Core values

MATTHEW SHARP Solo cellist, operatic baritone and professor of cello at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, UK

Embody and inhabit your sound

BORN Lisbon, Portugal

STUDIED WITH Julia Pringle, Kate Beare, Alexander Baillie, Boris Pergamenschikow

TEACHES Undergraduates, postgraduates, professionals, all ages

Singing is a fundamental and elemental part of what it is to be human; the ability to sing and thereby to express ourselves lies within every one of us. Playing a stringed instrument is similar to singing – we work with breath, flow and imagination ‘from the inside out’. The more I teach, the more I ground my work in vocal and movement-based terms. In my own playing I have found that there is something about the act of singing as honestly and expressively as possible that leaves a trace of physiological wisdom behind it to pick up on and carry forward into the act of playing the cello. This helps me and my students to zone in on and nurture the ‘grain of the voice’ in the cello sound.

We have all heard the excellent ‘play it like a singer’ advice offered to students. We have also heard and seen the kind of unembodied ‘di-dum’ vocal demonstrations that frequently accompany and undermine this good advice. In terms of accessing and benefiting from the innate sense of cello playing and musical wisdom coursing through our veins, what I prefer to do in this scenario is to encourage students to take the risk of not ‘di-dumming’ but really singing a phrase, for example, on a firm, bright vowel (‘ah’ or ‘eh’). This way they can experience the phrase in terms of breath, support and connecting one sound to the next. I follow this by helping them to explore ways to transfer this physiological and intuitional experience to the cello.

Essentially there are things about instinctive music making that transcend technical analysis. As a listener I don’t want to hear ‘cello playing’ – in the same way as I don’t go to the ballet to watch steps and exercises to music. Working towards the end of transcending the craft, I encourage students to search for and feel more flow and more connection with the sound to lift the audience up; I find that internalised vocal and movement-based experiences act as guides and facilitators for their playing going forward. Discovering, trusting and accepting the uniqueness of each voice is particularly important in a world that has increasingly favoured the generic.

MINDSET

Before sitting down to play the cello, bring your whole being to life. I like to warm up five fundamental qualities: breath, body, voice, pleasure and spirit. Keep refreshing these throughout your practice; pleasure, in particular, can get lost amid the notion of the daily grind, and there is no music without it. Think extension and expansion – feet in the wet sand, sunshine on the chest, olive oil in the joints and length through the spine.

EXERCISES AWAY FROM THE CELLO

Take any physical exercise you like, as long as it gets you moving and raises your heart rate. Star jumps work well; keep a spring in your step, land lightly (remember the olive oil and don't crunch those vertebrae). As you jump, imagine you are wiping a windscreen behind you. This helps engage the plane of the back (often forgotten in the forward-tending dynamic of cello playing and fundamental for a radiant sound and keeping healthy shoulders). There's no need to power through; be mindful in what you do.

MATILDE HOLLOWAY

Getting moving is a simple way to awaken breath, body and spirit, develop strength and flexibility and unlock momentum and e-motion (my shorthand for emotion and motion) in your playing. See my Riseshiner cello warm-ups on YouTube at bitly.ws/38rBF

Take this flowing, open, oxygenated state into your cello playing; the ‘work’ involved in practice is about connection with and upliftment of an audience, so aim to approach it with an open, flowing state of mind

VOCAL EXERCISES

The more you can align yourself with making sound within yourself, the better chance you have of producing a sound on something outside yourself in an authentic, powerful, expressive and meaningful way.

Not everyone feels comfortable singing but there are five short and basic vocal warm-up exercises by the 19th-century pedagogue Gaetano Nava that I do daily and encourage my students to sing. As they do, I encourage them to think of qualities of release in their bodies – the jaw, the tongue, the pelvis area, and to take risks with the brightness and openness of their singing as they do the exercise. Each exercise is done to a different vowel sound (ah, eh, oh, ee, oo). See exercise 1.

Sirens and lip trills are a way in for more reluctant students and are also a useful way of freeing up the voice ready for work

REPERTOIRE

To help a new student start to amplify the strength, flexibility and sense of flow in their playing I find it important to be student-led in terms of repertoire. Many students are coy about this, being reluctant to suggest music that they love in case it isn’t standard cello repertoire and/or will be judged by the taste police as lacking validity in some way. Sometimes they just haven’t admitted to themselves that they love Take That. It is worth persevering (sometimes by revealing that you love something really quirky or niche) because to address this new way of thinking, the music should genuinely make them want to sing and dance, whether it is Bach, Zimmer or Beyoncé. Remember, too, that choices might change from day to day. Later on, if a student must perform specific repertoire, the demands of that music become paramount. But the experience of increased individual connection with favourite music should carry through and affirm the individuality of voice elsewhere.

Personally, when I play the theme of the Tchaikovsky Rococo Variations (example 1) I imagine that I am inhabiting the character of Monsieur Triquet from his opera Eugene Onegin (example 2).

Monsieur Triquet is a cameo role (he is a French tutor) who comes on and sings in praise of Tatiana, who was Tchaikovsky’s favourite character. I go into my virtual dressing-up box and sing the couplets that he sings with all the curlicues that are part of his character. Then I feel that I can channel a genuine rococo spirit rooted in Tchaikovsky.

IN YOUR PRACTICE

Warm up as described above

Identify areas that you would like to improve and, guided by your intuition and any knots and resistances in your body and technique, invent extra warm-ups, always being aware that these should be based in sound, which inevitably carries everything you do: 1. On the right-hand side of the body, be aware of articulation, string-crossings and bow changes 2. On the left-hand side of the body, be aware of articulation, vibrato and shifts

Work on anything functional that your teacher has given you (such as the left-hand articulation from the base joint etc.)

Keep mindful and creative in scale practice. One way of doing this is by starting and finishing a scale on the lowest available note on the instrument (for example, play G major starting and finishing on open C). Use these scales as a tool for improvisation. This will further connect your inner voice with the cello, because improvisation asks that you say ‘yes’ to what is arising ‘right now’, whether you think you like it or not.

You may extend this by working out, say, a G major 7th arpeggio. Then find a pulse and, with the metronome ticking, play notes from that arpeggio on every quaver (e). When this is going along well, check in with your sound and make sure that it hasn’t become a casualty in the process.

TIPS FOR TE ACHERS

Your studio should be a safe, creative space; students need to feel open to risk-taking, especially with singing. You may find the following quote helpful: ‘Perfectionism brings out the worst in everyone.’ (With thanks to my father, John Sharp.)

Help your students to see things through the positive end of the telescope when learning something new; the analogy of learning another language may be useful (for example, if you are English and trying to learn French you already know 45 per cent of the vocabulary involved)

For advanced students who have been sitting with the cello for years, and who wish to find more release and flow in their playing, work without the cello to help them find what their bodies have within them. Encourage them to go beyond the edge in terms of release and risk, so as not be limited by that awkward bit of wood.

Teach yourself out of a job by helping students solve problems for themselves

INTERVIEW BY NAOMI YANDELL

FURTHER MATERIALS

How I Play, How I Teach by Paul Tortelier. This book is a model of pedagogy, brimming with rigour and creativity.