Guest post in tribute to Lucy Hale, from DM Associate Musician Georgina Aasgaard, a talented cellist who collaborated with Lucy on different projects and pieces.
I first met Lucy in September 2018 when she joined the Go Compose project as a trainee Associate Musician for Drake Music, delivering music sessions for a group of young women called Fusion based in Liverpool.
Lucy “revolutionised” the music making world of our teenage girls, who mainly listened to rap and hip-hop, by leading a session on graphic scores, pushing boundaries and encouraging them to explore new sound worlds.
Later on in the project, she introduced her brilliantly effective short piece for solo cello “Sustain and Snap” which I performed for the girls, leaving them mesmerised by her ability to showcase such diversity of sounds from one single instrument.
As part of the project, Lucy also helped to develop a piece that was performed for Imperial War Museum’ s Remembrance day. Lucy, by sharing her passion for music and composition, became such an inspiring role model for our young women. Her kindness and humour was heart warming for us all and her creativity and innovative approach to music had no limit.
Within that lively group of girls, Lucy’s voice was always heard, always had a role to play and made such an impact on us all.
As Covid 19 started disrupting our routines, livelihoods and way of life, I got in touch with Lucy to find out how she was.
Her extraordinary force for never giving up shone through those hard times: Lucy tweets on the 22nd March 20 “Temporarily breaking my Twitter hiatus to ask if anyone I know wants me to write them a free piece? I desperately desperately need a distraction from the looming existential dread.”
Within a few weeks, Lucy sent me her Cello Miniatures, based on the tragic story of the Trojan Women, all captive because the men in their family have been killed during the Trojan War. As Lucy said, there is a theme of perseverance and resistance in their stories…
Lucy loved the cello, she told me many times it was her favourite instrument, which was clearly proven by the way she wrote those pieces. She had an incredible understanding of the technique and physicality of the instrument, always putting its expressive qualities at its best.
It was such an honour and privilege for me to be asked by Abigail Ward from Drake Music to perform Lucy’s Miniatures at the Manchester Histories DigiFest in September 2020. We shared some priceless moments of rehearsal time on line where she asked me for a rough recording saying “it would be amazing if you can manage it, but again no pressure, especially if they’re as beastly as I suspect…”. Lucy also warned me about her “extreme nerdy side notes” which I loved and always went down so well!
Her miniatures entitled “Warnings, Falling on Ears that refused to Hear” had to be presented within the main theme of the festival which was based on three keywords “Celebrate, Learn and Challenge”…
Lucy, those words will resonate with me for years to come…I will celebrate you by carrying on playing your Music, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for all I have learnt from you, and yes…those pieces were “beastly” and a real challenge…
Your perseverance and resistance will never stop inspiring me, I will miss you so much.
“When I think of ‘my voice’ it’s the ‘voice’ I think in, so I think of my ‘voice’ as sounding like my ‘internal monologue’, it probably makes zero sense to anyone but me. To me, my internal monologue ‘sounds’ like me, but my speech doesn’t sound like me!”
In rehearsal with Lucy, 05.08.20
