Spectacularly Unconventional: Pianist Sally Whitwell

BY ANDREW MESSENGER

 

ARIA award winning pianist Sally Whitwell is one of the nicest and most genuine people in the business. Odd, eccentric and, as a result, delightful, she is the complete opposite of the traditional concert pianist – the haughty, dinner-suited genius like Liszt or Rubinstein. You might think that this has little to do with her playing, but you’d be dead wrong.

As far as I’m concerned, Sally is a national treasure. Her style is shockingly eclectic and incredibly modern. A purveyor of whimsy, Sally has been known to record on toy pianos. She delights particularly in modern music like Arvo Part’s gorgeous sparseness, and Phillip Glass’ repetitive hyperactivity. Her second latest album The Good, the Bad and the Awkward was dedicated to film characters which she described as “incredibly imperfect, beautifully blemished and fabulously flawed” – a phrase and an album I absolutely love and would argue is one of the best releases in a decade.

Sally was kind enough to talk to me about her meteoric career, and the role of the ABC within it. We also chatted about the connection between her wonderfully peculiar style and her ardent feminism – and the future of classical music.

 

How did you first get into music?

There was always music around! I think that’s the case with lots of musicians, too. I mean, you read these interviews where people say, ‘my grandmother had a piano, or my dad always fiddled around with his drum kit in the garage’. There was always someone making music or listening to music in the time you grew up, and I think that’s an important thing to happen.

My grandmother lived with us – long story. But she had her piano, and I just got curious. You see this amazing piece of technology with these hammers and these keys and you think, ‘that is so interesting!’. You know, as a small person. Probably Mum and Dad got a bit of tired of the theme from The Muppets.

You’re completely the opposite of what one would expect of a typical concert pianist. What led you down your own ‘curious and couriouser’ style?

It’s a series of accidents. I wanted to be a ballet dancer! In my teens, I thought, ‘ballet, that’s the thing I want to do’. But I got to a stage when I was 15 and I thought, ‘I can’t do this to my body any more. So what am I going to do now?’.

Quitting ballet left an enormous hole in my time. As a teenager, you want to fill all the holes in your life with stuff. So, I took up the bassoon and did my first degree with it.  It’s a really good thing for learning skills, like ensemble playing, the orchestral repertoire, chamber music, and all that stuff – but I don’t think it was for me. The music I like to play is more varied than you can play on the bassoon.

I used to say that you can’t learn Stevie Wonder on the bassoon – but I have heard it. But probably not the kind of Stevie Wonder I’d like to play. The piano is kind of versatile in a way the bassoon just isn’t. It’s self-sufficient. You don’t need other people to play a piece of music.

But you can if you want to.

Yeah. I studied accompaniment at the Sydney Conservatorium, because I thought that was where I could get some work. It was a fantastic course. It was probably the most difficult audition I ever did in my life!

A lot of people don’t start a career in concert piano the way you did – doing accompaniment, and then moving into concert piano. Why do you think you ended up doing that?

I just did things that meant a lot to me, like a repertoire that meant a lot to me. When I was in university and thereafter, I just loved new music. I was just performing around the traps and with groups like Ensemble Offspring and Halcyon and various new music ensembles. I think I just got seen. I also did a bit of recording session work, and they saw me doing all this new music and they thought, ‘maybe she wants to do a solo album?’ and I said yes – while having a quiet meltdown. I can’t play solo. I haven’t done that since I was 19! There were a good 17 years in between. It kind of blows your mind. So that’s how I came to it – in a bit of a roundabout way.

This is a bit more of a political question. Asking you to do your first CD Mad Rush was such a risk for the ABC. You were an unknown quality, and it’s an album of 20th Century American minimalist music – Phillip Glass. Nobody knew if the public would like it, or if it would sell. What do you think of the role of the ABC in terms of Australian arts culture?

I think they’re crucial. I know that nobody else was going to give me a go – because it’s not necessarily commercially viable to do that.

ABC Classics are actually the only big label to be operating in the black, all the time, and the way they do it is that they release lots of compilations. Like, every week or something they’ll have another compilation come out, and they’ll be like Lullabies for your Cat or The Great Aquarian Composers. You sign something in your contract to say they can do that, and you get a royalty. They get more sales. Somehow, between those things and the distribution of things you might not love, like Andre Rieu. They distribute Andre Rieu in Australia. I’m happy to pick up Andre’s sloppy seconds if it means that the ABC can keep operating in the way they currently do. Because ABC music is greatly respected, so I think the music side is in good shape.

I’d be very upset if something stopped the ABC doing current affairs. Without ABC and SBS, we wouldn’t have balance in our news, and that would make me a very sad panda. There wouldn’t be enough discussion in my dystopian future nightmare.

Without the ABC?

Without the ABC. So, I love Aunty and we need to do everything we can to keep the government’s hands off her.

I’m going to ask another political question now, so, you know, take a deep breath and so on.

Okay.

I think it’s fair to say you are an ardent feminist. What do you think the connection is between your feminism and the way you play music?

That’s a good question actually; I don’t think I’ve ever thought about it in those terms before. But I think that being committed to some very specific repertoire and a particular way of being in the world and being seen as being strong – I think that’s an important thing for feminism, for a woman to be seen as doing exactly what she wants to do in the world. There are lots of classical musicians who think that they’re above the politics, or think they’re separate from it. But, personally, I don’t see how you can live in the world without having a politics. Because it’s not honest, it’s not complete. If you don’t have an opinion on anything, why are you in the arts? The arts say something. It seems to be the way we’ve evolved over time, that we’ve separated ourselves from the world.

Speaking of separating ourselves from the world – why do you think classical music is so snobby, is so separate from the rest of music?

Strong words, Andrew!

I totally see what you mean. I don’t know why it is so separate. It’s not the people who play in the major orchestras and stuff – they’re all wonderful professionals. Maybe it’s the ghettoization of classical music generally – ghettoization, is that a word?

Yes, it is!

I know lots of my classical music colleagues only hang out with their own. They don’t see people who do other crazy stuff in the world. I think that contributes to this out-of-touchness, and therefore, we’re not very good at communicating why we do this thing that most of the rest of the world sees as pretty archaic. We can get better at communicating across that boundary, which is what I try to do in my life even if it’s only in small ways at a grass roots level. We’ve got to make like iTunes. If you really like Star Wars, you will really like The Planets by Holst. Because that’s its root. You will get it, I promise. We’ve got to talk to people like that, not judge people for not liking us, or tell people they don’t have enough education to enjoy it. I’m not sure why we’re bad at communicating that, but the future is not bright unless we learn to do it.

That neatly dovetails into my last question, which is about the future of classical music. What advice would you give – and I’m going to be specific – to a female Australian pianist who wants to do what you do in 20 years’ time?

That is very specific! I’ve picked up a great piece of advice from Tina Fey, and that was about answering yes to stuff. She was just doing a bit of improve and an off-off-off-Broadway show in New York, and someone from Saturday Night Live saw her and asked, ‘would you like to be on the show?’. She said yes – and went home and had a meltdown. But she still did it, and then they said, ‘do you want to write for SNL?’. She said yes, you know, panic, panic, and then they said, ‘would you like your own show?’ and she went, ‘Oh my God! Yes!’ and of course, all of those things turned out alright for her. Thirty Rock is very hilarious. She just had to be brave enough with herself.

You kind of feel a fraud. I personally think to myself, ‘oh my God, I’m not qualified. I don’t have a degree in piano. I haven’t spent years studying Liszt, like a stack of other pianists have’. I’m well aware of that. So what I do is, I just do the things I love. People saw me doing the thing I love and they gave me an opportunity to extend myself into something else they thought I’d love. So the ABC thought I’d love Phillip Glass, and yes, of course I do. It kind of snowballs.

But you need to be brave enough to put yourself out there and do something that might not be popular. That might not earn you gazillions of dollars, but will eventually give you an artistic identity that is really strong. Work on your identity, and on continuing to communicate that identity through the things you choose to perform, and the way you talk about it. That’s what I did – that’s what I’m doing and it seems to be working, so I’m going to continue doing things that way until I find a better way

Thanks very much for talking to me.

That’s my pleasure.

I hope you continue to do what you’ve been doing because it’s spectacular.

Thanks very much.

 

Check out Sally Whitwell in action here. More information on the unconventional concert pianist can be found on her website at sillywhatwell.weebly.com.

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