Issue No.21 - Polo De’Marco Magazine Issue No.21 - International Edition | Page 153

since I admired him as a musician myself. I felt him
and spent so much time with him, listening to him
sharing his wisdom which changed and boosted
my playing when I was 18. His approach to playing,
which is bow-pressure, has a muscular, thick sound
that he was able to create from his techniques. I
wanted these techniques for myself. I feel that certain
elements of his musical and technical approaches
were very helpful to me, and that he made a big
difference to my playing.
Q5. Talking about education, your a visiting
Professor at the Leeds College of Music and
Accademia di Musica in Florence to name a
few. What is on the agenda if I came to your
class? And, are you a strict teacher or are you
bit more relaxed?
CS: I don’t do that often! I usually do a MasterClass
the following day for local students in order to
share my processes, and my way of approaching
music to an audience and to the students. It doesn’t
come naturally to me being a teacher. I grew up
serving these MasterClasses and found that they
were about the master more than the student. It’s
like showing how much the teacher knew. You do
learn a lot by trying to teach by thinking through
your process, and about every decision you made in
terms of musical and technical decisions. You barely
understand it yourself, and then you have to explain
it to somebody else.
Q6. Your album ‘Under the Stars’ - you
composed a song called ‘canapé’. What
processes did you go through to create a
magnificent piece from tunes on a music board
through to having a full orchestra? And, what
was it like to hear it for the first time?
CS: Well, it was amazing experience. I’m not really a
composer traditionally, but I did this partly because
I was commissioned to do it by Jeremy Murphy;
my publicist who worked with CBS. Jeremy had a
project for CBS that required a composition that was
written, so he asked me to do it. I had an idea in my
mind and a simple theme that was a fiscardo theme
which the piece begins with - I worked it on the
piano and expanded upon it. I then drew up a score