#15 ROSEMARY CHRIMES, OLYMPIC ATHLETE, LANDLADY & PIANIST

“I originally come from the Scottish Borders. I remember my aunt encouraged me to start when I was nine or ten. I wasn’t the slightest bit interested. I was always out doing active, sporty things, and then five minutes before the lesson I’d do a little bit of practice. I’m not sure music really runs in my family, although one of my grandchildren (he’s in his twenties now) had the most wonderful ear as a child, and he could sit at the piano and make up little tunes. I was staggered at how good he was when he was a little boy. When I was in my twenties I thought, “This was silly, you must learn at least to read music, now you must do a little theory!” So I went through Grade V Theory and that wasn’t too bad. But I always found playing frustrating because I could sightread but I couldn’t memorise, I had great difficulty playing anything without having the music in front of me. And then, getting married, having children and having a full time job, I left it for a few more years. And then I came back to it because my second husband was a good singer. So I accompanied Brian a little bit. And then, I had music students staying in the house who were studying at the Conservatoire in Birmingham. I’d managed to get up to Grade VIII when I was playing with my husband, but I still had no ambitions. I asked the students if they knew anyone simpatico who could give me a few lessons. I’ve been learning with Mikael for a few years now, some of us are very elderly students, just doing it for fun. The problem now is that all the things to do with age start piling in, you might have arthritis, your eyesight starts to go and you can’t see the notes. You need the notes printed large. In the libraries there are books with big print, so I would like music with big print. That would be extremely useful. Some of my friends they think I’m crazy, others admire. Some say to me that they started as a child and then never had the courage to pick it up again. So I tell them that I started as a child and picked it up again at three different times. I like playing but I am scared still of performing. I don’t practise every day, there’s too much else to do. I’ve had the same piano for the last 20 years, a baby grand with a pleasant sound. Fortunately I’m in a detached house so I don’t have to worry about the neighbours. In fact, sometimes my teacher arranges a little concert in my house which is rather sweet because there’s a big room with a piano; therefore we gather and play together. It’s very pleasant. This happens every few months. Sometimes his very young students come, and they feel confident about performing in a private house, it gives them a good experience and I put a pile of toys in the corner for them to play with as well. We all profit in our own ways.” (Rosemary Chrimes)


Rosemary took part in the 1972 Olympics Games in Munich.  She has won a Gold Medal in the Commonwealth Games in Athletics.

#14 ANA SILVERA, SINGER AND COMPOSER

"I start with an image in my mind and then I make some words and a melody, the image is like a little seed which then grows.  I’ve always been very driven by words so I will create the song around the words.  They are my words that come to me from an image.  For example there’s a song I’ve written called ‘Notes from an Opera’.  I must have read the story of Coco Chanel somewhere but I wasn’t conscious of that, I had this image of a woman in wartime Paris, and she’s pampered and spoilt. I followed her story and I found these words she would say in the image I had as I followed her around Paris.  Then I sat down at the piano and started to sing the words.  I think what this means for my music is that it comes out more linear rather than cyclical, so it will have lots of different bits as if it’s a sort of film, rather than it being verse, chorus, verse, chorus.   It’s more driven by narrative. I’m writing about characters with a completely independent mind, I’m outside of them and they are separate to me.  Sometimes I will sing them as “I” or sometimes as “she”.  These are songs that emanate from my imagination rather than being songs about me.  I compose the music through a process of filtering through many layers of the story. I had piano lessons for a long time, I loved Bartok, Ravel, Debussy.  I sang opera from a young age,  and learnt a lot of John Dowland and Palestrina, very sparse music that was meant for harpsichord, I played it on the piano while I sang and really loved the purity of that music.   These days, as well as working with my band I have a couple of large scale projects coming up that I’m looking forward to - one is with an orchestra.  I’m also working with a choir in London, reviving a choral work I originally composed for an Estonian choir." (Ana Silvera)

Ana will be performing with her band as part of the Markson Pianos Concert Series 7pm on June 27th at Saint Mary Magdalene Church, London NW1

Ana Silvera CD ‘The Aviary’  (KMC Records) is available from www.anasilvera.bandcamp.com 

Connect with Ana

http://www.anasilvera.com/

www.twitter.com/anasilveramusic