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An interview with Phillippa Lusty By Chantelle Constable At the age of 15, classically trained Phillippa Lusty had already caught the attention of Dame Kiri te Kanawa. She continued to develop her talents in both singing and songwriting and recently began her own music agency. Chantelle helped us learn a little more about this exciting up-and-comer. Between Kessenya, Bella Sorella, dialogues…and so much more! Being Dolcy Vaughn, and things we independent is great, but everything probably don’t even know about yet takes a lot more time when you don’t — what is Phillippa Lusty up to these have a large team working for you! It days? hasn’t left me a great deal of time for a lot else! In April this year, As the director of Seraphina Music, Seraphina Music hosted ‘A Night To my acts – Kessenya and Bella Sorella Remember’ on the Battersea Barge, – have been taking up the majority of which was a lot of hard work, but a my time over the last year. I have really successful event. The turn-out been writing and arranging their was brilliant and the audience really repertoire, scoring the music; enjoyed the show. I acted as compere producing backing tracks; for the evening as well as singing a choreographing movement; sourcing few solos, and two wonderful duets and sewing costumes; scripting with the beautiful singer Mary-Jess have got to where I am with Leaverland. We are now in the developing Kessenya, Bella Sorella process of editing the footage from and my own solo work if I hadn’t. the performance to create live Sometimes it really pays to step out of showreels for both Kessenya and your comfort zone. I’m currently Bella Sorella. storyboarding music videos for Dolcy’s new songs to create a fun ‘Phillippa Lusty’ as a solo Crossover visual aspect to accompany the music. artist is taking a step back from the You will have already seen a snippet stage – partially because of the huge from my ‘Waiting’ song involving a time demands on my time for prince, a hobby horse, and a plastic Seraphina Music, and partially frog, and soon I hope to have a lot because of wanting to move in a more in the way of eccentric videos to completely different direction. I feel share with you! that my music has naturally grown and evolved away from the crossover When writing, do you believe in genre, and sometimes you have to just nurturing the muse and waiting for ‘go with it’…And this is where Dolcy inspiration to strike, or do you agree Vaughn appears! Over the last few with Louis L’Amour’s philosophy, years, I have been working on Dolcy “The water does not flow until the as a sort-of secret side project. With faucet is turned on”? so much going on it has been on the back-burner for a while but steadily Sometimes inspiration will just hit moving from the periphery into the you. You could be driving to the focus of my mind’s eye. supermarket or listening to the news, and you have to just stop everything By creating a new persona I can start and grab a notepad, or run to the afresh; creating new music, new nearest piano possible. However, I sounds, and a new style. I have been don’t believe this is a way many experimenting too as a music songwriters or composers go about producer in the studio with modern making a living – a job is a job and sounds and techniques and combining when you have to write; you write. It them with my heavily ingrained often helps if you give yourself classical training. It’s been a pretty boundaries and constraints under bumpy ride as I am an outright which to be creative. It sounds technophobe! I ashamedly owned my contradictory, but give an artist a production software for more than a blank canvas and say “paint me year before I was brave enough to anything”, the canvas may stay blank. even try to use it! I’m so glad now Give an artist limitations such as; that I took the plunge – I couldn’t “paint a portrait of yourself looking happy, using only shades of green and books and post-it notes, and I keep two large brushes.” and you are more thinking that one day I will assimilate likely to get a painting. In my eyes, them into one neat and tidy place. The inspiration and stimulus come from a same can be said for experimental strict brief you have set yourself. The harmonies and chord patterns which creative possibilities within those are stored in a very similar way as my constraints are endless. lyrics; in organized chaos. Without asking you to reveal too Which came first: composing or many of your trade secrets – would arranging? Did you find one was a you take us through your average natural outflow of the other, or that songwriting process? For example, they were separate disciplines you do you begin with lyrics or melody, had to learn? and how long does it usually take you to complete a song? Ooo difficult question…The first piece I arranged was my song It always varies for me. Sometimes I Guiding Light. I was really in love look at different song structures to with Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata figure out how and why they work, 1st Movement at the time and wanted sometimes I play with lyrics and try to to somehow pay homage to it. That fit them to music, and sometimes I was my first venture into the world or create a motif that I can expand on. writing and it was a long and Often my songs begin at the piano – insightful process. I took a piece of I’m not a great keyboard player, but music and transformed it into for me, it’s the best way to something completely new. I’m sure experiment with sounds and some hardcore Beethoven fans would sequences. For me, the sounds and call my dissecting of such a sequences. For me, the best process is masterwork as almost blasphemous, when the lyrics and melody happen in but to me, it’s a way of showing how synergy and just grow together. inspired I am by the great composers Sometimes all you need is a small who pushed music to its limits and motif with a couple of words to send were not afraid to go against the grain you on your way. and explore new ideas. However, I have pages upon pages of Studying composition at university lyrics, poems, phrases, statements, was a real contrast. We mainly and questions that I am yet to focused on contemporary techniques manipulate around beautiful melodies. and ways of exploring instruments to They’re currently stored on various create new sounds – we were notepads, scraps of paper, manuscript encouraged to step outside the box of conventional concepts of music and and scoring out instrumental and be as experimental and eccentric as vocal parts. In complete contrast you you dare. And yet everything had to don’t even need to be able to read be executed perfectly – presentation music if you compose on the was everything when preparing your computer – you can just use your ear orchestral scores to be played, there and build from sounds that you think had to be musical work together. structure/form/progression, and if you had created your own harmonic Do you find in today’s media- system, this had to be reflected saturated society that it is easy to consistently in the music. become over-stimulated and lose one’s inspiration to be an original One thing this did was open up my artist, or does the sheer volume of mind to new concepts and ways of competition drive you to produce viewing music. Having studied more, and better music? classical music all my life it was invigorating to have those blinkers It’s an interesting question – It’s removed so I could suddenly see a impossible to say that anyone’s music new way of looking at the harmonic is completely original, as we are all spectrum. influenced by our surroundings, our passions, and our thoughts. In the When it comes to arranging, it is world of Crossover, there is very little usually for other people, acts or original music and artists, on the groups, rather than myself, and again whole, seem to be performing the this is a skill that has developed over same music over and over. Very time alongside my composition and beautifully, might I add. orchestration skills. Last year I had about 3 weeks to arrange a whole In regards to today’s media-saturated Christmas show into easily learnable society, in my eyes, the modern vocal harmonies for an eight-piece western world has created a monster – group who were traveling we’re in an age now of heightened internationally for a cruise line. narcissism and self-obsession where practically everyone just wants to be I’ve since taken a short course in famous. Just because. This is music production which has given me exasperated by commercial pop music yet another way of looking at the that seems to be churned out on a writing process – both the way I am conveyer belt with seemingly used to arranging and the method I hundreds of new artists appearing and compose are very formal, and involve disappearing from the spotlight each sitting down with manuscript paper week, all looking and sounding the same.

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