In the Tradition of
The
Principled Cellist

At the age of 16, a young and aspiring cellist / composer (and then saxophonist) attended a ‘No War for Oil’ protest against the very first ‘Gulf War’.  Both her grandfathers had fought in the second world war.  One grandfather, a Commando, had seen and experienced more than any young man ought to (as do many who live through war), and as a result his personal war legacy had unavoidable ‘mental’ consequences for his children, and his children’s children.

 Protesting had seemed important to the young and extremely shy musician, and as such, the required chants of ‘No War For Oil’ did not come easily.  It was against her conditioning to make bold public appearances and stand up for her beliefs, and yet a deep sense of what is right, just and fair, and a desire to make a difference had compelled her to attend this protest. She had not yet begun to understand her true nature or the ‘reality’ of the world she was born into, so traversing the chasm between that which she was led to believe and that which she knew to be true created great unease in her own mind.   Hope was found in a few books about musicians who had taken principled stands, defying authority and fear itself.  In admiration, her secret desire was to one day obtain this courage and boldly express her inner most convictions, thus continuing the honourable tradition of meaningful art into the 21^st Century.

 In particular, Kristin was deeply inspired by the lives of two of the greatest cellists, Pablo Casals and Mstislav Rostropovich. At the time, what impressed her most was the fearless dedication they had previously shown in taking a principled stand against the humanitarian violations they had seen unfolding in their respective homelands.  This courageous stand for Art Without Borders, Freedom of Speech, Peace and Democratic Values eventually led to voluntary exile for Casals, and involuntary exile for Rostropovich.

 In 1997, Kristin, aged 20, attended the World Cello Congress in St Petersburg, Russia, of which Mstislav Rostropovich was the honorary patron.  (Rostropovich had returned to Russia in 1990) Anticipating an opportunity to meet the great cellist, Kristin decided to present a gift in appreciation for the inspiration he had unknowingly passed onto her. Eventually an opportunity was found to personally present the gift to Mstislav.  The gift was a drawing that Kristin had created of the ‘grandfather’ of cellists, Pablo Casals, entitled ‘Song of the Birds’.  Rostropovich was very moved by the gift, and appreciated the sentiment greatly. 

 On her return to Australia, Kristin fell into a deep depression about her cello playing and aspirations.  Whilst in Russia, she had witnessed first hand the ‘rote like’ training of cellists from a very young age into technical masters of the instrument.  Her depression grew from the subsequent realisation that her own relatively late start on the cello in such a comfortable country like Australia essentially meant that all she could aspire to was an orchestral musician, or if she practiced especially hard, a chamber musician.  For Kristin, this was a very demotivating realisation that cut at the core of her ‘raison d’etre’.

 Despite this, she followed her passion for expression and began serious studies in composition. In 2002, at the young age of 55, her Father died of Leukemia. This devastating event proved to be the catalyst for what Kristin would eventually come to see as, the ‘extinction of her personality’. It was a pivotal moment, and life would never look the same again.  For sanity to emerge from the rubble, Kristin needed to find a different way of thinking, one that she had not yet been exposed to.  As so often happens, life provided and the ‘extinction of personality’ now serves in far more constructive ways. This extinction of personality is the upside down building of understanding, the reverse of that which we are often led to believe.  It is challenging and sometimes very frightening, but it always offers the greatest reward. 

 ‘The Knife that Cuts a Tear’, marks the true beginning of a deeper understanding of life and the desire to make a difference. It represents Kristin’s earlier aspiration to join the important tradition of Artists and Cellists making a principled stand.  Such a stand is now being realised via her combined abilities as a cellist and composer and a determination to ‘be the change that she want’s to see in the world’.

 “The progress of an Artist is the continual extinction of personality’. T.S Elliot 

 

 

“Being the Change”

 Gandhi once said, "Be the change that you want to see in the world."

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“Dare to Dream”