Another sky
Michele de Wilton has grown with her fascination for the piano as a means to give voice to her emotions which are of great beauty. She’s inspired by dreams and mythology, but mostly by the rhythms that nature gives us and that we have forgotten to listen. She returned them to us accompanied by her own view of the world, her feelings in front its contradictions and always looking for beauty behind the magic as in daily stories as in the one that come to us from mythology. A lover of poetry and emotional honesty as a way to create intense beauty, the one that leaves us a deep mark in a complete harmony. Her music is an invitation to travel beyond the everyday, telling stories that touch our souls.
You define your music as “solo piano to relax your soul”. Is your music made for these days?
My music is intended to take the listener on an emotional journey – to invite you to transcend the stress of everyday life. In this way, many people find it relaxing. Really, it’s intended for everyday – any time you need a little serenity in your life.
Once a little girl told you your music sounds like a flower opening. Is nature one of your muses?
There is great emotion, I think, in the rhythms of nature. I am very inspired by the seasons, by transitions in the world around us. I am currently working on a new album titled “Winter,” and I love the duality of the season – its dangerous, cold beauty contrasted with the comfort of a warm hearth.
Listening to your music it’s easy to think of New Age music. Is your personal new age the look for beauty?
I seek to offer beauty in my melodies. Even if the inspiration for a piece is sad, I hope to convey loveliness in my music.
Your debut album was called “Myths & Legends”. What about reality?
I have nothing against reality – but I think the tapestry of life is woven with stories. I believe mythology and legend inform reality by offering us idealized and extreme examples human behaviour. Stories bring magic to everyday life.
“The door in the wall” is particularly moving for me and its title image has a deep and hopeful effect. Could music be that door in the wall?
I think it can! Music is a universal language. It touches us in the deepest parts of our minds. It holds a unique power.
Fréderic Chopin is one of your early references and I think that’s particularly clear in “Sea of sunset”, again a beautiful image as a title for a beautiful tune. If you were a sea, what kind would you be?
I was born in Cape Town, South Africa, where the Atlantic and Indian oceans converge. My earliest memories of the sea are of dramatic swells and crashing waves. But if I could choose a sea with which to identify myself, it would be more tranquil, like the Mediterranean – but, yet, with many currents.
Your brand new album, “Daydream”, opens with “There’s another sky”. Isn’t the one we all know enough?
In many ways, “There is Another Sky” is about hope. It was inspired by a poem by Emily Dickinson:
There is another sky,
Ever serene and fair,
And there is another sunshine,
Though it be darkness there;
Never mind faded forests, Austin,
Never mind silent fields—
Here is a little forest,
Whose leaf is ever green;
Here is a brighter garden,
Where not a frost has been;
In its unfading flowers
I hear the bright bee hum:
Prithee, my brother,
Into my garden come!
When I read this poem, I was reminded of the power of shifting perspective. A sky heavy with rainclouds may appear ominous to one person yet signal a welcome respite from drought for another.
Do you feel like being “In the garden of the selfish Giant”?
I would love to visit the garden of the Selfish Giant! Oscar Wilde described it this way: “It was a large lovely garden, with soft green grass. Here and there over the grass stood beautiful flowers like stars, and there were twelve peach-trees that in the spring-time broke out into delicate blossoms of pink and pearl, and in the autumn bore rich fruit.” Who wouldn’t want to visit such a place?!
“Memory of the sun” is like beauty falling in a deep melancholy. Do you think the sun is in pain?
The inspiration for this piece was a poem by Anna Akhmatova:
Memory of sun seeps from the heart.
Grass grows yellower.
Faintly if at all the early snowflakes
Hover, hover.
Water becoming ice is slowing in
The narrow channels.
Nothing at all will happen here again,
Will ever happen.
Against the sky the willow spreads a fan
The silk's torn off.
Maybe it's better I did not become
Your wife.
Memory of sun seeps from the heart.
What is it? -- Dark?
Perhaps! Winter will have occupied us
In the night.
Clearly, there is deep melancholy in this poem. Here, the sun is a metaphor for love – and its loss.
Where does your beauty come from?
I believe the beauty in music comes from the emotional honesty of its interpretation. When a musician puts his or her heart into a piece, it shines through. I hope I bring that to my music.
Could you sing me a lullaby?
Actually, I have been working on a lullaby album! It will be released in 2012.
We’ll be waiting for it.
Photo courtesy of Michele de Wilton