It’s common in the creative process for an artist to search their environment for inspiration or a jumping-off point. Picking up other artists’ work can be as essential as cracking stones together looking for a spark. One way or another something shows up to drive the engine forward - even if the something is a combination of references mixed with absence, like a sail catching winds and cruising or falling to a stop in the open water and appreciating the view while you have it before the inevitable wind blows again.
But it is the rare spark or gale that sets you straight for warmth through the night or a trip across the unswimmable. And that’s what Ireland’s classical pianist Isabelle O’Connell is experiencing now as her COCTEAU tour visits Wellfleet’s Preservation Hall on its next stop this week, Saturday, September 19th.
Isabelle has worked for, and lives, a life many musicians lay awake at night praying to their ceiling fans for (something she’ll acknowledge comes with some talent & good luck but likely more flexibility, curiosity, and effort). Currently on the faculty at Bard College and at Diller-Quaile School of Music in New York, she spoke to us late one night from Brussels (or some European time zone) to detail how, during the later-Pandemic days of 2021 and into 2022, she and composer Rhona Clarke set off on an adventure spurred by the Contemporary Music Center in Isabelle & Rhona’s hometown Dublin.
True to Pandemic form, their partnership, the result of the Music Center’s program pairing pianists and composers, couldn’t be complete without Zoom’s necessary evil worming its way into the works. Fold in the email element and you have the guts of what would set the table for them. And like the rare superpowered gust, this innocuous time-passing collaboration would eventually see itself on stages in Paris & New York before winding up in a recording studio, the result of which is now available to stream.
You never know when you’ll stumble & fall into the right bale of fodder and end up on a stage in England or maybe a studio Detroit. When Carnegie Hall is in the rearview mirror, it’s open road ahead.
The Blood of a Poet’s Town
Being grouped together on a spreadsheet or pinned under the same pushpin on an admin’s corkboard is one thing; setting about to write then play good work requires more than making sure your camera works for scheduled video meetings. Somebody has to go shopping for meat and potatoes. (*avoids sensitive famine topic)
After initial meetings it was clear, Isabelle was interested in working on a series of shorter pieces, having put in a lot of time on longer-form works and having her attention span chewed away by a hamster dressed as a worldwide flu. That left Rhona on grocery duty and she decided to shop uptown. Her flint struck best and brightest down the aisle of one of the most prolific artists of the last century - the French poet, playwright, screenwriter, novelist, painter, designer, and film director Jean Cocteau. One of the most purely talented people who graced our planet over the span of the 1900s.
When Isabelle told Rhona she wanted to deal in shorter bursts for their work together, Rhona already had Cocteau on her mind. She’d visited the south of France, spending time in Menton, home of the Cocteau museum as well as many other buildings or chapels where his art suns itself and everyone else. For this idea of shorter pieces, Clarke first looked directly to the artist’s sketches and translated the impression they left on her into what would become the compositions O’Connell would soon play.
Rhona relaxed into the task of letting his art speak to her and was soon working just as much from the work she saw of Cocteau’s as she was the idea of him and what his work drew out of her. Far from an adaptation of another artist’s work, Rhona delivered to Isabelle a kind of pressed impression of Cocteau’s aura that peels off a reflection of the comics like the most unserious putty. There were likely crystal balls, upside-down tarot cards, and bundles of burnt sage.
The result was a six-song thread that Isabelle used to stitch Cocteau-adjacent composer works together for what ended up becoming COCTEAU, a 33-track, 80-minute Sunday drive for the unacquainted and inexperienced; likely it’s much more for the folks native to the ecosystem.
Beauty of the Reach
When she was 6 years old playing a janky hand-me-down piano and taking lessons at school, the idea of creating an album inspired by one of the most complete French artists, Mr ‘Film Captures Death at Work’ himself, had to be murky at best and more than likely so far around a corner it wasn’t in play.
Even when she was jumping into competitions at the wee age of 10, or farther down the road to winning them at 12, when that winning brought the discipline necessary to keep the torch lit for the next sprint toward a career, there was simply the idea of a living a musician’s life at the end of the rainbow.
Then opportunities started presenting themselves to her: in 10th grade, the musical director at her school had to step away from the show the school was prepping and Isabelle was tapped to step in and fill the role. It was a natural fit and the show went off as well as could be planned. Easy enough to see in hindsight that she pulled it off, but thinking of a 15 or 16-year old being handed the reins to deliver on a show by driving a sled of kids in that age group is actually quite a feat.
And just as the work she put in leading to the show generated the opportunity that she landed, executing on it would burn the torch even brighter.
She entered the Royal Irish Academy of Music as an undergraduate and there was more of the same: playing well, achieving, winning competitions, local success … which, by this point, was the expected outcome. Many students who attend Conservatory have a similar path in mind: use the school as a springboard to win a major competition, secure management and recording contracts, then play your days away until the time of ashes. This could be because the world once worked this way or because it worked that way once but Isabelle will assure you there was really no such thing and the key to making this life work was understanding the essential path of a hybrid career, saying yes often, being uncomfortable, welcoming challenges, working through everything put in your way.
With that mindset, she hopped the pond to New York City and attended the Manhattan School of Music for her graduate degree. Taking classes with 8 students at the Royal Irish Academy evolved overnight into classes with 100 students in America - so less frying pan to fire and more simmering pan to the woodstove. With that crop of musical peers, the playing level was so high she was just one of the certain multitude who felt the rash of Imposter Syndrome no one can catch you scratching.
Soon she was playing concerts in the city, seeing shows with friends, immersed in a world she’d not only imagined and hoped for but actively worked to assemble. And the universe would continue to smile on her.
Testament to Transparent Walls
Some of the sexier segments of Cocteau’s sociological standing lie in the inevitable, beloved to the brand Scenius (nodding to Eno & Dibbern), so here we feature the Les Six and their muscular contribution to the party.
As Isabelle was carving out her place in the Manhattan School of Music, she was simultaneously arranging the board for how her career would unfold. Talent is talent and it tends to flock together. She likely didn’t move through spheres; they more aptly melded their edges and grew to accommodate the snowballing persons orbiting.
Looking ahead, this project’s union with Rhona was an instance of that same scenius orbiting. The accomplished classical music world is only so big, so while they may not have known each other, they certainly knew of each other. That knowing of each other, either through their prior work, impressions of their reputation or acquaintances, or likely a combination of both, brings another shade of crayon to the paper. You can practically imagine Rhona writing for Isabelle when recalling the All-Star game when Michael Jordan got to play with Shaq. The giddiness, the feeling of invincibility. How often that must happen in the air up there.
Le Miroir Traversé
And so it went, connecting and working on the project through digital carrier pigeon from December of 2021 and through 2022. When it was ready to take to the stage, the ladies looked to a venue in Paris which had previously awarded both residencies over the years (that air up there …) and were quickly accepted by the director to perform.
The show was performed a couple of times, including in their own Dublin, before the idea of recording the album came around. And here again, Isabelle was walking between the raindrops: in short order she found a grant with an imminent deadline, rushed the application through and won. After recording at the Detroit Institute of Arts in the fall of 2024, the arduous humidity of producing an album of 33 tracks remotely clung to her but the end was foregone and she’s been touring with the work on this run since March.
And with all of that, she flutters into Wellfleet to perform at Preservation Hall this weekend, Saturday, September 19th @ 7p.
Sit close to the front - the flame is powered with rarified air, and it’s certain to keep you warm.
