Interview: AVA, a Modern Classical Music Duo
AVA is made up of two musically prolific ladies, Anna Phoebe covering violin and Aisling Brouwer handling the piano. Their recent music video for the single “Mulholland” is a radical and exciting move forward for instrumental musicians making it work in the age of “7 Rings.”
Classical crossover and classic music generally these days is a harder sell with pop music radio stations never playing the genre. How do you market your music to be successful on streaming services like Spotify?
Ana: Our sound is cinematic rather than classical, and reflects our influences from a broad range of music. When i look out at an audience during an AVA show, I wouldn’t say that you could categorise them as being fans of a specific “genre” of music. Music streaming is great for music like ours. it’s much easier for people to experiment with their listening choices.
Aisling: I think it is a genre that is actually becoming a lot less reliant on pop radio stations for exposure. There are new radio stations popping up such as Scala Radio, which champion film and classical music, and streaming services (for all their faults) do give many people the opportunity to expand their musical tastes and discover new artists through playlists and suggestions. It's a double edged sword, but I think instrumental & classical subgenres are slowly taking up a much more prominent role in the music industry.
You have a new music video. How does one sell classic music visually? I personally sometimes get involved with film scores and instrumental music and myself do not know how to wrap up this whole genre because so many different demographics of people are composers or classical musicians. We aren’t like hip hop where everyone is young and cool or pop where everyone is young and sexy.
Anna: “Selling classical music” has never been a preoccupation of mine. Creative process is what interests me. I’m a musician and the violin is my main instrument, but it’s just one of the tools I use to express myself. I don’t consider myself any different from other artists, whether they are filmmakers, painters, hip hop artists, pop artists or actors . My main goal is to express emotion and communicate that to others. With our “Mulholland” video that is what we’re doing. We’re two people in a room creating an atmosphere through our instruments and our interaction with one another.
Aisling: To presume that audiences only engage with young, cool or sexy artists is, I feel, doing them a bit of a disservice to be honest.. and I don't see why instrumental artists can't be all of those things as well! What we wanted to show in this music video is precisely that as composers we don't need to subscribe to these expectations. We wanted to challenge the notion that our instruments are always elegant or graceful and show a more raw, honest side to our music which comes to life when we perform together.
How does that extend over into visual marketing for photoshoots, social media, and other tools?
Anna: Social media is a great way to share your own creative processes, but for me I use it mainly to discover and connect with other people across all disciplines. It breaks down so many barriers - it enables an instant multi-disciplinary and global connection with other artists and their work.
Aisling: I think our intentions have luckily always aligned on this front - we want to reflect our true personalities and not be afraid to take up space, to use colour, to wear clothes we love, etc. I've often found there's a certain expectation to be “understated,” “undisruptive” or simply the idea that to let the music speak for itself you should not reveal who you are at all. I disagree with that. I don't see why we can't be all that we are in conjunction with being composers and artists.
Lana del Rey is working on a spoken word album. Since one of you is involved with poetry, has a spoken word album ever crossed your mind?
Anna: At the heart of the AVA sound is the dialogue and interaction between violin and piano. it allows space for personal response and connection without projecting specific thoughts on the listener. Working with poetry is similar to working with film or dance - the music becomes a way to express or augment the emotion of the narrative. We’re exploring collaborating with poets and lyricists for the next AVA album - Kate Tempest would be our dream collaborator. The power in her words and flow light a fire inside me and induce all emotions from fire to tears to goosebumps.
Do you believe you have to be in a type of mood to write instrumental or classical music that is sad, happy, etc.?
Anna: For me writing music is about a cathartic experience which embraces and expresses all aspects of human emotion. There’s no mood I can conceive of where I couldn’t write music - except self pity - i have very little patience for that.
Aisling: We hardly ever write a piece starting from a single emotion - our sound is cinematic so more important is the dialogue behind it and what we visualise when writing a piece.All the frustrations we express about stuff going on in the world or in our personal lives is a giant funnel into the studio where what comes out is whatever emotion we need to channel to process it.
When you two write, how much of the music is created separately before you go over it together?
Aisling: Everything starts and ends with the two of us in a room. We want everything to come from an organic interaction between us and generally speaking we do most of the work together, shaping the piece, trying out different directions, producing & mixing it.. occasionally we bounce it back and forth between us a few times in the 'middle stage' before we rejoin forces for the final mix.
What would you like people to know most about a musician’s lifestyle?
Anna: For me, it’s not a “lifestyle” - music is part of everything I do. I am totally obsessed and I love it.
When are you drained emotionally from hard work, what keeps you going?
Anna: A great gin and tonic.
Aisling: Nature and art. Nature to find stillness and perspective, and art to refuel on inspiration and admire the work of others... be it music, exhibitions, film, theatre, all of it.