Episode 17 - Clare Loveday
Episode 17 features Clare Loveday, an internationally acclaimed new music composer, known for her saxophone works and interdisciplinary writing. We talk with Clare about her varied experiences as a women composer in different parts of the world, her ongoing work to uplift the women around her, and her current musical projects.
To learn more about Clare and the resources she recommended, check out the links below!
Clare Loveday - Website
Clare Loveday - Soundcloud
Full “City Deep” Performance
Women in Music South Africa
SAMUS: South African Music Studies Journal
Full Transcript
Carrie Blosser 0:01
Welcome to Diversify the Stand, the resource centered around listening, learning, and promoting diverse musical voices in music, through our podcast, website, commissioning projects, and more. I'm Carrie Blosser.
Ashley Killam 0:15
And I'm Ashley Killam. Join us on our journey as we speak with composers, creators, performers, historians, and music educators about the topics important to them, and music’s betterment. We have an incredible guest today on our podcast, Clare Loveday is one of South Africa's most active and internationally acclaimed new music composers. She is best known for her straight saxophone compositions and the interdisciplinary collaborations that she does. She's currently a research associate at Africa Open Institute at Stellenbosch University, and has a bunch of exciting projects that we're going to talk to her about. So welcome, Clare, we are so excited to have you here.
Clare Loveday 0:58
Thank you, thank you, I have a strong feeling this is going to be a lot of fun.
Carrie Blosser 1:02
So Clare, we wanted to start by having you talk just a little bit about both the Women's Collective Facebook group, and then also the Women in Music South Africa.
Clare Loveday 1:11
When I started the women's music collective a few years ago, based on experiences of mine, being a woman in music, and particularly a woman composer, and the difficulties I was experiencing in South Africa was that and not feeling heard, and having to shout and shout and shout and just being treated like a hysterical woman, and then traveling overseas and getting such a different reception to my work having men engaged with me, which was just astonishing, and take me seriously. And then I was sort of thinking about this collective. And then I talked to quite a lot of women in music about how they felt about it, because there's no point in starting something if nobody's going to benefit from it. And every woman I spoke to, there was one thing they all said, and all of them said they wanted a safe space to share experiences and to try new things. Someone said, which I found very revealing, and that she wanted to try new music ideas without a man in the room telling her how to do it. And you know, I mean, it's something I've noticed that you have a group of women, or people who are not white men in a room, and the moment a white man walks into a room, the whole thing changes, everybody kind of folds back, and almost like makes themselves into a smaller space so that there's a bigger space for this kind of authority figure. So having talked to these women about their experiences, I decided, just on Facebook, I would form a private group called the Women's Music Collective for women composers and performers. And the Facebook group itself has kind of quieted down. I think a lot of people are getting off Facebook. But it's been a great way to bring women together, and I think to make people kind of realize that working with each other is better than fighting on your own. And I've noticed recently that more women's groups are started to be formed and that women are being very supportive of each other. And that's just the women. That's the Women's Collective. And the thing of it being a collective is I'm not a leader, I'm just there to facilitate. I'm not there to guide or do things, I'm just there to facilitate what other people do. And then coming out of that I decided during lockdown, because I was doing nothing, but the idea had sort of been snapped about before to start a website of women practitioners in South Africa. So I've you know, sort of said to people, hey, send in your CVs, but people don't, it's like they’re too shy, you know, so a lot of it was chasing up wonderful musicians I knew saying come on, come on, come on, but I built this website, Women in Music, you can check it out. And it's all, it's obviously not all of them, but a lot of South African women composers and performers and you must read the profiles of these women. I mean, they’re just amazing. They’re just amazing, and people who I’ve never heard of before now I read their their profiles. I just thought wow there was this extraordinary woman, like, living three blocks away from me and I didn’t know she was so amazing. So and I've connected a lot of women together, just the process of doing this website has connected women together which is just wonderful, just wonderful.
Carrie Blosser 4:35
Clare, good job. Look at this cool new project you did. You turned such a terrible, terrible time into something so great.
Clare Loveday 4:41
Well, it was still a terrible time, but yeah, I think it's had a positive outcome.
Carrie Blosser 4:50
Clare, how do you make money as a composer in South Africa?
Clare Loveday 4:52
I don't. I make very little. I make very little. You can, I cannot possibly earn a living as a composer. The reason I can do what I do is because I've worked in advertising for the first 20 years of my working life, and I made quite a lot of money and I lived like a monk. And I inherited a little bit of money that I never spent. And if you don't, if you don't spend money, it just grows. And I have a husband with a full time job, and we don't have children, and we don't have debt. And that is why I can do what I do. It's an extraordinarily privileged position to be in, and I'm deeply and profoundly grateful that I can do it. And that's actually all the more reason why it's important for me to shout at men, because I'm able to do it, I really have nothing to lose. I've been in many ways sidelined in the South African composition world, because I'm a woman and because I shout a lot. So really, I've got nothing to lose. And that's why it's all the more important that I shout, because I'm in such a privileged position. It’s kind of a responsibility I have, and I enjoy it.
Carrie Blosser 5:51
All of the women on your page are receiving the benefits of you shouting at people saying like, this is important.
Clare Loveday 5:58
Well I hope so. I hope so, I really do hope so. Because that would be very nice. I would be very happy if younger women had an easier time of it as they move up the ladder, because I've, like, poked a few people on the way up.
Ashley Killam 6:15
Both in our pre interview and, I mean, just when you were introducing why you started Women in Music South Africa and the Women's Collective, you mentioned how you were treated differently when people in other countries started to hear your music. And would you talk a little bit about your experience that you've had with your music being played in South Africa versus the other countries and how kind of that treatment has been?
Clare Loveday 6:39
Well I can talk about two things around this actually, the one is working with musicians here and working with musicians in England. And the other is how I'm treated here by the kind of broader music field and how I'm treated in not England, but like overseas. So I'll start with the treatment because we’re kind of going on that line. I mean, you know, South Africa is a very, very small new music world. It really is tiny, and it's very dominated by white men, that is changing- hallelujah. But it is very dominated by white men in tertiary institutions. And they are profoundly, deeply sexist. I found that here and I got so used to it, I didn't really notice that, you know, I would put on a work and people would come and they'd all say, oh, that's great. And then everyone would go home. And you know, if I'd give a seminar or a lecture or something, people wouldn’t really engage, there was a sort of, you know, and I got sort of used to it. I thought this is, this is how it is. And then I had an experience in England, where I went and had a concert of my music at the Birmingham Conservatoire. And this well known, saxophonist, and of course most of the music was saxophone, came to attend the concert and talk to me afterwards like I was a serious intellectual to be engaged with. And I was completely stunned, of course, fell in love with him immediately. I was just astonished. I had, I didn't know that this is, this was more normal. And when I've worked with one of the men saxophone teachers in London, I mean, he took me really seriously. It was quite exhausting, because I'm not really used to it. And he would ask me intricate questions about the school and eventually I was just too tired to answer all this, that engagement and respect, and it was astonishing. Naomi Sullivan, who's a wonderful saxophonist in England, and she's just the best person everr. If ever there's an opportunity to get you two and her together, we must do that. Anyway, she came to South Africa, and we did a tour here. And she said to me, do you know how men, are you aware of how men here treat you? And she said, for example, we bumped into one of my male colleagues in a vegetable shop. And she said, he stood there for 15 minutes, he beat his chest about what he's doing, oh, I'm doing this and I'm doing that and I'm composing for this, I'm composing for that. She said, he didn't even ask you how you are. He just did the sounds like Tarzan—[vocalizes]—and just leaves you, you know? And she said, you gave a seminar and none of, your two male colleagues who were there, didn't ask a question. They didn't ask a question. They didn't listen with proper attention. They didn't engage with you at all. They just couldn't be bothered. And she was really angry about it. And I suddenly thought, oh, oh, yeah, this is a thing. Then I was really angry. And this also precipitated the starting of the Women's Collective. I was just really angry. How dare you treat me like this. Now, of course, I've softened down because, you know, it makes absolutely no difference. And I think what I was experiencing at that stage was a glass ceiling, you know, I’d had commissions from South African organizations for, you know, when I was starting out, and then as I got more and more and more established, I noticed that the commissions didn't get bigger, it was still like a solo marimba piece or little piece for clarinet and piano, or maybe a trio. You know, because women's brains are little, we can't manage, like, more than three instruments at a time. I mean, nobody said that to me, but it's implied. I'm still you know, I'm still really angry about it. And you know, but eventually you get tired of shouting. So I decided to stop shouting for myself and start shouting for other women so that they have a bit less, the glass ceiling is at least a little higher when they get there, we live in hope. But you know, let's not count our glass ceilings before they've risen. And then the other thing to talk about is working with performers here and performers overseas. And I think the first thing that needs to be noted is that overseas, the resources are just astounding, people have more time to practice, there's also a kind of level at which people engage with music that is just so much more intense, you know, standards are higher, it's much more competitive. I worked with a couple of performers here who are brilliant, and I'm really lucky to work with them. And I always find when I go overseas, and I've worked with overseas performers, and there's the first run through, and I'm sitting there with my score thinking there’s nothing to say. It's like note perfect. I remember when I went to France, I worked with an ensemble at the Paris Autumn Festival, and this ensemble played through my piece the first time, I've got nothing to say. And then the clarinetist came in, and he played three wrong notes. And they said, after, do you have any comments? I said, well, at bar 287? Clarinetist said oh, yeah, sorry about that. I was playing from a concert pitch school, I do that sometimes just to keep my attention up. So people come to rehearsals and it's like they've practiced, you know, they've really practiced, and you come and you just hear this beautiful sound. And then you can nitpick the details, and then the magic just pops out, it's like, then you can sprinkle the fairy dust, and it's just gorgeous. But with a few exceptions, some very notable exceptions, there is a grit in the playing of South African musicians, it's like they just understand the kind of grind of what you're trying to say. They sort of, I think they understand the tensions of the world we live in and the sort of, at a very kind of deep level, and the fraughtness and the feeling that like tomorrow morning, you know, we had eight years of Jacob Zuma, which would be like, which I suppose was like eight years of camp, and you wake up in the morning, and you don't know who your finance minister is, he's changed, you know, and that kind of tension, and also high crime rates, and all those things, it’s a very fraught place to live. And I think they get that. So there's a kind of tension underlying and also, there's a sense of rhythm there that is just not in everyone. But there are some very notable exceptions of people. I have worked with the, Naomi Sullivan can just rock anything, she is amazing. And the Birmingham saxophone ensemble that played my octet, she conducted, just bang on. I mean, it was just perfection so that's an interesting thing, so for me, it's like when I go overseas, I'm working with musicians who are so good and work so hard, but there's just sometimes, there's that grit that’s missing, you know. Swings and roundabouts, I suppose.
Ashley Killam 13:45
So here is a little bit of City Deep, one of Clare’s works, followed by her speaking a little more about the piece.
Clare Loveday 17:31
So this piece came out of a project I did with Naomi and Luke in 2017. I was in Oxford, my husband's an academic and he had a three month fellowship at Oxford, and I decided I wanted to connect with Birmingham. So by various connections I got in touch with Naomi. And we did a concert together, which we called Crossing Paths, because it turned out we knew people, we felt it was just bizarre. And through that, we formed a kind of a link between Birmingham and Johannesburg. And then the sort of next leg of this project was City Deep, where Luke and Naomi commissioned composers from the two places to write pieces with film about the experience of the cities that they live in, and I wrote City Deep for that, and City Deep premiered the whole big project. And I love this project, because I've worked with Nandipha Mntambo, who's an artist I've worked with quite a lot. And she made the film. And I read the music, and I love writing for saxophone, and I've loved writing for Naomi, she's just such an amazing player. And then I got to write for a British player who would come out here to play with a South African clarinetist. I mean, Luke lives in England, but he's a South African clarinetist, and have the work played in a South African context. And I'm, you know, and I often miss having my works played here because most of my work is played overseas. And this is my home, you know, I want to engage with local audiences. So they came out here and with very generous funding from the Centre For The Less Good Idea in Johannesburg, we did City Deep, and it was the most fantastic work to write, I mean, saxophone and clarinet, a tricky ensemble, I kept thinking to myself, this is like writing for siblings who kind of are close but don't really get along. And then I also wanted to showcase the saxophone. I wanted to use extended techniques in a way that I've always fought for extended techniques to be used, which is for specific purpose within a piece. So not just oh, I need an extended technique and pop in a multi phonic, or it’s pop in some slap tonguing, or whatever, which I hear so often and makes me wild with rage. So I want the sort of long piece that would really explore every part of the saxophone. And then I found myself when I was writing the piece really falling in love with the clarinet. It's so versatile, and it just whistles up and down, and I wanted to Luke to sound really pretty. I wanted him to just sound beautiful. Yeah, and then Nandipha did the movie, which she finished like the day before the premiere. When your’re a control freak like me, that's quite stressful, but she did it. And she did it beautifully, as she always does, and I love working with her. So then it was premiered in Johannesburg. Then we took it to Durban. So we traveled around the country with it, which was just fantastic. And then they took it to England, and it's been performed around England a lot in Birmingham and in London. So it's a piece that's really traveled and I love that, I love a piece that can travel. That's, that's just first prize. So that's about City Deep.
Carrie Blosser 20:42
I love it so much. Like I'm going to tell every saxophonist and clarinetist I know about this piece and that they need to, like-
Ashley Killam 20:50
So what projects are you working on now? Anything exciting?
Clare Loveday 20:53
Yeah. So you know, I mean, even though COVID sort of stripped my enthusiasm, I'm working on a piano piece for a wonderful South African pianist called Mareli Stolp. And it's a project, a collaborative project with Wanjiku Kihato. Caroline Wanjiku Kihato, the other way around. But she is an urban planner, who did her PhD on women migrants in Johannesburg and how they have reshaped the city. If you ever want to read a PhD that seamlessly combines theory and the most beautifully told narrative, that is the book you have to read. It's just magnificent. Anyway, so Caroline is writing the texts of these women's experiences in Johannesburg, and I am setting them for talking pianist. It's it's a real challenge. It is a real challenge writing for talking pianist because you got to be really careful that it doesn't just sound like oh, and then I've walked down the street, dun dun dun dun, I saw a police car going past, dee dee dee, you know, it's just, and you also have to keep in mind, I mean, Mareli wouldn't ever do this, but there are pianists to do it really badly. So you have to write the speaking part in such a way that it's completely— I'm finding it enormously challenging, and I'm loving it. I'm loving it. And also making it sound African in a way that's not overt. So it's not like, oh, here, look, here's an African element. I'm going to sellotape it in over here. So when I finished writing the first little vignette, they're going to be five. I sent it to Caroline and said, what do you think? And she said, it sounds like I'm walking through a street in Johannesburg. I thought, great. I've got it. Yeah, no, I'm loving it. It's hard. It's hard. And the idea is to present it with Mareli playing and you know, making it very physical. I'm trying to make it very physical, like one of the vignettes is about hiding. So I'm making it all like awkward right inside the piano. So that, you know, on the hands always over the keys so that the pianist is constrained. So such fun, such fun to think so differently. You know, yeah, so if you don't have the pianist go “I’m hiding,” but rather it's in the body language and what they’re doing sort of feels tense. You know, that's what I'm working on.
Ashley Killam 23:20
Our last question is what's on your music stand this week? And how are you diversifying your stand?
Clare Loveday 23:26
Okay, so on my stand, literally, this week is my piano piece that I'm writing. And when I'm writing a piece, I don't listen to music because it interferes with the notes in my head, which are all hanging there in extremely delicate balance. And if I listen to other notes, they're like bang them off, and then it just doesn't work. So that's what's on my physical stand. In terms of how I'm diversifying my stand, which reminds me I must update the website. That's what I do to diversify the stand, I run this Women in Music website, you know, I need to add something that someone sent me, actually a lovely project called Her Story that looks to promote women and talks about women composers, that’s a lovely project. So I'm putting that up on the website and I need to put on Facebook my new composer of the week or musician of the week. So that's what I'm, that's how I'm diversifying the stand this week, and shouting at men.
Ashley Killam 24:23
To learn more about Clare, the organizations and resources that she promoted and the projects that she's a part of, check out the podcast description. Thank you so much for listening to Diversify the Stand. I am Ashley.
Carrie Blosser 24:36
And I'm Carrie. If you'd like to support us and our projects, check out our Patreon www.patreon.com/diversify_the_stand. Also, the link is in our podcast description.
Ashley Killam 24:52
And a huge thank you to Trevor Weston and Whitney George for allowing us to use their compositions in our podcast. The musical introduction is Trevor's trumpet duet Fanfare for Changes and the ending music is Whitney's Incantations for trumpet and piano. Both composers’ websites are also listed in the description.
Carrie Blosser 25:10
Until next time, what's on your stand?