Sarah Jeffery of Team Recorder Interview
Click here to go to the podcast and video versions of this interview, as well as show notes with all the links to Sarah Jeffery and more.
Below is the complete transcript of this interview:
Sarah Jeffery (00:00:00):
When I was learning the recorder, there was a view of technique as being very robotic, or if you play in a technical way, that's a bad thing. I just find that it's an artist's toolbox. So I try to give my students this wonderful artist's toolbox, they can do absolutely anything with. They understand everything about their instrument, exactly what makes it work: This finger movement, this tongue movement, this way of blowing, has this effect, so that they can create any sound they want to. And then it's about getting into the music, understanding the history and the context, understanding where you are performing, what you want to communicate, and then you have all of this knowledge and technique and passion that you can put into a package. And yeah, I think I've just described being a musician, basically.
Leah Roseman (00:01:00):
Hi, you're listening to Conversations with Musicians with Leah Roseman. This podcast strives to inspire you through the personal stories of a diversity of musicians with in-depth conversations and great music that reveal the depth and breadth to a life in music. Sarah Jeffery is a wonderful and versatile recorder player based in the Netherlands, known worldwide for her outreach with her YouTube project Team Recorder, which at the time of this podcast release has well over 205,000 very engaged followers. She's the recorder Professor specializing in contemporary music at the Royal College in London, and we talked about a work teaching recorder technique, improvisation in different styles, her varied career, including experimental theater and her synesthesia, which directly informs her work as a musician. There's lots more to this wide ranging episode, which features some fantastic recorder performances as well. Like all my episodes, you can watch this on my YouTube channel or listen to the podcast.
(00:01:57):
And I've also linked the transcript to my website, leahroseman.com. The podcast them music was commissioned from composer Nick Kold, and you can use the timestamps to navigate the episode. Before we jump into our conversation, I wanted to let you know that I have a new way you can support this independent podcast through a beautiful collection of merch with a very cool, unique, and expressive design from artist Steffi Kelly. You'll find that link in the description of this episode. This weekly podcast is in season four, and I send out an email newsletter where you can get access to sneak peeks of upcoming guests. Have a look at the description of this episode where you'll find all the links, including the store for the very cool shirts, mugs, and more, and the support link to buy this independent podcaster a coffee. Now to Sarah Jeffery.
(00:02:42):
Hi Sarah. Thanks so much for joining me here today.
Sarah Jeffery (00:02:47):
Thank you for having me.
Leah Roseman (00:02:49):
I was thinking how you are one of the most important ambassadors for music, really. I mean, you have such incredible reach through Team Recorder, both in community music, and you must bring in people because of your free improv and all the different work you do. Maybe, do you think some people are surprised who start following you because they took recorder in school and now they're finding out about all kinds of things?
Sarah Jeffery (00:03:11):
Oh, definitely. I mean, that's a big part of the reason why I do what I do to bring in people to the recorder and to music and just the love of making music. But yeah, I really try and show all the different facets of what it means to be a musician, of what my instrument can do, because the recorder is so versatile, so varied. I'm sure that everyone is surprised at some point, myself included.
Leah Roseman (00:03:43):
Well, I've enjoyed so many of your beautiful videos, and I think one of the reasons, so it's been almost 10 years since you've had this channel Team Recorder, and from the beginning, I don't think I've seen your very earliest videos. You have a wonderful presence where you include bloopers. You're very much yourself. Did you always have that persona in your videos?
Sarah Jeffery (00:04:03):
Oh, definitely. Definitely. I mean, it is important to see the context of where I was coming from in terms of YouTube. So my first video I uploaded at the very end of 2015. This was very much in the era of the big famous YouTube names were still filming, sitting in their bedrooms, on their beds, using their phones. It was very DIY. Social media today is all professional studio setups. It's completely a different level, a different world, but I came up in a previous era that was very much just kind of figuring it out yourself, and part of that was being very real, very relatable, and now that relatability has almost become a kind of a selling point almost. So people affect relatability, but it was really just very natural. Yeah, you talk about something, you make a blooper, you leave it in. It is all part of the atmosphere, and I liked that very much.
Leah Roseman (00:05:12):
Yeah, I was looking, I've actually never had a recorder player on this series, but I was following many recorder players because I do love the recorder, and I was fascinated to learn that so many of you play jazz, do different kinds of improvisation, folk, music, rock. It's really a huge gamut, not just medieval renaissance and baroque, which most of us associate.
Sarah Jeffery (00:05:34):
Oh, definitely. I mean, part of it is that the recorder does not have your typical orchestral career path. So opportunities for our instrument going into it are much more scarce than many other classical instruments. So you get recorder players, we tend to be very creative. You have to think outside the box. You have to create your own path because there isn't one for you. And the other thing is that early music is full of improvisation. It's full of playing by ear, constructing your own scores. A lot of these things have parallels in jazz or in pop or in folk. So it just feels very natural that we cross over into all these different genres.
Leah Roseman (00:06:20):
As a violinist, I found a lot of your videos really very interesting, especially you have one about renaissance ornamentation, for example, as someone who's only played early baroque and not earlier. So I encourage people who aren't recorder players to just dive in.
(00:06:37):
Now, in 2017, you won the International Recorder Competition and the prize was to produce an album, which I hope we can talk about Constellations a little bit.
Sarah Jeffery (00:06:47):
Yes, definitely.
Leah Roseman (00:06:48):
But I'm curious about this competition. What did that look like?
Sarah Jeffery (00:06:53):
That's the International Nordhorn Competition. It's in Germany. It's set up by two very dedicated musicians, Sanna van Elst and Bobby Rootveld, and they've really created an international music community in their small town. I thought, let's enter the competition. I won it. It was, yeah. Great.
Leah Roseman (00:07:17):
Did you have to play a range of music from different periods? How did that work?
Sarah Jeffery (00:07:21):
Oh, yes. I mean, we do always, anyway. What did I play? Oh, I'll tell you. The thing that attracted me to the competition was that they always have a contemporary music prize with a set work. And that year, the set work was this piece that by chance I had studied. And I can tell you that was the most difficult, challenging piece I have ever played in my life. It took me a year to study this piece. It was called Liturgy of Darkness Five by Raphael Reiner. And I looked at it and thought, why is this on the set list? So I was like, well, I poured a year of my life into learning this piece. I'm going to go and play it. So I did. I went and played it, and it was nice. I won the Contemporary Music Prize as well by playing that ridiculously difficult piece. It's a beautiful piece, but it's very challenging. Yeah,
Leah Roseman (00:08:20):
I'm sure you have collaborations with composers and you have to advise them on what's possible on the recorder and what's manageable.
Sarah Jeffery (00:08:28):
Yes. So I was encouraged during my education to always say everything is possible. Anything is possible, and that is true. But the recorder is a special instrument. It has vulnerabilities, it has its own danger and fragility. So even though everything is possible, there are very many things that work better than others. It definitely has its idiosyncrasies. So a fearless composer will write anything for the recorder, but a very, very good composer will know exactly what works and what finger combinations create certain sound colors, create certain effects. Yeah.
Leah Roseman (00:09:13):
Okay. So the prize, you're able to produce your first, your debut album Constellations, which I bought on your website, and so I will point people. Everything will be linked right in the description of this podcast, sort of the central work is Vermont Counterpoint by Steve Reich. So you've got permission to do this on recorder. Do you want to speak about that?
Sarah Jeffery (00:09:36):
Yeah, so this was a little passion project of mine. I love the piece for Vermont Counterpoint. It's originally for flute and electronics, and I really wanted to make a recorder arrangement. So I worked with sound artists, Müşfik Can Müftüoğlu, and we augmented the piece with electronic sounds. So the original piece is for different flutes, traverse flutes that has a wider range than the recorder. You can play all of those notes on the recorder, but then you spend the entire piece up in the third register of the instrument. I just don't think it sounds very nice. So we chose to take the register down. So it sounds sonorous, but the low notes that we miss, we use synthesized sounds. It is a piece with a backing track. We made that into this eight speaker surround sound that moves as you play. So it was a little bit like taking the electronics from the eighties into the 21st century.
Leah Roseman (00:10:46):
Now, I assumed you hadn't performed it live, but is it possible to do live?
Sarah Jeffery (00:10:50):
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I perform it live a lot. I mean, we have our eight speaker version and we have our stereo version. So basically I can rock up anywhere and perform it.
Leah Roseman (00:11:03):
Okay.
Sarah Jeffery (00:11:04):
Yeah.
Leah Roseman (00:11:04):
Well, it's so immersive. Of course, I listened with headphones.
Sarah Jeffery (00:11:09):
Yeah, I think 11 layers, 148 samples, something like that. It was mind bending to record. I was also something like seven months pregnant. So it was a whole experience.
Leah Roseman (00:11:27):
You're about to hear an excerpt from Steve Reich's, minimalist masterpiece, Vermont Counterpoint, and you can listen to the whole work on Sarah Jeffery's album Constellations, which you'll find linked in the show notes of this podcast. (music)
(00:13:46):
And also on this record, you have your trio. It's axoLot.
Sarah Jeffery (00:13:51):
axoLot
Leah Roseman (00:13:51):
Yeah. So you have two versions. Oh, Virgo Splendors. You have this trio version with, so I thought that might be nice to include some of that, and this trio is important in your life as well.
Sarah Jeffery (00:14:01):
Yeah, very much. Yes. So Trio axoLot. It's a chamber ensemble I've been playing in since 2012, I think two very dear friends of mine. And we're a recorder trio, but we play early music, contemporary music, theater, improvisation. We've done many different things over the years, and it's just like this wonderful Petri dish of being able to experiment with anything we want to.
Leah Roseman (00:14:30):
Virgo splendens is a 14th century canon. And Sarah Jeffrey writes in the program notes "The canons are perhaps one of the earliest forms of minimalism." There are two versions of this on her album Constellations, and what you're about to hear is the trio version performed by Trio axoLot. This is a short excerpt, and the link to this album is in the description of this podcast. (music)
(00:16:14):
And I remember the first time I heard this album, I think I was out in my garden doing some weeding, and then this piece came on the Austro with the circular breathing with around the F, and it was just this super spacey wonderful thing. And it's the kind of thing I might not choose to listen to it, but then I was completely immersed. And it's really just you get into this moment, it's very meditative.
Sarah Jeffery (00:16:36):
It is. I love this piece. It's one of a handful of pieces that can really only be for the recorder. So sometimes when we're thinking about virtuosity and contemporary music, it's when you can take a flute piece and play it on recorder or a violin piece. And sometimes great colleagues of mine have done that. Like, hey, look, Fernyhough on recorder or Boulez, that this piece Austro by Giorgio Tedde, it was written for only our instrument. You play the lowest note, so you're closing all the holes, and with these tiny finger movements and changes of breath pressure, you hit all of these different harmonics, really constellations. That's where the name of the album came from, and your circular breathing at the same time. So it can last as long as you want. It's full of repeats. And as the performer, you also become completely immersed in the sound.
Leah Roseman (00:17:42):
You're about to hear a short excerpt from Austro by Giorgio Tedde on Sarah Jeffrey's album Constellations, and you'll find that link in the description of this podcast. (music)
(00:17:51):
Did you know other works by that composer?
Sarah Jeffery (00:19:07):
A few. Yeah. He's written some other solo recorder works. There's also another piece, I think it's called Contra or Contra, it's similar idea, but for contrabass recorder. But that's a lot more challenging to circular breathe on a contrabass.
Leah Roseman (00:19:28):
Well, that brings me actually to the whole thing about recorder consorts and the family of recorders. Not everyone listening will know about that. Do you want to speak to that briefly?
Sarah Jeffery (00:19:39):
Sure. So the recorder is in fact a family. You have instruments from the 15 centimeter garklein to the sub sub contra bass, great bass in B flat, which is three meters tall. As a recorder player, you are expected to be able to play on all of these sizes, and we play in different sizes in different models. Medieval renaissance, Baroque, modern, in different tunings and temperaments. So modern pitch, low Baroque pitch, high Renaissance pitch. It just means we have a very long shopping list.
Leah Roseman (00:20:17):
Do you have friends, colleagues in the recorded world who have perfect pitch? Because I would think that would be so difficult for them.
Sarah Jeffery (00:20:25):
I'm not sure. That would be very difficult. Yeah, I play with a harpist, a fantastic harpist, and Andrea Voets, she has perfect pitch. And yeah, she said if she had to play in 415 or 392, it would be a nightmare. So yeah, luckily I don't,
Leah Roseman (00:20:46):
So that actually brings me, I was really interested to learn that you had synesthesia. One of my daughters has it. She's an artist and designer, actually based in the Netherlands as well. And one of my recent podcast guests, I have done this interview, but as we speak, I haven't put it out there, but it'll be released before yours is with the conductor, Jessica Cottis. So we spoke about her synesthesia in that episode because it's so interesting to me that people see color and that shapes. And then I'd asked her about the time aspect, the time space which you have, because I knew my daughter had that, but Jessica hadn't heard about that. But I guess there's all these different variations of perception,
Sarah Jeffery (00:21:29):
Right? Yeah. I mean, to me it's very normal. It is as natural as saying, think of an apple, and then you can see an apple. But I realize it does inform my music making a lot. I perform a lot from memory, and when I memorize a piece, I actually construct an internal score in my brain, but according to synesthesia. And then it's just useful for remembering things because everything has a color. I'll remember the colors and I'll be able to see dates, times, names, associations. It's only problematic when I remember something wrong or it turns out there's been a mistake because then I have to repaint my memory. Yeah, it is just present. I don't know what it's like to not have that. Yeah.
Leah Roseman (00:22:30):
And you do a lot of improvising. I'm curious, as you're improvising Sarah, there's an certain anticipation of what you're about to play and do the colors also anticipate a little bit what you're seeing?
Sarah Jeffery (00:22:44):
My synesthesia is quite baked into the associations of letters, let's say. I believe it's called color graphene synesthesia. I think through music education, I know that this fingering is a B flat, for example. So if I'm playing this, everything is blue, but then if I take a different recorder, I'm playing that same fingering and everything is yellow because I know that that's an e-flat. So it is more that sometimes it gets in the way if I'm playing and I'm existing in one color and then I remember I'm actually on a different instrument, I won't be able to see my way. It's like being lost in the dark. And yeah, that's a good question. I haven't really thought about it, but I hope my answer kind of makes sense.
Leah Roseman (00:23:39):
Yeah, and I think people won't realize about the transposing instruments and how you do have to have these different patterns. I don't know how you manage.
Sarah Jeffery (00:23:49):
Yeah, I always say it's like having different languages. In the beginning when you learn a new language, you're constantly translating, and eventually you can just speak it fluently. I mean, for recorder players, we have to play as professionals. I have four different keys, like finger systems we play in C, F, G, and D, then treble and bass clef. So it just gets easier as you go along. And then if I'm picking up, I have a new recorder in B flat over here, so this is a tuning that I've never, yeah, it's great. I've not played in that tuning before, but you can think, oh, imagine that I'm playing on a soprano in bass clef, and then I add three flats and I'm there. So you find all these shortcuts.
Leah Roseman (00:24:41):
So in terms of the different sizes of recorders, you have a beautiful video I was hoping we could include of Bach the Sarabande from the, which suite is it on basesrecorder with Michala Petri's ornaments?
Sarah Jeffery (00:24:55):
Yes. The first suite, the G Major. Yes. That piece honestly got me through the Covid lockdowns, Michala Petri, phenomenal recorder legend, publishes music, and she's been arranging one by one the Bach cello suites for recorder with her own ornaments. And at the time, the first suite was available. I downloaded it, the sheet music, and have played it nearly every day ever since. It's just been like a balm for my soul. I've been experimenting a lot with which instruments to use for different movements. And the Sarabande, it just sounds beautiful on the bass recorder.
Leah Roseman (00:25:39):
I love it. It's so beautiful. Thank you for that. This is Sarah Jeffery's performance of the Sarabande from J.S. Bach's, Cello suite in G on bass recorder with ornamentation by Michala Petri. This performance was recorded at Splendor Amsterdam in the summer of 2021, and the video on the Team Recorder, YouTube is in the description of this podcast. (music)
(00:29:32):
You mentioned you were seven months pregnant when you recorded Constellations.
Sarah Jeffery (00:29:35):
Yes.
Leah Roseman (00:29:37):
I do speak to a few parents on this series, and I have a couple kids who are now grown up. And what I find interesting as musicians, professional musicians is how to navigate arts education for our kids.
Sarah Jeffery (00:29:49):
Right? Yeah.
Leah Roseman (00:29:52):
Well, is it something that you discuss with your partner? Do we push, do we expose them to a broad range of things? You know what I mean?
Sarah Jeffery (00:30:01):
That is such a good question and that's exciting to talk about. So aside from being a parent, I think that arts, education, music education is one of the most essential things in society. I firmly believe that if we had really excellent music education throughout school, if it was well-funded and well supported society would be much better as a result. It promotes listening, communication, teamwork, empathy, creativity, motivation, problem solving. And I think in terms of education, it's a tragedy how much music and the arts has been cut. I'm speaking from the Netherlands, from England, I think in the US as well. So as a parent, I think instilling the joy of music in my child is one of the most important things that I can give her. I really, really hope my daughter grows up loving music, but that will be on her own terms. And I see that if she ends up wanting to go into music, I will have the knowledge to help guide her, but I'm not going to put any pressure, if that makes sense.
(00:31:24):
So at home, our home life is infused with music. We are always listening to music. We have a house full of instruments. We play together all the time. We take her to see concerts. Her life is full of music, and we want music to feel like home. We want it to be full of joy. We want it to always be there if she needs it, but not a source of pressure or panic or stress. It's also for my students. If my child or my friends or my students end up being fantastic touring concert musicians, wonderful. If they say, you know what? I just love playing, and that's enough for me. Fantastic. Yeah.
Leah Roseman (00:32:11):
Hi. Just a short break from the episode, which I hope you're enjoying so far. I wanted to let you know that I have a new way you can support this independent podcast through a beautiful collection of merch with a very cool, unique, and expressive design from artists Steffi Kelly. You'll find that link in the description of the episode. If you want to check out over a hundred episodes you may have missed in addition to your podcast player or YouTube, I have an extensive website, leah roseman.com with show notes, transcripts, the complete catalog of episodes, and you can sign up there for my weekly newsletter to get access to sneak peaks of upcoming guests. Please do share your favorite episodes with your friends, follow me on social media and share my posts. And if you can spare a few dollars to help support the series, that would be amazing. You'll find that link in the show notes along with the merch store. I'm an independent podcaster and I really do need the help of my listeners. Now, back to the episode.
(00:33:01):
So through Team Recorder, you must have made some very interesting connections also with the amateur communities.
Sarah Jeffery (00:33:08):
Yes, yes, definitely. So I've been lucky to come into contact with this incredible global community of recorder players. I had no idea existed, and I think a lot of people didn't know that. None of us had any idea. There were other recorder players out there. So in one of my early videos, I made a joke to the camera like, oh, I've got 400 subscribers now. Well, I guess it's all of us. And in the meantime, there's recorder players everywhere. And this is also down to the incredible teachers in all of these locations. Everywhere where there's a great recorder community, it will be because of a local teacher who is pouring their heart and soul into making that happen. So I think the internet has just allowed us to come into contact with one another.
Leah Roseman (00:34:07):
There's a wonderful video you put out where you were calling to task these broadcasters for making fun of recorder education they got and not appreciating it.
Sarah Jeffery (00:34:19):
Absolutely. I mean, I just call it lazy journalism, and I understand you as a human being. You can't know everything about everything, but the recorder becomes the butt of a joke. I think that's just such a shame. I also used to joke that if a journalist interviews me and doesn't say, oh, well, the recorder we know from primary school, then I would pay them a million pounds. Luckily, journalism has come on a little bit since then. So I've been asked some more sensible questions. I think the reason it bothers me when journalists and the media makes fun of recorder isn't for the recorder itself. I don't mind a joke. I don't mind people lightheartedly taking the piss of it. It's because arts and culture and music education has been eviscerated. We are in an educational culture where music is not valued, it's not funded. We are not given the resources or the training or the funding or the expertise that it needs. So within that climate, to then put it down feels really terrible. If we were lucky enough to be in a climate where we had all of the support from the government to the local level for music, I would be much more able to take a joke.
Leah Roseman (00:35:55):
And a lot of people never hear professional recorder playing. They don't know. They only hear beginners. So that's their association.
Sarah Jeffery (00:36:01):
Yeah, exactly. And that is why I started Team Recorder. I thought, why do people think the recorder is a beginner's instrument? Because we never hear it. In 2015, I was looking on YouTube, I was looking on the internet for information about the recorder, even just performance videos. And back then there was nothing. And I thought, well, of course people underestimate the recorder. There's no information about it. And how did I get all the information? I know I went to Conservatoire for nine years. I came up in a time where it was very affordable to study. I could move to a country in order to do that. I could move from the UK to the Netherlands. That is not accessible for most people. So in order to change people's minds about that instrument, that information has to be made available. And I think it's accessibility of information I think is so important.
Leah Roseman (00:37:08):
And it is really the best thing about the internet.
Sarah Jeffery (00:37:11):
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Information and community.
Leah Roseman (00:37:17):
Now, in terms of your mentors, Annabel Knight was one of your,
Sarah Jeffery (00:37:22):
That's right, yes. So I studied my bachelor's at the Royal Birmingham, the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire in the UK. Annabel Knight and Ross Winters were my teachers there. Ross Winters has sadly passed away recently. Annabel is incredibly active in the uk, especially for young players and up to Conservatoire level, she is doing really, really fantastic work.
Leah Roseman (00:37:49):
So when you entered, you hadn't had a private recorder lesson?
Sarah Jeffery (00:37:54):
Not really, no. So I started recorder when I was six. My mom is an amateur recorder player. She started a group at my primary school, but I did not like having my mom teach me, so I told her to go away, sorry, mom. And I just taught myself from a book. Then from the age of eight, my local music center, Derby music center had a Saturday morning music school and they had a recorder club. So I went to that every Saturday throughout my childhood. So that was how I learned in an ensemble. So by the time I'd gone through that, it meant that I had some skills. My sight reading was very good. My rhythm was very good. I had no technique, no articulation, no breathing skills. I'd never really played on my own before and throughout childhood, I did have lessons on piano and flute.
(00:39:04):
So that was how I got my music education. But there was never any view to doing it professionally. It was just for fun. And when I was 17, I was planning to go to university, study medicine and become a doctor, very sensible. And in my last couple of years at high school, I got a wonderful, wonderful music teacher, school music teacher. I was saying A level music. Ms. Jackson we're still in contact now if she's listening. And she encouraged me. She was wonderful. I mean, I cannot praise high school music teachers enough. So Ms. Jackson gave me all the encouragement. We also had a second music teacher, Mrs. Morse, who is a recorder enthusiast. She kept bringing me music, and the two of them kind of picked me up and guided me through my grade eight, which is the exam you need to kind of audition for music college. So with their encouragement, I thought, alright, I've no idea what I'm doing, but maybe I can do this. And I auditioned and they let me in.
Leah Roseman (00:40:21):
You auditioned on recorder or piano?
Sarah Jeffery (00:40:23):
Recorder. Oh yeah. So I love piano. There's not a chance in a billion that I would be able to study piano. It's just not where my heart is. I mean, I really like playing at home. I would not want to be a concert pianist, absolutely not. Recorder, it's captivated me. There's nothing else I want to do. And still, after all this time, I still have the same love and passion for it.
Leah Roseman (00:40:59):
That's wonderful to hear. And another one of your mentors was Jorge.
Sarah Jeffery (00:41:02):
Jorge Isaac, yeah. Okay.
Leah Roseman (00:41:03):
Jorge Isaac. Yes. So in the Netherlands.
Sarah Jeffery (00:41:08):
That's right. So after I graduated from Birmingham, I thought, oh, well, I moved to the Amsterdam and do a year of study. 17 years later, I'm still here. But my teacher at the Conservatorium of Amsterdam was Jorge Za. He is a real specialist in contemporary music. And he was very inspiring for me in terms of not only contemporary music, but music, theater, improvisation, electronics, just kind of really daring to experiment.
Leah Roseman (00:41:44):
And your Dutch is pretty good. You actually do some translation.
Sarah Jeffery (00:41:48):
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I speak fluent Dutch. I love languages. And I started learning from the second I got there. So I always try to just learn it.
Leah Roseman (00:42:02):
That's good to hear. I mean, many expats have told me they found it hard because Dutch people tend to speak English back or it was hard to practice their Dutch.
Sarah Jeffery (00:42:11):
Yeah, I mean, with Dutch the first years, you definitely know that everyone's English is better than your Dutch. I did lots of babysitting. I worked with kids. I taught teenagers for many years. I mean, nothing improves your Dutch, like a class of 13 year olds looking at you when you've made a grammatical mistake. And they're like, why did you say that? And they're not afraid to correct you. Yeah.
Leah Roseman (00:42:41):
Well that's good. And do you also know German or some other European languages?
Sarah Jeffery (00:42:47):
I can fake German. So we had French and German in school to a very basic level. When I'm in German, I can chat with people after a concert because I know all the musical words and I've studied a little bit of Portuguese. No, I mean Dutch is the only language that I really speak.
Leah Roseman (00:43:17):
I love languages and I like to talk to people about learning them and strategies. So I guess you were immersed and you went for it basically.
Sarah Jeffery (00:43:25):
Yeah, I managed to stay ahead of the curve. So I started with an intense language program. So I started practicing right away and people would say, oh, you've only been here a week. You sound great. And I tried. I managed to just stay ahead of that wave. So wherever I was, they said, oh, you've been here two months, you sound great. And I did get a job in a cafe and I just told them I spoke Dutch. I didn't. Just had to learn.
Leah Roseman (00:43:58):
Well, that kind of bravery certainly comes across in your creativity. I was interested in your free improvisation, and you teach as well. I think it's at SoundLAB in Amsterdam.
Sarah Jeffery (00:44:09):
That's right. Yeah. So I taught at the SoundLAB in the Muziekgebouw Muziekgebouw aan ’t in Amsterdam. I taught there from 2011 to 22. And there is a kind of laboratory of about 60 instruments, most of which only exist there. They were developed with local artists. And the idea is that we take a group, either a school class, it can be for any age, really adults as well. And we have a 90 minute workshop on composition improvisation and conducting, except we don't use those big scary words. We guide through all kinds of group activities and in the end, we've created our own composition that can be performed, that can be practiced. That's really, really something solid that we've all made together. And you can do this with no prior experience at all. And it's just wonderful. I mean, it's so much fun to do and it taught me so much as a musician as well.
Leah Roseman (00:45:20):
Did you find with groups of adults that this sense of play was kind of new for them?
Sarah Jeffery (00:45:25):
Yes, absolutely. We did a lot of, for example, team building workshops for companies. Adults find it a lot more difficult to get into than kids, but every target group has their own special thing. Basically. We did do some workshops with conservatoire students, for example. These are students on the verge of being professional musicians. They found it extremely difficult to let go and not overthink and plan everything. My favorite age group to work with is group five in the Netherlands, like nine year olds. I guess that's like third grade because they just have all of this imagination and fantasy and no, and they would come out with incredible compositions.
Leah Roseman (00:46:23):
What are some of the favorite instruments you got to play as part of that SoundLAB?
Sarah Jeffery (00:46:28):
There's an instrument called the Toonpad that means tone pad, and it was developed for people with limb differences. So you can play it if you don't have hands, for example, or if you don't have full mobility. And it's like an upturned wooden bowl and it has warmth, heat sensors. So wherever you touch it, it makes different chords. And you can use your forearm, you can use your chin, and it comes out with these beautiful chords and it lights up at the same time.
Leah Roseman (00:47:06):
Beautiful. Any other memorable instruments there?
Sarah Jeffery (00:47:11):
Yes. There's also a sequencer synthesizer called the Dato named after. Its two makers called Daniel and Tone, and it is just a really user-friendly sequencer. So you push different buttons, it goes, and you can play with all these parameters, but the interface, how it looks, it's really very simple. So we can have kids using it. It's very addictive to play with.
Leah Roseman (00:47:42):
So in your trio axoLot and also Jerboah, you do a certain amount of free improvisation.
Sarah Jeffery (00:47:50):
Yeah!
Leah Roseman (00:47:51):
There was one, I think it was with Jerboah, where it was based on the Alexander technique.
Sarah Jeffery (00:47:55):
So Jerboah is the kind of Prog jazz rock quartet I play in. We all write our own songs. Our drummer, Marcos Baggiani does a lot of Alexander technique. And his teacher was always saying to him, allow your neck to be free. Allow your neck to be free. So we have one song where those are the lyrics and we're all singing it together, and we take every opportunity really to improvise together. That song has a long intro with me and Marcos playing together, but we're happy to put in some improvisation to any song.
Leah Roseman (00:48:33):
It's quite a unique band.
Sarah Jeffery (00:48:36):
It is funny. We hear that all the time, wherever we play, people love it. But they say it's so unique. I've not heard anything before. And we are all, we will take the compliment that slightly flummox because we just put together the music that makes sense to us. So we are four musicians. We come from different backgrounds, we come from different countries and we've put together our favorite music, and this is the result for us. It's the most self-explanatory thing in the world. It's always really interesting to hear people's reactions.
Leah Roseman (00:49:13):
For this podcast. Sarah has shared a track from Jerboah's upcoming album that will be released very soon. This is called Walking, and it is written by Marcos Baggiani, who is the drummer of Jerboah. And she wrote to me, "it starts quiet, but really builds up towards the end. "Enjoy (music)
(00:55:05):
I had asked about the Alexander technique. I was curious if you'd studied it because, you might have.
Sarah Jeffery (00:55:10):
Yeah, I haven't myself, but yeah,
Leah Roseman (00:55:12):
Your neck's already free!
Sarah Jeffery (00:55:13):
Marcos has. Yeah. Yeah.
Leah Roseman (00:55:17):
So Sarah, you've done quite a bit of music theater for children, for young children. Do you want to speak to some of those projects?
Sarah Jeffery (00:55:26):
Yes. With my theater company Theater, flupp! , we make music theater for very young children, age two to four. The great thing about that age group is one, they're very, very open and curious, and the other is that the target audience refreshes itself every two years. So that's very handy. But with music and with dance, we made this beautiful show called Uit logeren. That means the sleepover about the first time you sleep away from home. Another example of a very nice piece I worked on that was with my trio axaLot was with(Dutch) in the Netherlands, the Theater of the South. And it was called HOE DE GROTE MENSEN WEGGINGEN EN WAT ER DAARNA GEBEURDE which means When the Grownups Left Us. And what happened after that, it was a show two hours long without a break for children aged eight. And the premise was, it was a story about a village where all the grownups suddenly stopped loving their children and they leave.
(00:56:38):
All of the music that we played live was by Obrecht, this medieval composer. So all of these elements sound bizarre. Halfway through the show, all of the actors leave and we are just left alone on the stage. And the children in the audience each have a little bag with headphones in and they start buzzing and 10 of the children from the audience put the headphones on and they come on stage and they're guided by the actors who are backstage. And for the rest of the show, the children from the audience play the rest of the performance.
Leah Roseman (00:57:19):
Wow!
Sarah Jeffery (00:57:20):
It was incredible. So every show, we'd have 10 new kids who had no idea they were going to be on stage performing in big theaters. And I can tell you it worked. The director is Jetse Batelaan, he has this incredible mind, and it was funny. It was beautiful. It was affecting, it was very, very special. And to be a part of something like that, it was an experience. I'll never forget,
Leah Roseman (00:57:56):
It gives me goose pimples thinking about it, but I have to ask that the adults don't come back at the end of the plot.
Sarah Jeffery (00:58:03):
They do so spoiler at the very, very end. So the kids on stage, it takes a long time. They come up, they put on the costumes, they do all different things together. At one point they find these bags of chips, so they all have a snack. Then they're allowed to completely ruin the stage. They run around with a fire extinguisher. The climax is that this giant wooden house on the stage falls apart. And at the very end of the show, the parents do come back and they're all dirty and decrepit and holding their arms out for the children. And the children just look at them and silently leave the stage and they gain their independence. So yeah, they do come back in the end.
Leah Roseman (00:58:56):
So how do the children in the audience react when just a few of them have this opportunity to go on stage?
Sarah Jeffery (00:59:04):
It's given a lot of time. So the whole transition from the actors leaving the stage to the first child standing up and entering the stage is about 15 minutes. And when you're sitting in a silent theater, that's a long time, but it's all done with lighting. We had this incredible synography from tone mosque and lighting. So we gradually get the dawn. And the most important thing is the whole making process of this theater production took months with experts. So we have the actors, we have the director, we had a whole team of pedagogical experts, and we had test audiences from local schools to try out what worked and what didn't. So the kids have these headphones and they have very clear instructions and there's lots of safety nets. So quite often we'd have a kid that didn't want to do it, and that's fine. And then they're taken this way and they are brought back to their seat. So it is this experimental children's theater in the Netherlands is really special. They really dare to go places you wouldn't expect working.
Leah Roseman (01:00:19):
Being a British person. Do you find the cultures very different that way in general?
Sarah Jeffery (01:00:25):
I do in the Netherlands. So in the UK we have a huge amount of rules, regulations, red tape. A lot of it is there to keep us safe and to keep things working. A lot of it just doesn't exist in the Netherlands, so there's a bit more freedom to work. I think here in the Netherlands it's a lot more relaxed. I mean, I would go and see with my students or with the kids I babysit for, go and see movies, kids, movies that have been banned in the US because they depicted someone smoking or they depicted a kid riding their bike without a helmet. And in the Netherlands, people are just like, what? Come on. It's fine. Certain things are much more relaxed here,
Leah Roseman (01:01:17):
And the arts funding is different. Do you find,
Sarah Jeffery (01:01:19):
So the arts funding in the Netherlands has historically been much, much better. That was one of the things that attracted me to moving here was the fantastic arts culture. Over the past decade, it has been completely decimated. We have had a government who have been openly hostile towards the arts and funding. We've had ministers saying things like, why do we need the theater? You can just watch a DVD. They've stamped the arts as a leftist hobby. We've now had an ultra right wing government voted in who unanimously agree that they want to just cut the arts. So it is looking very bleak at the moment. And the Netherlands has this wonderful music culture. They have incredible musicians, incredible concert halls, but that is all going to wither away if we don't have support both for professionals and for education. So it's very, very, very sad.
Leah Roseman (01:02:23):
And you teach in London still?
Sarah Jeffery (01:02:27):
I do. So I am a professor of recorder at the Royal College of Music. I was appointed in 2022. So yes, I teach there. It's wonderful. It's my dream job, so I'm very, very happy to be there.
Leah Roseman (01:02:42):
And aren't you the contemporary music specialist for recorder there?
Sarah Jeffery (01:02:46):
Yes. So the recorder department has three professors. We're each a specialist, one for Baroque, one for Renaissance, and myself for Contemporary. We all take chamber music. That's one very nice thing in the college actually, any professor can give chamber music coaching to any ensemble. So I can teach non-recorded players too. This past year I've been working with the composition departments to create new works for a recorder, and we've been working with the museum from the historical performance faculty, reconstructing original instruments.
Leah Roseman (01:03:26):
Yes, I saw your video about the 3D printed.
Sarah Jeffery (01:03:29):
Yeah, it's fantastic. It means that our students can really touch history and get to grips with it. So yeah.
Leah Roseman (01:03:38):
Do you want to speak to that project a little bit?
Sarah Jeffery (01:03:41):
Yes. So at the Royal College of Music, there's currently a research project in collaboration with the University of Turin at the Royal College. They have original 18th century instruments in their museum, including three original ivory recorders, sorry, two ivory, one wooden. They have a Corno Shala, mos, I believe traverse maybe. But these instruments have been scanned at the Natural History Museum so that we can really get their measurements, we can see exactly what condition they're in, and they're in the process of being 3D printed to a very, very detailed degree. So this is different from your 3D printing at home. It's really within a university lab setting. And there's lots of research experimentation going into the materials, the density. And one very exciting thing is the original instruments are quite damaged due to the passage of time. There are cracks, there is warping just because these instruments are hundreds of years old. So the 3D printed versions, we can print exact replicas and digitally repaired replicas. That means our students can experience firsthand. What does it mean if your instrument's warped, okay, there's a crack here. What does it do to the sound? That means they can really understand the instruments so much better.
Leah Roseman (01:05:24):
And how does your commute work then? Living in Amsterdam,
Sarah Jeffery (01:05:28):
I can go once a month. A lot of Conservatoires, they say we expect our professors to have an international character. That means we come from all over. I visit once a month and do my lessons in a block. And because they have their other two professors, they can also do the same. So the students can enjoy regular lessons and we can work a little bit in that way.
Leah Roseman (01:05:57):
That's really great. And you've also done some studio work, I believe you recorded for Bob's Burgers, which is such a fun show.
Sarah Jeffery (01:06:05):
Yes. Oh, that was great. That was a very happy day. I got that email. Yeah, I've been very lucky to get in contact with some great people due to being on the internet. I recorded on the soundtrack of Bob's Burgers last year, they had a wonderful episode called Amelia that featured one of the kids playing a bass recorder and they wanted real bass recorder on the soundtrack. The team are wonderful. When I did the recording, it was with the entire team there, the composer, the crew, the director, and we spent a lot of time experimenting using different instruments, creating layers of sound. So that was wonderful to see how they not only have an idea for their show, but they really support it with their music as well.
Leah Roseman (01:06:58):
Yeah. It might be interesting to talk about your teaching. You're teaching at a very high level at the Royal Academy in terms of teaching your students to take expressive risks.
Sarah Jeffery (01:07:11):
I always tell my students that mistakes are useful data. So I don't want them necessarily to come to their lessons and have everything CD perfect, but they're terrified. I would rather dig into the music and really find our own way of playing it. And if you have to take a risk and make a mistake, great, that has to happen. I also teach technique and technique, instrumental technique is something I'm very, very interested in, very passionate about. And I feel that when I was learning the recorder, there was a view of technique as being very robotic, or if you play in a technical way, that's a bad thing. I just find that it's an artist's toolbox. So I try to give my students this wonderful I artist's toolbox. They can do absolutely anything with, they understand everything about their instrument, exactly what makes it work. This finger movement, this tongue movement, this way of has this effect so that they can create any sound they want to. And then it's about getting into the music, understanding the history and the context, understanding where you are performing, what you want to communicate, and then you have all of this knowledge and technique and passion that you can put into a package. And yeah, I think I've just described being a musician basically, but none of that comes without expectation of falling over and picking yourself up again.
Leah Roseman (01:08:56):
And for your channel, are people always throwing requests at you or is it generated mostly from your own, what you want to bring out?
Sarah Jeffery (01:09:05):
A bit of both. I definitely get a lot of requests. In the beginning I was leaning heavily into record a technique. Again, that's what I like talking about. I had a lot of ideas with that. Now I'm nearly 400 videos in. Sometimes I say to the audience like, okay, what do you want to hear? And someone might just have this spark of an idea that I say, okay, great, I'll film that tomorrow. With centuries of musical history, with all the different pieces in our repertoire instruments, there's almost an infinite number of videos that I can make. So the ideas don't run out.
Leah Roseman (01:09:46):
In terms of the Renaissance repertoire is a lot of it hasn't been recorded, I'm guessing.
Sarah Jeffery (01:09:54):
Well, that's the thing. There's not original Renaissance recorder repertoire doesn't really exist because we tend to adapt music from other instruments, vocal music, even keyboard music, vial music. So it's more of a case that maybe it hasn't been adapted yet.
Leah Roseman (01:10:18):
But the recorder, excuse my ignorance. So I thought people were playing the recorder in medieval and Renaissance times, but you're saying there wasn't that much written for it to, the Baroque
Sarah Jeffery (01:10:28):
Music publication worked in a different way. So when the first music was being published, we see a lot of, for example, sonatas or Canons published for record or flute or oboe or violin or cornetto. It wouldn't always be specifically for one instrument. They've also got to make a living from their printing press. And we know that recorder like instruments have existed for 40,000 years. We have bone flutes existing from 38,000 years ago, but not all of the music would have been written down. It wouldn't necessarily have survived. So it's much more of a recent thing that it says Sino recorder in G at 415. The instrumentation of a piece was much broader.
Leah Roseman (01:11:24):
Okay. No, I think I interviewed Elizabeth Pallett, who's a British lutenist, and she's really a Renaissance specialist, and she was saying there's of course, all this tablature that just no one, people are just discovering it and it hasn't been recorded. So she wants to get the music out there, but it's I guess different.
Sarah Jeffery (01:11:41):
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. No, no, that makes a lot of sense.
Leah Roseman (01:11:46):
Yeah. So where do you see Team Recorder going in the future?
Sarah Jeffery (01:11:53):
That's a good question. I would love to, in any case, preserve all of the information on there as a database, as an archive. Now I have these hundreds of videos on YouTube. I would love to have them in a format that's more searchable, more accessible, because I want this information to stay available. Something else that I did during the lockdowns was offer online courses, and they were incredibly successful, so much fun to give. I had a lot of very happy students, but that was also a full-time job. That was great during Corona because then I could keep working. But something I'm currently working on is creating downloadable courses that people can follow. So a kind of bridging the gap between watching a YouTube video and going for a weekly lesson. Something that can fall there in the middle. Yeah. One thing I have to be mindful of is we don't know where technology will go.
(01:12:59):
We don't know where social media will go. I think it's already amazing that I've been on YouTube for eight and a half years and the platform still exists. So you always have to stay flexible, preserving the information as an archive and courses. And the final thing that I am working very much on is publishing sheet music. So I have three books out now with Schott Publishing. I have them all here. So you can see this is my first book. It was released last year. We have three books out. I'm working on the fourth as we speak. I'm also writing the Recorder Method for Hal Leonard. So that will be, that's currently the manuscript is in, we're editing it. So hopefully a lot more sheet music publications will be coming out in the future.
Leah Roseman (01:13:51):
That's exciting. I didn't know about the Hal Leonard project. That must have been so much work.
Sarah Jeffery (01:13:56):
Yeah, I think I submitted 138 pieces. Yeah, composed a lot of new music. Yeah, it's great. Yeah, it's still very much in progress. It's been a wonderful organization to work with.
Leah Roseman (01:14:15):
Okay. Well thank you so much for speaking with me today. It was a great opportunity, Sarah.
Sarah Jeffery (01:14:22):
You're very welcome. Thank you so much for having me.
Leah Roseman (01:14:26):
I hope you enjoyed this episode. Pleased to share this with your friends and check out episodes you may have missed leahroseman.com. If you could buy me a coffee to support the series, that would be wonderful. You'll find that link in the show notes along with the merch store. I'm an independent podcaster and I really do need the help of my listeners. Have a wonderful week.
