30 - Sara Caswell

ladies and gentlemen is my pleasure to have grammy-nominated violinist sarah caswell with me on the violin podcast today hi sarah nice to see you hey nice to see you too how's brooklyn it's good it's it's very wet here right now it's raining yeah the the skies just opened up so uh yeah if you hear a little bit of thunder rumbling in the background um yeah hopefully won't be too too noticeable no i'm sure it'll be fine yeah but thank you so much for coming uh for taking the time to speak with me today we have a lot of cool things to talk about um fantastic with your with your career and your new album and you know your history as a violinist because you know it's also nice to make a new friend in the violin world we've never met before and it's such a pleasure to speak with you um for the audience who is not familiar with sarah caswell who is who is sarah that's a good question um no i i've uh i've been playing violin for a long time um i started playing by when i was about five and a half years old and i started in more of the traditional down a traditional path as far as violent instruction goes i began learning suzuki this is using the suzuki method as a way of getting into violin uh plane and um i have parents who are are music nerds of sorts um they're both musicologists and um so they had a really yeah wow you're the first person on the violin podcast who has both parents not one but two parents as musicologists wow so you must be like a huge history buff then well they certainly were and it was um something that that was of course passed on to to both me and my sister just that love of music and interest in learning about music from all all reaches of the world and so um pretty early on uh my parents thought it would be a really cool idea for uh for both me and my sister to take violinists or take lessons in um in other styles of music in addition to suzuki just so we had a broader perspective on things and you know keep in mind that this was um well the internet was in its infancy at this point so um you easy access to different music musical archives and and you know certainly spotify these things weren't in existence so to um sort of give us exposure to this music it involved like a day's activity like going to a music library checking out records and bringing them home and and putting them on on our stereo um so it was a very valuable uh thing for us to be listening to these records and recordings and getting a broader perspective on the musical world so i started doing taking baroque violin lessons when i was around eight or nine and also started taking jazz jazz lessons at that same time so i was doing three different um three different tracks of lessons uh but for me it was it was all fun you know it was um it wasn't like a segregated thing where i'm doing classical and jazz and baroque for me it was all music and i was really able to get uh an understanding about how how those those styles of music interlaced and how this there were of course many more similarities and there were differences um so i you know started doing those three different kinds of musical studies and really sort of um kind of as time went on i really felt the classical and um jazz were a little bit more me so i started doing spending more time studying that and started doing classical competitions and was playing in my high school jazz band and was doing a lot of things along along those lines um and when i got to college i i studied both styles of music and and then toward the end of my college i was really sort of college time i felt um as though my my true self was a little more in the jazz arena and so um once i finished my undergraduate degrees i took a little bit of time off from school with teaching and and performing and traveling um and then i finally decided in the fall of 2004 to uh to move to new york to pursue a master's degree in jazz performance and um yeah i kind of made a long answer to your question this is wonderful yeah and i was i was reading a little bit more about what you um where you studied and you studied at indiana uh from your undergrad and you am i correct that you studied with gingold and joseph gingold i did yeah my professor's study with joseph gingold maybe you might know him richter noren do you happen to know the name no do you do you know when he was there i i'm afraid not no but he's um but no it was it's nice to have that gingle connection i mean of course i never took lessons with him but i hear just many great things about his you know pedagogy and his style of teaching and yeah he was he was such an incredible teacher i mean all the teachers that i had um during my my studies at iu were amazing so i grew up in bloomington which is where um indiana university is located right so i kind of grew up in that um in that college town and and was certainly around the music school a lot since my father was a musicology professor there so me meets feig who started the um the iu pre-college program um she and rebecca henry who um now is a peabody i believe um but she and rebecca and mimi were my first teachers and um you know they were just a phenomenal uh pair um as far as like first teachers go and i learned so much from them and and then after i started with mimi for about five years i began working with joseph gingold and oh my god what an incredible period of time that was to to learn from such a master master performer master teacher and just such a beautiful human being just so giving and so loving uh you know and had such a passion for the music when he passed i was about oh maybe 16 years old when he passed away um i then went on to study with one of his former students henry kowalski and um henry was another amazing teacher and of course coming from that lineage of gingold um we shared a uh that kind of connection and was he was really able to to um just yeah just give me so much more to learn and so many ways to grow and of course my studies with david baker who's also at iu um he was a phenomenal jazz trombonist cellist and um and uh pedagogue and um yeah i i just i couldn't have asked for a better set of of teachers during my time there in bloomington that's really fantastic yeah it's so i can hear the passion in your voice how they really made an impact on your life in your musical life um but you're now more involved in the in the jazz world as you as you said just a moment ago and i was listening to your your previous records and your new record and you know the one with nine horses your previous record is very different than omega which is you know by the time this podcast episode is out is already available either for pre-order or it's available for all online platforms but i was wondering if you can talk a little bit about your recording process into jazz because there is a little bit of improvisation involved some of it is already you know you have the charts you know the chord progression can you talk to us a bit about that recording process as you or actually let's actually take a step back i would love for us to talk about the moment you want to create an album and then you go from there yeah well um just to clarify for your listeners um so i um as a jazz musician i'm part of many many groups and um that's one of the joys of of uh sort of being jazz violinist is that different leaders have different um instrumental visions and different sounds that they go for um so i have a group that i lead um it's a it's a quartet of my own the group that we're talking about right now this is called nine horses and um this is uh the core of the group is a trio and it's with me on violin and hard anger damoire andrew ryan on base and our band leader is um joseph brent he is um the mandolinist and uh also the composer of most of these selections um so yeah this group i've been part of for oh goodness maybe about maybe about seven years or so um and it's been just a phenomenal group so and what's unique about this group in particular um as opposed to some of the other groups that i do which are a little bit more straightforward in as far as the jazz stylings go nine horses is unique in that joe has really taken the time to blend our our individual backgrounds together in the music that he composes so for me in that case that translates into um you know my jazz background my classical background um and then also a little bit of americana i mean i've had a lot of exposure to different styles of music i say my primary specialties are in classical and jazz but um i've had a lot of exposure to some other stuff too so he's kind of woven that into the compositions that he does and um andrew is kind of in a similar situation he has a lot of classical background to his playing but he's also got much more of an americana sensibility to his uh his um you know performance as well so and joe's background is in um he actually played violin for quite a while so he's a violinist but he's primarily a mandolin player now um but he's done a lot with classical music he's a phenomenal um classical mandolinist a great jazz player he's done a lot with rock music and and folk music as well so as you can see like we have um a lot of similar backgrounds but we also have a unique qualities um with our upbringing as well so joe's been able to write all of that into the sound that you hear so as you were saying there are elements of um a classical their elements of jazz their elements of improvisation that kind of belonged in all in both those different styles and of course americana too so it's been really fun um so going back to your question as far as um you want to record an album um you know with with this group in particular uh the recording process and the album development um was very unique um and i say unique in that like like for instance when i record my own album um i you know i've been working in a batch of repertoire for a while and um once i really feel like the album is kind of like the repertoire's taken form um and i have my album's worth of material then i call up the band we rehearse and we block off two days of recording time and we go into the studio for two full days and we record and that's that's the yeah that's the process more or less um this album didn't come together in that way um uh as far as joe's composition process um you know he he started writing this project i think like five years ago um sort of piecing to piecing together these different uh songs that he was and melodies that he was hearing in his head and sort of formulating those into these these compositions that he that you hear on the album and um because of the fact that he was hearing this uh this project in a much bigger way and what i mean by that is it wasn't just the three of us like you you heard on our first album which was perfect as harold that was just really the the three core members you know bass violin and um mandolin which is by the way like you you like you went on a road and all of a sudden you take a massive detour to that original town in omega i was actually quite shocked like before i heard omega i was like listening to the the previous album with just the three of you and i go wait am i all this wait am i listening to the right

that album was very much an acoustic thing and we actually approached that album that recording of that album in the way that i was speaking about with my own project where like you know we're like we go into the studio for two or three days and we like we record that's it um so this was very different so you know joe had a sense of how the three of us would fit into this this kind of sonic landscape but there were also many other voices many other people that he heard being involved with this project um to the extent like i think it would it would have been an impossibility to get all of these people into um into the studio at one time and i think also just um

schedule wise it would have been a nightmare to try to coordinate but i think also the way in which this was done it's not something where you just get into a studio and do it there are a lot of layers there are a lot of

a lot of how do i say this um things that are shaped and crafted in a way that you you know it takes time to do when you couldn't do it within a two-hour window of time um so yeah so this project has kind of been pieced together over the course of a couple years at least not including the pandemic now the pandemic certainly caused a lot of cause a lot of complications but in a lot of ways it also added it created some opportunities as well i think we got the bulk of the tracks recorded um you know in this piecemeal way uh whatever involves some studio time we were able to get done before the pandemic i think our last recording session happened in february of 2020 and then the shutdown happened um and that was when joe he is a phenomenal uh audio engineer as well so he was able to communicate and engineer a lot of these tracks from home you know getting people to the various guests that we have on the album having them record their parts at home and then he would take those parts and put them into pro tools and we will was able to sort of push put all these pieces together it's so interesting that you talk about the recording engineer because often times they get overlooked you know they like they look at the people on the albums like oh yeah they recorded that's their sound but as a matter of fact the sound design the actual engineering of where they place the mics that's an art and end of in and of itself to get that specific sound that you're going for in omega which is it was really really absolutely listened to oh thank you yeah well joe you know i think in a lot of ways i mean it's we're so lucky that joe has such an ear and uh such a skill with pro tools and mixing and all this um because yeah i mean he knows how he wants these pieces to sound you know and and who better in a way that to do that than the composer you know i mean it's i would imagine it's very difficult for a composer when they're in the studio trying to you know i mean that's why you you hire an engineer who you know can realize the vision that you have um but it's great when you're as the composer you're actually able to do that yourself um and uh you know joe was able to do that and really um i mean of course he sought advice from um from master mixers and engineers um along the way just to you know make sure that he that um he just as a sounding board for a lot of this stuff um but yeah when listening to the entire project um once he'd finished doing all the mixing and mastering um it was really uh pretty incredible what he was able to do yeah like the first track of the entire album it was like this um it was like this really dark sound i was not expecting it and i'm like nine horses why why name the band night horses it's like there's gotta be some kind of nordic mythology may be involved with the sound and the name and i was wondering if you could just talk about nine horses as like what the what the name of the band actually means because it's just the three of you i'm like that that doesn't make sense you know i know that's probably one of the questions we get asked the most when we're doing um doing uh workshops with with uh you know students um is where the name comes from so it's actually uh the title of a billy collins poem oh and i'm totally wrong then usually people are like where are the other you know other uh six horses you know like what's going on there um no it's a billy collins poem and um it was a i don't have a poem in front of me but it um it's a uh the poem is sort of a uh narration about this gift that bailey receives from his wife and it's this um image of nine horses um or nine horses heads um and just sort of the his feelings about that and i think the the emotion and the um the emotion and the motion uh that was kind of in this poem was something that really um con like really connected with joe and he felt that um sort of that musical energy um with something or it was that energy with something we could translate into a musical fashion um and that's where the the name comes from so that's so fascinating i and i actually want to talk about the actual music of the album so i think how many tracks are there on the album of were there nine i can't remember off the top oh goodness um that's a good question uh i do want to talk about the actual music like what was your take on actually receiving the sheet music or you know the when you were pitched the sound of the site of this idea what was going through your head what was like did you like it at first did you not like it was it exciting was it not you know and you know joel if you're listening you're that's okay don't worry i i'll bet they're off it's okay no i i absolutely adore joe's compositions um i i have a you know having worked with him for this long um i have a good sense of we we all as a trio certainly have a very good sense of of the process now uh and that is that joe will um will put his ideas on on paper but they are not set in stone and he definitely i mean he's writing for us he's writing for our voices so he he wants us to get in there and and get our hands dirty as far as sort of working the piece and and really um crafting it to another level um and we're not of course rewriting it we're just we're um adjusting things here and there to um to really make the piece come to come off the page and come to life um but yeah i mean joe's pieces they're not easy they take a lot of work um so you know i'm sure to ask like when he said all right i've got another piece written we're gonna get together for rehearsal here in a couple weeks i'm like alright send me the music asap because i know i'll have to to study it and practice it but it's such a joy because i i know that when we actually get our our voices together it's going to be um it's going to be pretty pretty fun and an epic journey and i love that challenge that he um he puts in front of us and i love the the process of um of crafting these pieces with him as a group i was listening i was listening to your violin playing in this hour and i go wow this does sound challenging but my god that must have been so fun oh my goodness you're like all over the place in this you know and i and for all the listeners who are like interested in this album i highly highly recommend it it's a lot of interesting sounds you haven't heard before i will guarantee that it'll make you what was cool about this album is that you're you're wanting more like your your ear is engaged and i think that's what's so special about the the sounds the collective sounds that um were you know being produced in in this album yeah well and you know there's a so the acoustic trio is kind of the core like i had mentioned before but the way that joe was able to layer everybody's contributions in and was able to manipulate the sounds like as you heard um at various points throughout the album um he goes in there and he takes the violin and he puts all kinds of different filters on it and manipulates it in such a way that it's like oh my god is that me like kind of you know i said did i record that but he's able to do it in such a beautiful masterful way that um it really does become sort of like the cinematic landscape of sound and i um yeah i love i love the way that he's able he did that you know in his engineering and composing of this project i was just gonna say it sounded cinematic which was which also leads beg the question like is this music approachable is this album approachable and i would say it's very much approachable and you know for someone who has not heard this kind of music before you could listen to this album and you'll be like wow this has made an impression on me i think that's what struck me the most is like anybody who likes anything you know has elements of rock and folk americana jazz classical i was really impressed with the with the max richter uh inspiration and i'm a huge max richter fan and um i actually got to see him live when in massachusetts where i'm currently based right now but it was uh yeah like the minimalistic ideology and that in that piece i wanna i wanna figure out what your favorite piece is um and i know it's a tough call but if you have maybe like top three ish i know i'm looking through my book right now of the pieces that we've done because i need like a visual reminder of them um i think the water understands is one that i particularly love um we did a video of that one as well um pre-pandemic and uh that was one of the first ones that we did where it was a performance involving more than um uh just the three of us so that was involving nate cosey kevin garcia um and uh oh the engine the engineer's name is escaping me right now um but it was it was just a really uh a fun um venture into that sort of performance aspect of our of our group um so that one i love um oh i you know yeah it's really hard to choose you know i love they're all so interesting i kind of put you on the spot there but they're i know no it's good though great um but i'm one i'm wondering like with this kind of jazz training that you know you're you're on faculty at the berkeley college of music and you know when you're teaching you're currently doing it you're you're in the field you're recording you're promoting albums and can you give the the violin students on the violin podcast were listening in you know what um what does it take to become like a full-time pro musician because i'm curious to have the the listeners know your perspective yeah um you have to have a passion for this music that that's number one like a passion for making music a love for exploration and and just you know the idea of what it is to emotionally communicate through through your instrument that has to be something that you are are so passionate about um for me i i know i couldn't there's nothing else in the world i would much i would rather do than make music and i've known that since i was a kid like the minute that i picked up the instrument um i i felt a connection to that fiddle that i'd never felt with anything else you know and i really felt as soon as i had it in my hand i was like oh my god this this feels like a part of me and that's been um a constant in my life um because of the fact that i feel as though like there's nothing else that i really i could do um that's determine all the choices that i've made um being a musician isn't necessarily the easiest thing but it's some i would never i don't there's nothing else i would want to be doing and um i love you know i love traveling i love performing i love um the collaborative process um it's it just is so fulfilling and um you know there's no prescribed way of like how to to get to a level of sustainability with with this you know with a profession and there's no like um uh i'd say uh idyllic career i think everybody has to their own unique picture of what it is to be a musician and what is this fulfilling to them and i think it's you know it's each of our our responsibilities to figure out what we want to be doing with our music careers and how we get there um yeah i wish that there was like some sort of you know manual for violin making or violin magic pill exactly there's no magic pill right and it was it's a very interesting conversation i have many of these conversations on the violent podcast because it's nice to know every person's perspective but what it comes down to is that there's no there's no magic pill it's either either you put in the work for something that you truly love you go all in or you don't and i think that's what i'm taking out of this conversation right now and the reason why i mentioned that you're a faculty because you you teach this stuff you know you're in the profession you teach this stuff do you teach privately or do you teach like specific courses or classes regarding like i don't know music entrepreneurship or jazz violin studies what exactly do you do and as a teacher so i primarily teach private so i've got most of my private students are through the berkeley college of music but i'm also on faculty at manhattan school of music and um and new school the new school and then i have a few private students that i see as well uh so um yeah i don't teach any ensembles at this point um the the private lessons like that instruction gives me a flexibility to keep doing you know tours and performances and that sort of thing um but you know the as far as uh you know i'm not though i'm not teaching an entrepreneur class or anything like that of course those topics come in to you know come up in the lessons that i give and i'm there to be a sounding board i'm there to give some guidance you know to my students whether it be with certain technical things musical things are professional things you know i i love to to share the experiences that i've had with my students if that can be something of benefit to them and um you know for me it's all kind of intertwined you know the idea of being a performer a teacher um a composer all those things just kind of make up what it is for me to be a musician and whatever i can do to you know to help my students out along their personal journey is something that i really find fulfilling so essentially you're a walking business i suppose you're walking business you're an advocate you're an advertisement you're you're a business you're a musician you're a marketer you're everything which is super impressive for me because i felt like you know when i did my studies in boston and you know i went to umass amherst from grad school i've always felt that you know i was like three years of my undergrad i'm like okay i'm gonna be an orchestral musician i'm gonna get a job i'm gonna play brahms symphonies for the best rest of my life and that is gonna be awesome however i took an audition decided it was not for me and then i became more entrepreneurial but i feel like that is such a unique skill set that can be taught you know every everyone has that ability to learn you know to play well right you know learning learning is violin is a skill that you can learn and then being a good business person is also something that you can learn and that's something that i'm pretty passionate about too you know the music business side of things and how you can provide good music but also receive um you know financial benefits and you know etc so yeah no i think that's what being a professional musician is about i mean it's not just if it were just about the music making then um yeah the all the training that we've been doing since we were kids is is all we would need but that's not how the music business works you know it's yes obviously we have to have our skills as a as a musician and a performer but we also have to have our sk our our skills as a teacher we also have to have our skills as um as an entrepreneur as you said like you know how do we get our music out to people so that they can hear it and enjoy it how do we put tours together how do we sort of um make what we do financially viable and um it's it's a complicated process and i i think in a lot of ways this wasn't something that was taught to musicians before like in prior generations this was something like you handed this responsibility off to a manager or whoever a record label at that time when when record labels were actually really a viable way of having a career sustain itself um that was somebody else's responsibility but that's not how it works these days i mean as you know everyone's kind of their own ceo of their own musical company and um you know we are responsible for being our our own agent and our own booker and our our own promoter um and you know i i think at some point you know you've you are at a place in your career where you can hire people to help you out with these sorts of things but i think what i've found and in conversations with with friends is that at least we've all like wherever we are in our musical ventures we've all at least had quite a bit of experience being our own advocates when it comes to making our our career sustainable so it's a lot of hats to wear but you know when it comes down to it it's all built around this passion that we have for making music and um yeah i mean there are days of course when i get frustrated having to to spend the entire day booking flights for you know the band or having to deal with contracts and all that but then i i stepped back and i remember all of that business is centered around what i can't wait to do which is to get on the stage and to play with these musicians and perform with an audience that's the most high and like the most joy that i can get and it makes everything else that i do that maybe isn't quite as fun makes it worth it that's so cool well i know you have such a passion for music i love like listening to you talking such an advocate for music in general like jazz music and everything but i want to take a detour and do and talk about things outside of music what are your passions what are your hobbies you know what do you do if let's say ugh these jazz skills are me up and i want to do something besides touch my instrument because the reality is that we you know we also musicians take breaks from our instrument it's nice to get a healthy perspective away from the instrument so i'm curious to know like are there any things that you're passionate about outside of violin oh yeah well you know the music is richer because of the experiences you have in life the life that you live comes through into your music so i'm uh i'm definitely one who loves to live life and um yeah i have a lot of different things that i enjoy doing um i'm a runner so i like to go out and you know run uh you know i've i've run marathons before i'm not great at them so my um my preference still kudos to you i mean no i i do i do enjoy running and that's one of the things that really kind of recharges me when i'm i'm getting you know in a frustrated zone or um just need a break from things i also love bicycling long distance cycling that's another thing i did a lot of that when i was living in indiana um if if you say if you're a swimmer too then i'm just going to consider a triathlete no no i no i'm not a big swimmer so yeah not not my there's also this huge uh triathlon like the iron man oh yeah yeah like i was gonna i was gonna be prepared to be like oh yeah you're like an ironman competitor okay nope nope not gonna happen um so yeah so as far as like physical activities that i do i really enjoy that and hiking as well um as far as yeah other activities that i enjoy doing um so well one of the two new hobbies actually that kind of uh emerged during the pandemic um you know i wasn't touring i was i was home you know as we all were uh just sort of um riding the crazy wave that covid was and um so one of the things that got started was um baking so i did a a sunday stress bake um one day and like the sunday in march and um can i join can i join next time absolutely so i mean i was just i posted this photograph of something that i baked and and the positivity that came out of that that bake i was like well maybe i should just keep doing this so i i just actually had to break the streak i had a 69-week uh baking sunday baking streak going wow so that's like over a year of baking yes 69 weeks of sunday stress baking but i had to quit it this last sunday because i was in europe um on doing a tour uh for a week so i had to had to stop the baking but that was you know i never really baked much in my life my mom did a lot of baking when i was a kid but i didn't really do much of it on my own so this was sort of a fun venture for me to do and um yeah it was a lot of a lot of uh fun tasty treats to to to explore another hobby yeah another hobby that came out of all this was um pottery there was a pottery studio close by my apartment and i'd always wanted to take a pottery class my mom had done it when she was my age just you know kind of as a fun hobby um so i'd always love to do it and i'd always wanted to take a class but you know as a musician the idea of you know i couldn't sign up for like a six-week course because i was there was at least gonna be like two or three days when i wouldn't be able to attend the class um so with the pandemic i was here the entire time so i took four different classes through this um this studio and now i have a membership there and i've been loving throwing pots and it was a very musical activity uh that little lyricism that you find in in pulling up the walls and and finding the shapes that um the clay wants to be molded into um yeah it's a really um a very meditative cathartic thing for me to be doing absolutely i'm hoping you're still doing them both yeah i'm noticing that all these activities are you know you use your hands a lot you know pottery baking violin you seems like you're the kind of person that likes to be like be creative with your hands like if my fingers and hand are not doing anything then it's like ah like you're not living so i feel the same way for sure i think it was you know the violin podcast was something for me like it's just like it was kind of like a random idea like oh there is no such thing as violin podcasts i should create one and then and then there it is right but we're just we're approaching the end of our time sarah so one one last question before i let you go and i really really had fun during this conversation but there are a lot of there are a lot of students who are approaching music school or someone who is kind of nervous they want to start something new they want to start playing the violin and they're not sure if it's for them whether they're an adult beginner whether they're you know a parent listening to the violin podcast could be anyone what could you say to that person who's listening right now who is like i'm on the fence should i try getting a music career or you know should i even start playing music what what can you say to them if you love it pursue it that's my my feeling about it i you know i don't yeah i i never went into the like into my violin degrees thinking you know uh can i make this career work um i just i knew i loved it i knew i had to do it and and pursue my passion and i wanted to learn more and i felt like that passion would lead to something and i just had to have faith that um that that passion i have for the music will will lead to good things and lead to actually being able to make a career out of doing it um if yeah if you love it then pursue it you know um i think you know yeah the the idea that uh hand in what ends up happening with your with your life you know just have faith in in a passion driven life and um and don't worry so much about the details because you never know where life is going to lead you know i i had no idea when i was six or seven years old that um i that you know 30 some years later i would be you know living in brooklyn and um talking with you and having just gotten back from europe and releasing these albums and you know having a you know a grammy nomination i never knew any of this was going to happen all i knew is that i loved music and i wanted to to study it and learn as much as i could about it and that's still the adventure that i'm on you know i i still transcribe i'm still practicing every day and and you know just working on on improving skills you know i there's always more to learn and um when that's sort of the motivator in your life then you never know where the path that path is going to lead so you just have faith in in your passion and good things will come out of that sarah thanks so much for coming on the violin podcast really really appreciate this conversation and uh for any listener who's new to us or a returning uh listener please make sure to hit the subscribe button hit the bell notification so that way you get notified for when these new episodes come out we know season two is underway so please make sure to follow us on all social media platforms make sure you know you'll like us on your favorite podcast platform and uh until next time sarah i wish i can see you in person and meet you in person and uh that would be uh that would be uh a wonderful time and i i need to learn like a a baking recipe from you gladly i'll send you over some thank you so much yeah until next time