JAMES STRECKER: Please tell us about one or more projects that you have been working on or have recently completed. Why exactly do they matter to you and why should they matter to us?
ELINOR FREY: I’m working on two projects right now for which the final product is a CD and a publication of sheet music. Both projects involve Baroque Italian cello music, a genre that I keep coming back to and that I really enjoy playing and working on. The first is the complete works of Antonio Vandini, a wonderful cellist who lived and worked in Padua and who is famous for being the best friend of Tartini. His music is very rich, virtuosic, and heartfelt.
The second project involves the cello sonatas of Giuseppe Dall’Abaco. One of the things that attracts me to the project is that not only do I like the music, but I find it very effective with the audience. Therefore, when I practice his sonatas, I’m already imagining people listening and how they will react. It has the kind of spectrum of musical qualities that I’m really attracted to: intensity and clarity, charm and depth, sincerity and levity, virtuosity and ease with the instrument.
JS: How did doing these projects change you as a person and as a creator?
EF: The Vandini project had a major impact on my musical life. Vandini is always pictured playing the cello with an underhand bow grip and so I learned how to play this way using Vandini’s music as my focus. As I began to feel more comfortable with that, I decided to really dive in and so I learned how to play a new instrument, the viola da gamba. I practiced really consistently and now the gamba is something I’m using in concert! It’s a total joy… what a fantastic sound, history, and repertoire! Following that, and still using a type of underhand grip, I am now learning to play a 16th-century instrument called “viola d’arco.” Another new adventure! Having these instruments opens up my sound world and also helps me go into earlier repertoire, a style and approach to phrasing that is always very wonderful and helpful for my playing of later music.
JS: What might others not understand or appreciate about the work you produce or do?
EF: I think others might not know that many steps are involved in putting on a concert of lesser-known music. It’s not that the music appeared in my hands, I practiced it once or twice with colleagues, and then “poof” a concert happened. Sometimes the process is very slow and even confusing and could take years of teasing out to arrive at something I’m ready to share with the public.
JS: What are the most important parts of yourself that you put into your work?
EF: My love of music and instruments, my love of laughter and laughing with others, my passion which gets channeled into intense concentration, my ability to generate ideas, and my joy in productivity!
JS: What are your biggest challenges as a creative person?
EF: To not overload myself and my body with too much activity and pressure. To keep positive and stay willing to continue to be a musician, even when there are no guarantees. To have a balance between gratitude, ambition to grow, and self-confidence. To build my work and my community, all the while being careful to not get stuck if I feel rejected or unhappy.
JS: Imagine that you are meeting two or three people, living or dead, whom you admire because of their work in your form of artistic expression. What would you say to them and what would they say to you?
EF: I would say, “Thank you for the inspiration and for giving me ways to hear music differently. Thank you for all you did for so many years, what you do is valuable.”
They would say, “I’m glad my work touched you. Keep going, Elinor!”
JS: Please describe at least one major turning point in your life that helped to make you who you are as a creative artist.
EF: While on a Fulbright Fellowship in Italy, I started trying to understand where the cello began who first wrote music for it. So that led me to have a coffee and chat with Marc Vanscheeuwijck, a wonderful musicologist and cellist, where he told me all sorts of books and articles and things to look up. I followed his advice and read the materials and tried out new ideas on my cello… and these first actions started me on a very long journey to better know my instrument, a life-long one that is ever-changing!
JS: What are the hardest things for an outsider to understand about your life as a person in the arts?
EF: How much time and effort and money it takes. Sometimes I just feel so burnt out… but then music is pure energy… it flows back.
JS: Please tell us what you haven’t attempted as yet that you would like to do in the arts? Why the delay so far?
EF: I would like to try to conduct chamber orchestra pieces from the cello. I have done it for cello concertos, but not other repertoire. In Baroque music, I think people usually give leadership roles to the violin or the harpsichord (meaning the leader is playing at the same time), but not as often the cello. I have fallen into the trap of perpetuating these stereotypes and haven’t pursued leading from the cello because I probably feared it wouldn’t be well-received.
JS: If you could re-live your life in the arts, how would you change it and why?
EF: I would have spent more time developing my musical heart and my individual voice rather than comparing myself to others. I would have started researching and focusing on historical performance practice sooner.
JS: Let’s talk about the state of the arts in today’s society, including the forms in which you work. What specifically gives you hope and what specifically do you find depressing?
EF: The audiences who love music give me hope. They are kind and generous with their time and money and they make it possible for us to continue. I prefer an arts funding model that incorporates government support of culture in which funding decisions come from peer-reviewed choices. The philanthropic model is very flawed and I find it depressing when I see Canada move in that direction.
JS: Finally, what do you yourself find to be the most intriguing and/or surprising things about you?
EF: I’m constantly surprised and intrigued by new things. I’ve become a bit of an instrument junkie and I have 6 cello or gamba-like instruments, but I live in a quite small apartment (with no storage closet) with my boyfriend. It gets to feel a bit crowded.
Also, when I graduated high school, I didn’t go to college right away and I also had 2-3 years not in school between my post-graduate degrees. It took me a long time to find my own “profile” as a musician and to make decision about what I wanted to spend my time on.