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ABLE Voices Ep 82: Sarah Lianne Lewis
11 Plays5 months ago
We are inviting disabled artists and arts educators to be guests and guest hosts on ABLE Voices. Today's guest host is Ben Lunn. Ben Lunn is a music composer, conductor, musicologist, teacher and associate artist for Drake Music and Drake Music Scotland. As a composer, Lunn’s music reflects the material world around him, connecting to his North-Eastern heritage or how disability impacts the world around him or his working-class upbringing. Alongside this, he has become renowned for his championship of others, which have seen him creating unique collaborations with musicians from across the globe and developing unique concert experiences and opportunities for others. Today, Ben will be speaking with Sarah Lianne Lewis.
Sarah Lianne Lewis is a Welsh composer crafting vivid and inventive music that bridges tradition and innovation. Working across the concert hall and stage, she weaves unexpected sonorities into bold soundscapes that captivate and challenge in equal measure. Described as "charming," "haunting," and "imaginative," Sarah’s music often explores themes of connection, climate change, and the natural world, embracing music’s power to create space for discovery and thoughtful dialogue. Her compositions have been praised for their delicate yet powerful music, and performed by leading ensembles, including the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Quatuor Bozzini, the Royal Opera and Ballet, soprano Sarah Maria Sun, Blank Space Ensemble, UPROAR, and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.
Follow Ben online:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blunnmusic/
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/benlunnmusic
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/benlunnmusic/
Follow Sarah Lianne Lewis online:
Website: https://www.sarahliannelewis.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarah_lianne_l/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sarahliannelewis.composer/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahliannelewis
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/sarahliannelewis
The ABLE Voices podcast is produced and edited by BIAAE Operations Coordinator, Daniel Martinez del Campo. The introduction music was written by Kai Levin and the ending song was written by Sebastian Batista. Kai and Sebastian are students in the Arts Education Programs at the Berklee Institute for Accessible Arts Education.
For more information about our programs visit us at https://college.berklee.edu/BIAAE
Follow us for more weekly updates at:
Instagram: @BIAAE
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BIAAE
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Transcript
Introduction to Able Voices Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Music
00:00:14
Speaker
Hello everyone and welcome to the Able Voices Podcast.
00:00:18
Speaker
I'm Dr. Rhoda Bernard, founding managing director of the Berklee Institute for Accessible Arts Education and the assistant chair of the Music Education Department at Berklee College of Music.
00:00:28
Speaker
And I'm proud to present this podcast featuring disabled artists and arts educators.
00:00:34
Speaker
We are inviting artists with disabilities to be guest hosts for the Able Voices Podcast.
00:00:39
Speaker
Today's guest host is Ben Lunn.
00:00:42
Speaker
Ben Lund is a music composer, conductor, musicologist, teacher, and associate artist for Drake Music and Drake Music Scotland.
00:00:50
Speaker
As a composer, Lund's music reflects the material world around him, connecting his Northeastern heritage or how disability impacts the world around him or his working-class upbringing.
00:01:03
Speaker
Alongside this, he has become renowned for his Championship of Others, which have seen him creating unique collaborations with musicians from across the globe and developing unique concert experiences and opportunities for others.
00:01:17
Speaker
He has won accolades from the Scottish Music Awards in both 2023 and 2020 for his work with Hebrides Ensemble and Drake Music Scotland,
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Speaker
In 2022, Ben became the first Northeast composer to be selected for the Royal Philharmonic Society's Composer Scheme, which sees him paired with music in the round.
00:01:38
Speaker
As a musicologist, Lund specializes in Baltic music, Horaccio, Raduliscu, political ideology and composition,
00:01:48
Speaker
and composing a disability.
00:01:50
Speaker
He has had the honor of lecturing at some of the world's leading academic institutions, and his articles have been published across Germany, UK, US, Russia, Lithuania, and collected by the Arvo Hotcentra.
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Speaker
In 2021, Ben also helped found the Disabled Artists Network, an organization which is bridging the gap between the professional world and disabled artists.
00:02:18
Speaker
Hello, I am Ben Lund.
00:02:19
Speaker
I'm a composer based in Scotland and it is my pleasure to be once again being the guest host for Able Voices, where I have been introducing and talking to a variety of wonderful disabled musicians and composers from across Britain.
Interview with Sarah Leanne Lewis
00:02:34
Speaker
And it is my absolute pleasure to introduce a really wonderful colleague and friend of mine called Sarah Leanne Lewis.
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Speaker
So before we do that, we're going to hear a small excerpt of a piece by Sarah as a nice, wonderful introduction to her music.
00:02:52
Speaker
So let's have a listen.
00:04:04
Speaker
So, Sarah, could you tell us a little bit about that particular piece we've just heard?
00:04:09
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So that piece is a piece for solo piano that I wrote, commissioned by Drake Music Scotland back in 2023.
00:04:18
Speaker
And it's called Letting the Light In.
00:04:25
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The idea being, it sort of sums up this woozy, sleep-addled kind of sense where that summer that I wrote it, I'd just had my firstborn son and I was incredibly sleep-deprived.
00:04:43
Speaker
And it was sort of, I suppose, a reflection on motherhood, but through the lens of what my kind of exhaustion was,
00:04:53
Speaker
kind of pre-existing as well.
00:04:55
Speaker
I've got ME, which is myalgic encephalomyelitis, which is quite a mouthful to say when you've got brain fog half the time.
00:05:04
Speaker
But basically, like exhaustion and sleep deprivation is quite often part of my daily kind of experience.
00:05:13
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And the kind of the toll of the early days of postpartum kind of
00:05:22
Speaker
I suppose, kind of expounded that a little bit.
00:05:24
Speaker
It was just, it was so much more.
00:05:27
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But there was a real beauty to that, seeing those kind of tiny moments in the dark nights and having that hope and just awe of this tiny little human being, kind of, I think it created something very beautiful.
00:05:46
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And I tried to
00:05:49
Speaker
create that beauty in the piece.
00:05:54
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And I sort of created some different sounds.
00:05:56
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So there's these almost kind of gamelan kind of gong, bell sounds that are created through some kind of extended techniques, as you'd call them, where I weave a coin in between three of the piano strings.
00:06:11
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And it's quite a kind of light preparation.
00:06:13
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It's very subtle, but it changes the sound world of the piece to be familiar, yet kind of unusual and unfamiliar at the same time.
00:06:26
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For those who don't know Sarah, she's been particularly modest as this particular piece as well, won a very fancy prize.
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Do you want to tell people about what that prize was?
00:06:34
Speaker
Yeah, it won the Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Chamber Scale Composition this year, which was a little bit of a pinch me moment to say the least.
00:06:47
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I think I definitely gawped at you and Jack, my husband, sitting next to me for a good couple of seconds before I was pushed saying, you've got to go up on stage.
00:06:58
Speaker
But no, that was a lovely accolade actually to...
00:07:03
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to kind of encourage me that something that I felt was quite a small, introspective, quiet piece resonated with people enough that it won that award.
00:07:14
Speaker
It's a really prestigious award, and I think I might be the first Welsh person to have won as well.
00:07:24
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I know several people have been shortlisted.
00:07:27
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But I think I might be the first Welsh person to have won, at least in the last 25 years since the awards are what they are now.
00:07:37
Speaker
We'll have to do some digging because I've remembered.
00:07:39
Speaker
I know.
00:07:40
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I'm in a similar situation where I'm the first composer from the northeast of England to be ever commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic Society as well.
00:07:47
Speaker
So I'm glad we're both causing havoc for that organisation.
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together.
00:07:51
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So to rewind a little bit, I imagine everyone would be very, very interested to how you got from just your initial interest in music to becoming this wonderful internationally recognised award-winning composer.
00:08:06
Speaker
How was that sort of journey finding music and then coming into composition?
Sarah's Musical Background and Challenges
00:08:12
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Wow.
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Speaker
I mean, I think music was kind of part of my life quite naturally.
00:08:20
Speaker
I grew up in a family where they were all very keen amateur music making people.
00:08:27
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And I just kind of played piano, sang around the house and just sort of absorbed kind of lots of different musics.
00:08:37
Speaker
My dad was really into kind of the 70s Led Zeppelin and kind of 70s classics, like kind of Camel as well, which is quite a prog kind of interesting indie rock.
00:08:49
Speaker
And then my mum was into kind of Mozart and the more traditional classical music.
00:08:55
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And so I had those soundtracks on long car journeys around the house on the weekends.
00:09:01
Speaker
And it was a time where there was, I think, a greater access to music education as well.
00:09:09
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We had free music lessons in schools.
00:09:12
Speaker
It was easy to be able to learn instruments.
00:09:16
Speaker
because it was just offered, instruments were cheap or rented to you for a very small amount of money.
00:09:24
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And I sort of then, so I learnt piano first and then went to violin and started being in kind of the school orchestra, the county orchestra, and then sort of went from there.
00:09:37
Speaker
And then all of that alongside singing too.
00:09:40
Speaker
And I just, I think I took it for granted at the time
00:09:44
Speaker
I think it was only when I went to university and I told people about what our Christmas tradition was that I realised it's quite an unusual family to grow up in.
00:09:54
Speaker
And bare amount, I went to a school of music in university.
00:09:59
Speaker
I felt that, oh, there'll surely be people who are as nerdy as I am.
00:10:03
Speaker
Apparently, not many people are nerdy enough to sing extracts of Handel's Messiah at Christmas with their family.
00:10:11
Speaker
Or part harmony too.
00:10:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:15
Speaker
So that was my Christmas.
00:10:17
Speaker
Every year, almost without fail, we'd sing Extracts of Handler's Messiah.
00:10:22
Speaker
And then I, so I was really busy, you know, quite often through school, I would have, I think almost every lunchtime, every after school was some sort of music group.
00:10:37
Speaker
And if it wasn't groups that already existed, myself and friends set up our own groups.
00:10:43
Speaker
So we had a kardant, which competes in the Welsh Eisteddfoddai, which for those who don't know, the Welsh Eisteddfodd is this kind of local and national kind of arts competition community celebration.
00:11:03
Speaker
And there's lots of different categories like arts and music, singing, composition.
00:11:08
Speaker
And it's just this incredible celebration of Welsh culture and Welsh song and music.
00:11:14
Speaker
It's brilliant.
00:11:15
Speaker
So we were part of that.
00:11:16
Speaker
And we even set up a recorder group to compete there in the chamber music.
00:11:22
Speaker
So as a young teenager, I was super busy with all of this music making.
00:11:27
Speaker
And yeah, I took it for granted until I got glandular fever at the age of 17.
00:11:36
Speaker
And I had to effectively drop out of school for six months.
00:11:40
Speaker
And suddenly I was just even just kind of going up and down stairs to be able to have a meal was an effort, let alone
00:11:50
Speaker
thinking about doing anything musical.
00:11:53
Speaker
I didn't play or sing for months and months and months on end.
00:11:57
Speaker
And it was really hard to actually get back into it.
00:12:03
Speaker
My music teacher, my school music teacher was incredible.
00:12:08
Speaker
And instead, when I started going back to school, they thought it was just a virus to begin with.
00:12:14
Speaker
They didn't realise there were more repercussions to it.
00:12:17
Speaker
And when I started back at school, I'd missed all of my AS level exams, which are kind of the year before you graduate school.
00:12:27
Speaker
And at the time, they're quite important.
00:12:29
Speaker
They kind of add about 50% of the overall mark of the grades that you get leaving school.
00:12:38
Speaker
And I'd missed most of those.
00:12:41
Speaker
The only one I'd managed to sit was actually my music exam.
00:12:47
Speaker
I think because it was the easier one.
00:12:50
Speaker
The music came naturally.
00:12:52
Speaker
And...
00:12:54
Speaker
actually listening to music and doing that part of it was almost, I wouldn't say restful, but it's not the same as writing a history essay.
00:13:10
Speaker
But school looked very different for me when I came back for the final year.
00:13:16
Speaker
did as much out of school as possible.
00:13:21
Speaker
I had to do a lot of catch-up.
00:13:23
Speaker
And I also had to deal with some teachers really not understanding what it was to not be able to be a fully functioning teenager.
00:13:36
Speaker
And
00:13:37
Speaker
you know, I'd have comments not just from friends or people who didn't know me, but kind of, oh, I've been bunking off, oh, I've, you know, I'm just putting it on for attention, or oh, she doesn't want to sit that exam, so she's found an excuse.
00:13:51
Speaker
And
00:13:52
Speaker
Those are the teachers as well, kind of saying those things.
00:13:57
Speaker
But my music teacher was incredible.
00:13:59
Speaker
She saw that actually it was too much for me to keep going to school, to do the music lessons with everyone.
00:14:07
Speaker
And she took it on herself to teach me after school on Fridays, an hour a week.
00:14:15
Speaker
and we covered all of the syllabus that would ordinarily be covered in, I think, about nine hours over a fortnight.
00:14:23
Speaker
We covered in two hours a fortnight and more.
00:14:28
Speaker
We got to explore kind of more of what I was interested in music.
00:14:34
Speaker
And whilst it was a struggle for me
00:14:40
Speaker
realizing my health was not quite as well, and it's never been as well as it was previous to the glandular fever.
00:14:48
Speaker
I really look back at that time and realize how special it was to have that time with my music teacher
00:14:55
Speaker
and do the syllabus in a way that I connected with it, that I got to explore composers like Berg.
00:15:03
Speaker
I found his violin concerto and I just fell in love with it.
00:15:09
Speaker
And my music team, we wouldn't have been able to do this if we were in a class of like 20 kids.
00:15:15
Speaker
she wouldn't have been able to say, right, we're going to spend like a week on this.
00:15:19
Speaker
We're going to watch this DVD of it.
00:15:21
Speaker
We're going to find out a little bit more about him.
00:15:24
Speaker
But because it was one-on-one quite often, I was able to do that.
00:15:29
Speaker
And so I think that really instilled this love and this...
00:15:33
Speaker
kind of hunger and understanding of kind of new newer music kind of in the 20th century and and forward and um I think that probably formed the basis of me wanting to study music at university too yeah wonderful and so there are many threads to pull on in that and so the you sort of touched on it a little bit with so obviously the the nature of an
00:16:00
Speaker
disability that's evolving is always a very interesting one sort of how we relate to it so like with myself i've all my sort of conscious life i've been autistic and i've known about it whereas my physical disabilities now are much more recent things so there's a process of sort of accommodating that and so i'm sort of curious of how you found that particular process of sort of say coming to terms with that while also doing the creative things and also
00:16:25
Speaker
having to navigate the really problematic elements of the work that surrounds us, mainly people not really understanding at all.
00:16:33
Speaker
what we're like.
00:16:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:35
Speaker
Oh God.
00:16:36
Speaker
I think, I think I, I was awful to myself actually, because I thought everyone else is saying, oh, you'll get better, you'll get better.
00:16:46
Speaker
And oh, it's only going to be a short period of time.
00:16:48
Speaker
Just kind of, everyone is expecting me to get back to normal, to be able to kind of go back into everything I'd done previous, to be able to do as well as I had done previously.
00:17:00
Speaker
And,
00:17:03
Speaker
I tried.
00:17:06
Speaker
Probably, well, definitely to the detriment of my health.
00:17:11
Speaker
It took me a long time, and I'm really embarrassed about this now, and I regret a lot of things.
00:17:19
Speaker
But I didn't want to label myself as disabled.
00:17:23
Speaker
I think a lot of people didn't see me as disabled because I looked healthy to...
00:17:30
Speaker
the most part.
00:17:32
Speaker
And I found that people treated me different if I said I can't do something because I don't have the energy.
00:17:40
Speaker
I also didn't have the terminology, I think, to explain how it was different for me.
00:17:47
Speaker
And so I actually struggled, really struggled through the first year of university without any help because I didn't know
00:17:55
Speaker
where to find the help.
00:17:57
Speaker
It perhaps wasn't as signposted as clearly as it could have been, but also there just wasn't maybe an understanding that possibly because I wasn't being as vocal about my needs as I could have been, because I feared any repercussions of not being included in ensembles or choirs because they would see my limitations and not see further than that.
00:18:19
Speaker
And I think it was only in the second year that
00:18:23
Speaker
I'd been severely ill by the end of the first year.
00:18:26
Speaker
I was pretty much bedbound again.
00:18:29
Speaker
For the better part of that summer, I'd been accepted into the National Youth Choir of Wales.
00:18:35
Speaker
I had to drop out because I was so ill.
00:18:38
Speaker
And for the better part of the, gosh, probably about eight to ten weeks, I could barely do anything.
00:18:43
Speaker
And I thought, I can't go back to university like this.
00:18:47
Speaker
something has to change.
00:18:48
Speaker
And so my parents are brilliant.
00:18:50
Speaker
And we found that there was actually something called like student support services.
00:18:56
Speaker
And I felt like I didn't look disabled enough or didn't feel disabled enough to warrant the help.
00:19:06
Speaker
But actually it was
00:19:08
Speaker
Gosh, when I got that help, it was like a weight off my shoulders.
00:19:14
Speaker
They were able to put kind of really small, simple things in place that meant I was able to do better work.
00:19:23
Speaker
They provided me with note-takers for my lectures because part of ME means that I have a significant amount of brain fog on a day-to-day basis.
00:19:37
Speaker
And quite often it's the combination of trying to listen but also trying to focus enough to write is very, very difficult.
00:19:47
Speaker
And I mean, nowadays, if I'm in meetings, I tend to kind of record them on my phone so I could listen back and take notes afterwards.
00:19:55
Speaker
But it's very difficult for me to kind of do the two things at once, which seemed very normal for everyone else to be able to do.
00:20:02
Speaker
And the early starts were very difficult.
00:20:05
Speaker
So it meant that note takers would turn up whether or not I was there.
00:20:09
Speaker
and support me by producing notes that I could read.
00:20:13
Speaker
And they provided me with kind of a book allowance so that I wouldn't have to trek to the library each time I needed to get a book out.
00:20:20
Speaker
And they provided some transport costs as well so that if there were concerts that I needed to get across the city for,
00:20:28
Speaker
that I wouldn't feel like, oh, I've got to walk there or I've got to catch a bus.
00:20:32
Speaker
I'd be able to afford a taxi to get me from start to finish as easily with as little energy used as possible.
00:20:40
Speaker
And it was like little things like that that really helped.
00:20:43
Speaker
And they thought through the accessibility aspect of where these things are.
00:20:47
Speaker
For instance, the computer lab
00:20:51
Speaker
in the music department, is on the third floor of the building.
00:20:55
Speaker
And it's quite a track up those stairs.
00:20:58
Speaker
And it's also very, very hot, or very, very cold, to extremes temperatures.
00:21:05
Speaker
Again, part of the Emmys, I don't deal well with extremes of temperatures, my body kind of doesn't cope very well.
00:21:12
Speaker
And so I felt it was so extravagant at the time, but it honestly helped me complete my degrees.
00:21:20
Speaker
They provided me with a computer with Sibelius, and I just felt like the jammiest person to have got this equipment.
00:21:30
Speaker
But I don't think I would have been able to do as well as I was in being able to be creative and be able to still do the essays and
00:21:43
Speaker
everything if I actually hadn't had that equipment that they'd provided me with um that I felt like I didn't deserve and so that kind of helped me help support my studies um for the most part and I still at that point still refused any help during exams I thought I could still cope with them silly me um really um
00:22:09
Speaker
And it was actually only after my second year, I think, where I actually had to walk out of an exam because I just couldn't cope with the environment.
00:22:20
Speaker
And I just, I was exhausted.
00:22:23
Speaker
And I think I completed maybe 50% of the paper before I thought, I can't do this.
00:22:29
Speaker
I just felt like I was going to cry.
00:22:31
Speaker
And I could see everyone else around me just coping and
00:22:35
Speaker
furiously writing away and I just think I'm exhausted.
00:22:38
Speaker
It hurts my hands to just write at the moment.
00:22:41
Speaker
My brain fog is so bad and I just thought I've just, I can't do this.
00:22:47
Speaker
And so I think about an hour and a half into a three-hour history exam, I just stood up and left and I thought I can't do exams, I've got to figure something out.
00:22:57
Speaker
Turns out there was support for that too and I
00:23:03
Speaker
I'm so annoyed at myself that I didn't take that particular part of the help up sooner because there was such a marked difference in my grades between the second and the third year when I actually had help in the third year.
00:23:16
Speaker
And when I say help, it wasn't they were sitting there writing the exam papers for me.
00:23:20
Speaker
It was they provided a quieter environment.
00:23:25
Speaker
They provided a chair that wasn't uncomfortable for me to sit in.
00:23:28
Speaker
They provided...
00:23:31
Speaker
I think it was something like every half hour I was allowed a five minute break if I needed it.
00:23:35
Speaker
And I could build up those five minute breaks if it was a three hour exam.
00:23:40
Speaker
I could build it up so I had like 20 to 30 minutes I could take if I wanted to take it as a chunk to like lie down and rest.
00:23:50
Speaker
And I just remember going into those exams and there were only maybe 10, 20 people in the room at any one time doing an exam.
00:24:00
Speaker
Quite often they weren't doing the same exam as I was.
00:24:03
Speaker
And I just remember feeling...
00:24:06
Speaker
I can do this at that point, feeling this is an environment where I feel safe to be able to do my work and do it to the best of my ability without being, you know, looking up in the amount of brain fog I would have, looking up and having these exam invigilators just glaring at me and kind of saying, head down.
00:24:30
Speaker
And instead, there were maybe two, three exam invigilators in the room and they were just, it sounds really silly and so small, but they would smile.
00:24:41
Speaker
And I was like, okay, I can do this.
00:24:43
Speaker
They're not like these people saying, why aren't you working?
00:24:46
Speaker
And it helped so much.
00:24:49
Speaker
And then for my master's, I didn't have any exams, which was great.
00:24:53
Speaker
It was all coursework based.
00:24:55
Speaker
But yes, I wish I'd taken up
00:24:58
Speaker
student support offer much earlier than I did.
00:25:02
Speaker
I think that would have completely transformed my experience of my degree because I was determined to struggle and try to be, oh gosh, normal.
00:25:17
Speaker
as much as possible because I looked normal and it just got tiring to explain to people I can't do that I've got ME and then all the questions of why do you have it how long have you had it what does that stop you doing oh okay we won't ask you to do this thing and feeling suddenly like you're kind of put in this box where there are these limitations placed on you without your permission and feeling like it's a lot harder to break out of that box then
00:25:47
Speaker
if that makes any sense.
00:25:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:49
Speaker
And so one thing, well, so a few things come to me in mind for all of this is one, there's a wonderful book by Leonard Davis called Enforcing Normalcy.
00:26:00
Speaker
And there's just this wonderful element in the book where he talks about how with disability, it's one of those things of, if you can't see it, you presume it's not there.
00:26:09
Speaker
But once you see it, you then don't see it.
00:26:12
Speaker
You can't see anything else beyond this.
00:26:15
Speaker
And so,
00:26:16
Speaker
that sort of my time in university was sort of similar in many ways but also it has its own different kinds of chaos so like even though I'd entered university knowing all the things I should have had access to my institution failed to give me that for a variety of reasons both internal problems but also I don't want to name names of individuals because who knows hopefully they'll employ us at some point in the future for things but I
00:26:40
Speaker
That then meant that even though I knew what I should have had access to, it wasn't there.
00:26:44
Speaker
But on the flip side, because I was at a music college for both my bachelor's and my master's, I was, it was much more relaxed, much more chilled.
00:26:54
Speaker
It was purely coursework.
00:26:55
Speaker
I did not have to do any recycles.
00:26:57
Speaker
It was lovely.
00:26:59
Speaker
It was manageable.
00:27:01
Speaker
But then, but I also was in through going through that same kind of process of not necessarily wanting to take ownership of being disabled.
00:27:07
Speaker
At that point, this was particularly prominent around my late teenage years, early 20s, because essentially, I just felt there was that great fear of typecasting.
00:27:18
Speaker
They mean, you're the autistic one, we'll give you the nice autistic thing.
00:27:21
Speaker
We won't let you work with the orchestra, we'll give you the ASM kids and all this other kind of stuff and not actually envisage you're able to do any more.
00:27:29
Speaker
And so...
00:27:31
Speaker
there was that sort of a sense of shame that came with it, but it's over time, it's just addressed it very differently.
00:27:36
Speaker
And it also got to a point where it's like, I can't hide it anymore.
00:27:39
Speaker
But that's a whole different story.
00:27:41
Speaker
So yeah, and it is also just very interesting, particularly as you were only just around the corner from this while you were going through all of this.
00:27:46
Speaker
Yeah, probably around the same time, actually.
00:27:50
Speaker
Well, I exactly, because I was only a year behind your life.
00:27:52
Speaker
So even though, because as my course was four years, I finished, sort of graduated two years later than you, but I was only one year behind.
00:27:58
Speaker
So...
Sarah's Recent Work and Advice for Disabled Artists
00:28:00
Speaker
We've waffled enough of that past.
00:28:01
Speaker
I'm sort of curious, what things are you working on at the minute?
00:28:04
Speaker
I'm sure people listening in will be very curious to hear what sort of pieces you're writing at the minute.
00:28:08
Speaker
Gosh, quite a... Quite a...
00:28:15
Speaker
wide variety.
00:28:18
Speaker
So I've just finished working with the Philharmonia Orchestra in London.
00:28:23
Speaker
I wrote a piece for a kind of Symfonia, Symfonietta lineup.
00:28:29
Speaker
So that was premiered as part of their Music of Today series back in June.
00:28:34
Speaker
And it'll be released on NMC Recordings in October this year, I think.
00:28:43
Speaker
I don't know the absolute date, but yeah, around October time.
00:28:48
Speaker
So that's very exciting.
00:28:50
Speaker
And yeah, that piece sort of followed on from Letting the Light In, in terms of it's still a reflection on motherhood, but it's talking about, well, talking, the music, I suppose, is reflecting and kind of trying to explore the idea of motherhood of motherhood.
00:29:10
Speaker
and kind of reflects, I think, feelings that I've been exploring about how my disabilities and conditions have impacted what my interpretation of motherhood is, how one of the autoimmune
00:29:25
Speaker
conditions I have has affected a lot of pregnancies that I've had.
00:29:32
Speaker
So I've had recurrent pregnancy loss because of a condition that I've only recently found out about that I've had for a while called antiphospholipid syndrome.
00:29:44
Speaker
So that was kind of, that was a really hard piece to write, but I think it kind of did me good to write it.
00:29:51
Speaker
if that makes sense.
00:29:52
Speaker
I think sometimes when we write music, we can write really joyful music, we can write music that's kind of not got any context to like parts of our personal lives.
00:30:03
Speaker
But for me, a lot of my music is wrapped up in personal stuff.
00:30:07
Speaker
You could probably go through my back catalogue and just be like, oh yeah, that happened then, that happened then, that happened then, just by seeing kind of programme notes and kind of working out what my pieces are about.
00:30:18
Speaker
But I think it's just, I don't know, writing music is kind of free therapy of processing stuff sometimes for me.
00:30:26
Speaker
And so, yeah, that was a big piece that I spent a lot of time on over this past autumn and spring.
00:30:35
Speaker
I'm currently finishing a piece for harpsichord, which is really exciting.
00:30:41
Speaker
I've never written for harpsichord before.
00:30:44
Speaker
And so I've learned a lot about that.
00:30:48
Speaker
So, yeah, that's been a really interesting project and that'll be premiered in October in Hey On Why.
00:30:57
Speaker
And then I'm just about to put the last dots to the notes and send it off.
00:31:03
Speaker
A score for the shortlist of the Composer's Medal in the Ice Deathsword.
00:31:10
Speaker
So I've been shortlisted for the Composer's Medal, which is one of the, probably one of, if not the most prestigious Welsh music prize for composers in Wales.
00:31:22
Speaker
And you kind of look through those who've won the Composer's Medal, which I'm using the English term, it's Meddler Coven Sotr, which means literally Composer's Medal.
00:31:34
Speaker
And it's everyone who's won it is literally a who's who of
00:31:37
Speaker
Welsh composers it's amazing and it's amazing to just even be part of the shortlist so yeah that's the string trio that reflects on Welsh culture and identity in the face of losing a language and how sometimes kind of memory speech and music is tied up together and how it can be triggered like a memory can be triggered by music
00:32:04
Speaker
So I think those are the projects I've kind of got at the moment or just finished.
00:32:10
Speaker
Awesome.
00:32:10
Speaker
And so like with the I Said Forth, colleagues of mine from other settings will be down for it.
00:32:17
Speaker
So like one of the newspapers I regularly write for, The Morning Star, they go down to the I Said Forth and then they are the only national paper in Britain that does a special edition of The Morning Star in Welsh.
00:32:28
Speaker
So you can get...
00:32:30
Speaker
No other paper in Britain does that, does a translated edition of the paper for the I said was.
00:32:35
Speaker
So they'll be down with the arts and culture stuff.
00:32:37
Speaker
So that sounds like a really fun celebration of it.
00:32:40
Speaker
And a very timely and important topic as well, looking at Welsh identity and so on.
00:32:45
Speaker
And also this is where sort of coming from the northeast of England.
00:32:48
Speaker
It's really infuriating because our culture is as ancient as Welsh culture.
00:32:55
Speaker
But because we were an industrial part of England, we're kind of overlooked.
00:32:58
Speaker
despite the fact that the only British person mentioned in Dante's Inferno was a lad from down the road from where I was born.
00:33:05
Speaker
But now we're not treated as seriously as anything else.
00:33:09
Speaker
Funny old world, but they're really wonderful projects.
00:33:12
Speaker
And I'm also very excited to hear the Philharmonia piece when that comes out on NMC recordings as well.
00:33:17
Speaker
I'm sure everyone else listening in to this now as well will also be just as excited.
00:33:22
Speaker
So I appreciate sort of our stolen and lost of your time, and particularly when we both have various different kind of fatigue problems.
00:33:28
Speaker
Half an hour is much more than half an hour in various different problems.
00:33:32
Speaker
It's easy talking to you though.
00:33:36
Speaker
Likewise, but still the ramifications of losing half an hour is much bigger than anyone else's half an hour.
00:33:44
Speaker
So that's just as a nice sort of rounding off.
00:33:46
Speaker
Is there any sort of bits of advice you'd like to give, say, young artists who are disabled, either say with ME or other kinds of disabilities, or just young artists wanting to enter into the world?
00:33:58
Speaker
I think, gosh, for those especially with a disability, whether it's seen or hidden, find the person or people that's safe to talk to and to ask for kind of support, whether that be organisations,
00:34:15
Speaker
like things like student support services if you're in, or the equivalent for universities, but also if you're going through any kind of artist development schemes as well, which quite often are kind of seen, I suppose, as alongside university or just immediately post-university as you're embarking on a career.
00:34:39
Speaker
They quite often historically haven't been as aware of kind of additional needs.
00:34:45
Speaker
be it accessibility needs, like on a physical level, but also
00:34:53
Speaker
Things like if you've got caregiving responsibilities as well, those can be often overlooked.
00:35:01
Speaker
And I will actually hold the Philharmonia up as an example.
00:35:05
Speaker
They were amazing.
00:35:07
Speaker
And Linda, who was the programme manager for the Composers Academy, she was incredible.
00:35:13
Speaker
So as well as the ME and coping with that on a daily basis, I'm a parent of a young child.
00:35:22
Speaker
And she identified that I needed certain things in place for me to be able to do my best work.
00:35:30
Speaker
And that was kind of...
00:35:33
Speaker
through having conversations with me, both at application stage and after I accepted the place.
00:35:40
Speaker
And it was done in a really gentle kind of, we want you to do your best work.
00:35:44
Speaker
What can we do to help you?
00:35:45
Speaker
It wasn't me having to ask for things.
00:35:49
Speaker
I just mentioned, this is stuff I'm living with.
00:35:52
Speaker
And they said, we want you with all of that stuff.
00:35:58
Speaker
We want you.
00:35:58
Speaker
How can we make it easier for you to turn up?
00:36:02
Speaker
And they were amazing and they just championed all of that.
00:36:08
Speaker
And I felt really supported and to be able to turn up and be both a mother and a disabled artist.
00:36:19
Speaker
And be able to do work in a really supportive environment and be maybe a slightly boss composer in the room.
00:36:29
Speaker
And it felt really empowering to actually have that support behind me from the start.
00:36:34
Speaker
And if I was having a really bad day with my Emmy, they'd
00:36:40
Speaker
Just as part of the course, they provided a quiet room at every single venue for me to be able to go to and gave me space and time to be able to do that.
00:36:51
Speaker
In rehearsals, I'd sometimes get like a quiet text from Linda saying, if you want to go out now, I'll make you a cup of tea.
00:36:57
Speaker
Go out, find a quiet space and I'll let you know when you've got to come back in.
00:37:01
Speaker
And so having that reminder of like, I need to look after myself to be able to be as present and as capable as I can be.
00:37:10
Speaker
really helped.
00:37:11
Speaker
So I think sometimes we still need to ask for things because people don't have the awareness of, and also being disabled, it's not a kind of one size fits all.
00:37:24
Speaker
We all have wildly different accessibility needs.
00:37:28
Speaker
So one thing that works for one person doesn't work for the other.
00:37:33
Speaker
So knowing, I think it's also helped me to put kind of an access rider together of
00:37:40
Speaker
What helps me to do my best work and what people can do to help me?
00:37:46
Speaker
So that really helps.
00:37:47
Speaker
There's lots of examples online of disability access riders.
00:37:52
Speaker
So I'd recommend anyone to kind of look those up and use them as a template for your own needs.
00:37:58
Speaker
I think probably there is a fair amount of stubbornness as well.
00:38:01
Speaker
I think you get used to rejection when you apply for things and it's a case of brush yourself down, pick yourself up.
00:38:09
Speaker
and know that that's a subjective evaluation of your work.
00:38:14
Speaker
And if you truly believe in your work, there will be somewhere and someone who also believes in it.
00:38:22
Speaker
And it's kind of connecting with those people.
00:38:24
Speaker
And sometimes I think that can take a while to find.
00:38:27
Speaker
But when you've found your people, again, you can do your best work, which is just really freeing.
00:38:35
Speaker
Yeah, I think maybe that's advice, thoughts, reflections.
00:38:39
Speaker
That's a really beautiful way to sort of round off
Conclusion and Future Conversations
00:38:43
Speaker
our chat.
00:38:43
Speaker
Thank you very much there, Sarah.
00:38:45
Speaker
You're welcome.
00:38:46
Speaker
And thank you very much, everyone who has listened in to Able Voices podcast.
00:38:51
Speaker
It's been my pleasure to introduce you to the wonderful people I've been able to chat to these past three sessions.
00:38:57
Speaker
So thank you very much and look forward to hopefully chatting to more people in the future.
00:39:12
Speaker
Able Voices is a production of the Berkeley Institute for Accessible Arts Education, led by me, Dr. Rhoda Bernard, the founding managing director.
00:39:21
Speaker
It is produced by Daniel Martinez del Campo.
00:39:24
Speaker
The intro music is by Kai Levin, and our closing song is by Sebastian Batista.
00:39:30
Speaker
Kai and Sebastian are students in the arts education programs at the Berkeley Institute for Accessible Arts Education.
00:39:37
Speaker
If you would like to learn more about our work, find us online at berkeley.edu slash B-I-A-A-E or email us at B-I-A-A-E at berkeley, that's L-E-E dot E-D-U.