CELLIST AND COMPOSER DOBRAWA CZOCHER
Dreams have long fascinated artists and inspired their creative pursuits. How these fictions of the unconscious mind can feel both phantasmagorical and real, how they’re able to twist, bend and expand time itself, or the relation that they may carry to our waking life are questions that have inspired the likes of Dalí to Kafka. Likewise, these musings have served as the starting point for Dobrawa Czocher’s debut album, fittingly titled DREAMSCAPES. For it, the Polish cellist and composer takes listeners on a journey through unconsciousness exploring through sound the mystical richness of reveries. Dobrawa has an outstanding career in classical music - she's a member of the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, principal cellist of the Neue Philharmonie Berlin as well as the soloist at Szczecin Philharmonic.
We are excited to hear more about your upcoming album "Dreamscapes"- Tell us about your greatest inspirations or influences as a musician and a composer.
I always wanted to make my debut solo album as a conceptual one. With a leitmotiv and some core story behind the music. But because I have been collecting music for this album over two years, which is basically from the beginning of my adventure with composing, I had to somehow understand the musical language I operate most naturally first. And only then I realized what creating music gives me and what is the craziest thing about that - for me it’s about expressing the most elusive emotions and phenomena. This is when I decided I want this album to be about something familiar to everybody but also hard to comprehend fully. And this is of course dreams. Another aspect that I like is the duality of the word ‘dreams’ in English. It can be about falling asleep but also about desires.
Where do we go when we sleep, maybe this is one of the rare moments when we naturally connect with our unconscious mind, with our desires? I wanted “Dreamscapes” to be a journey, with a Prologue as a symbolic moment of falling asleep/falling into another state of mind, middle pieces as stories we encounter and Epilogue in the end which takes us back to reality. I want to know if we are the same people as before the journey. So, as you can see my great inspiration is the human mind.
But above all, I believe my greatest inspiration is living with curiosity, also analyzing and observing what other artists find in life and living worth showing in their art.
You're well-known as a cellist. Tell us a bit about your creative process as a composer.
I think I was always approaching playing cello in a way that reflected how I wished performed music to be full of expression, messages, and stories. Composing now is just another step to reach fuller expression of these stories, more personal, because sounds I play are written by me not another composer. What I want to say is that expression is just my aim as an artist generally. For this album specifically, I wanted to find a special atmosphere, of course, the dream-like one. But I decided I didn’t want to use any other instrument than the cello, I wanted this first solo album to be a representation of what my beautiful instrument is capable of. So, all of the noises, murmurs, and sounds that create this dream-like aura are achieved by the cello. I used many different playing techniques like arpeggio, pizzicato, flageolet, tremolo and then after recording them I met with a producer, Niklas Paschburg, spending time on searching effects which would emphasize and strengthen these techniques, and which would bring out this limitless feeling of a dream and dreaming. I believe production also brought a more modern touch to this album and for that I am very thankful to Niklas.
What are the themes you touch on with your new music?
Exactly like the title itself, it can be interpreted in many ways. I wanted this album to be multidimensional because in a dream anything is possible and that’s exactly what I wanted to find in the music. I think I wonder what’s happening with us while we sleep or while we dream .
How has this year changed your creativity and how do you see the world changing moving forward?
The world is changing and moving forward at such speed, we are still dealing with so many problems, just mentioning one – the pandemic. I will answer this here in the last question because I think that this speed is something dangerous for art and artists, for humans generally. I don’t think any shortcuts and quick solutions can be good for anything, especially for delicate matters like art. I hope that we can find more time basically for everything. For living and wondering, for dreaming and observing, for talking and being together. I believe only then we can make something valuable - either it's a piece of art or even the decisions we make in an everyday life.
Photo by Maria Skarbek-Kiełłczewska
