Zoë Martlew

Cellist, performer, composer, educator, media commentator and writer

Life and Death

Life and Death

My first tongueless snog was on a clear moonlit night in the back of the cricket pavilion at Radley College in Abingdon, Oxfordshire. The ecstatic intensity of these fleeting minutes was accompanied by the voice of my deeply religious upbringing, insisting God would smite me down for such a terrible sin. But I didn’t care. I was prepared to risk the worst for this hair-gelled and fringe-highlighted mortal along with his taste in Nick Kershaw, Drakkar Noir and guyliner.

In the 2 hours that followed I spun the pinkest, fluffiest dreams of love, knowing we would be married before long and wondering already what kind of present I could buy such a paragon of style. A thin leather piano keyboard tie perhaps? Name bracelet? An alternative to the Drakkar? [Read more…] about Life and Death

On course for Nibiru

There’s less than a fortnight left until the end of the world. It’s official. It’s curtains for planet Earth on December 21st 2012. The Mayans said so and their clocks have been accurate to within seconds for thousands of years. They run out in a matter of days.

If you don’t believe me, google Maya 2012 and marvel.

Some say that Earth is to be sucked into a black hole at the centre of the galaxy on the winter solstice. Others, that we’re on a collision course with a planet called Nibiru. If you’ve made it through Lars Von Trier’s film Melancholia you’ll know what to do. And avoid the Tristan sound track. [Read more…] about On course for Nibiru

The rose doesn’t ask why

Oh my God I’m in love! Desperately in love! And not with one, not two but a whole stage full of hot young men grooving their shirts off, making an unbelievable amount of noise.

I’m in the Purcell Room at the (THE – note use of forbidden definite article) Southbank Centre. Yes, you heard me, the Purcell Room, a venue I’d not seen and frankly tried to forget since the early 90s when playing in a concert of Brian Ferneyhough’s lesser known chamber works to an audience of 5 beardy weirdies with plastic bags and bad jumpers. [Read more…] about The rose doesn’t ask why

Different silences

As far as I can see there are music shops. Outside each one, musicians sit with bowls of green tea, playing ancient melodies on pot-bellied reed flutes, single stringed huqins and high pitched whiny violins punctuated by the odd paiban wood-clapper.

They wave and smile at me as I walk past, the only blonde in the world, inviting me to try the instruments and the tea, nodding congenially when I show my calloused cello fingers to indicate the benign presence of a fellow muso. [Read more…] about Different silences

The Bridge

“This should sound like your wife screaming” was the composer’s first comment to the London Sinfonietta trombonist during rehearsals for his piece “Run” in the large dance rehearsal studio at the Royal Theatre in central Copenhagen.

“Ah yes!” he said as I whacked sfffffz hell out of my cello fingerboard with the wood of the bow. “A real catastrophe!” (He’d probably have been pleased to know that my brand new bow fell apart during the opening bars of a performance seminar I gave music students in Copenhagn a few days later). [Read more…] about The Bridge