that will survive longer than my ability to work. As I can no longer rely on my husband’s income, I am driven to find ways to generate more myself.

As well, the past two years of my life have been isolating and tiring. I am seeking community in a way that I haven’t done in quite some time. In my experience, education has always been a gateway to meeting new people and discovering new things. I am excited to continue this journey.