I have been exploring multifarious ways of making music & playing the ‘Cello in all kinds of 'genres', both 'experimental' and 'not', in formal and unusual settings, and with different approaches to the interact-ion with sound, people, place and time/spontaniety, since around 1997.
I approach the cello in it's objective reality, of parts and components, consciously bringing my subjectivity, body /mind and movement to that, so that I'm aware of how expressing myself and how the instrument can make sounds, play off each other. Sometimes I end up taking the instrument apart, sometimes I play it set up traditionally. Mostly I do this in an improvised setting where the focus can be entirely on listening and physical/mental awareness, however I also enjoy playing composed and written music in both small and large ensembles.
I make sound and music for stories, theatre, film and dance. I have been (and still am!) involved in theatre as a performer, with instruments and not, in sound design, production and devising.
I draw pictures, and make short films.
I am a trained & real-life experienced community music and life-long-learning ‘teacher/learner’, guiding musicianship, creative practice and practical playing.
Please take a look at the CV below if you want to know more about my training and past experiences.
Excerpts from reviews of performances and recordings:
'Tulse Hill' - solo record with Linear Obsessional: "BRILLIANT improv pieces for solo detuned cello by glorious Hannah Marshall !!!! - minimal & rhythmic & instant & also eternal !!! - first BC random-hit of the day !!! - there is a god !!!!" -Pyongyang Plastics
The Ding Foundation's 'Wild Life': "..perfect, sensuous clarity of performance. A heartfelt play, Wild Life serves up a jungle of emotions, the urge to make sure you never fall into the pit of personal abandonment and become stale, a ghost of yourself; for nobody should ever feel that small or insignificant. A wonderful production! Ian D. Hall - Liverpool Sound and Vision
Live performance with John Edwards - Bass & Alex Ward - Clarinet: "The trio play two long pieces, with every note forged an act of co-operative discovery, every pattern of sound new, transient and fleeting, never to be heard again" Morning Star Online.
'Gratuitous Abuse' by Barrel with Ivor Kallin - Viola & Alison Blunt - Violin: "...imagine three first class musicians locked up in a time capsule, having associated with various shamans, drunk Romanian fiddlers, Yiddish chant leaders, the serialists, especially Webern. Then folks like Ligeti, Satie, and various Dadaists pop their head round the door from time to time to put in their tuppenceworth. After a few months you let them loose in the 21st century to pick up on the very new....." Fouter & Swick
Halftone with Yvonna Magda - Violin, Tina Hitchens - Flute & Caitlin Callahan - Bass: "The foursome play an unsettling, absently beautiful post classical music evoking wind in the trees, unresolved conversations and difficulties around corners" – Misfit City.
Wild Theatre's 'Stone Belly': '...A trance-like hypnotic power, magnified by Hannah Marshall's specially composed score it lured the audience smoothly and effectively into it's world of dreams and memories, a place inhabited by discarded and forgotten things..." Animations Online -Isabel Smith
'Haste' with Ingrid Laubrock - Tenor Saxophone & Veryan Weston - Piano: "sublime technical abilities, which is marked by spectacular passages of pizzicato and con arco playing. Replacing the absolute bass of the music, Marshall nonetheless shows up with brilliant passages where she reinvents melodic lines, provides spectacular harmonic intervention, and sets the pulse around which much of the music revolves. Together, these three musicians have created an ingenious document where past and present collide revealing a glimpse what might be in a not-so- imaginary future" - Raul de Gama Rose
Live performance with Julie Kjaer - Alto Saxophone & Rachel Musson - Tenor Saxophone: " a single diaphonous improvisation of heart stopping intensity and quietude that brings the entire room into a tip-toed state of heightened awareness..." Daniel Spicer - The Wire.
Tulse Hill: "..with 'Tulse Hill' Hannah Marshall has proven herself to be a solo player of imagination and intelligence; recording an album of deceptively simple but very rewarding and hypnotic music. A series of small meals that combine in a feast for the ears and mind." -Michael Holland - Ears For Eyes
