Our twosome is composed of cellist F***y Marks, and actor / speech artist Julie Le Gal Since Julie recites and writes in English, we chose this as our language.
Our twosome is composed of cellist F***y Marks, and actor / speech artist Julie Le Gal using music/ tone and words/speech sounds to explore forms of expression as equal contributors. Julie Le Gal, a theater artist, creator and speech formation artist, had always wanted to find a way to experiment and perform with the speech work on its own, a difficult context to find. Working with music was a wa
y to research wholly in the world of speech and sound. Having worked in collective theatre creation, writing, editing, she has also always enjoyed writing poetry, and here is a chance to bring this into live performance. F***y Marks, mainly an orchestral performer and teaching artist, had always been interested in improvisation and multidisciplinary art. Working with painters and actors during Banff residencies inspired her to join crossover chamber music groups in Amsterdam, where she spent 12 years, performing regularly on the same stage as dancers and actors. When she started working with Julie, she was so thrilled to find new ways to satisfy her creative aspirations in her present hometown of Wakefield, Quebec. The duo started working together in Winter 2020. It all began with Julie reciting Shelly’s classic poem Arathusa and F***y composing and improvising music. We explored sounding together, responding to each other and worked technically with the volume issues. After sharing our short piece during a virtual concert last summer, we realized that this opened up new possibilities for collaboration. Our current aim is to explore forms of sound, their juxtaposition with words, see the effect different forms of improvisation have on weighing the focus on cello vs voice. The cello is said to be one of the instruments closest to that of the singing human voice. In Speech formation, we are working with the sounds as living events. We strive to fill language with full, pliable tone, to have and give an experience of the word that is profound in sound and meaning and gives a connection to deep human experience. Indeed our two “instruments” share the same parameters inherent to all art creation: sound, rhythm, gesture of word and/or breath, content and style. Furthermore, the rare juxtaposition of the voice and the cello seemed to be ideal for more experimentation and call for infinite variations, including collaborations with a wide range of artists in different disciplines.
