Floating Around with Hayden Nickel and Marty G
A conversation with recent graduates Martin Greshoff and Hayden Nickel. We talk about the art we make, and why we make it. These conversations with my friends help me so much figuring out my approaches to art and life, and I hope they help and inspire you. As Hayden said after this interview, “that was surprisingly mega therapeutic”
Intro
Lauren: I’ve been reflecting on how my relationship with music has changed this year, and I think I’m actually kind of more open to performing now than I ever was. Partly because when I was at music school I had this weird and stupid mindset that I could not perform until I was ready to be presented to the world. Yanno, like I had to slave away in the practice rooms until I was good enough that I could perform and be like, this butterfly emerging from my cocoon and everyone will be like, oh my god she’s improved so much she’s amazing
Hayden: That’s totally a mindset a lot of people have who are heavily in the classical trajectory of music. Coz thats the very very traditional you disappear for 5 years and you turn up at a competition and you win it and then you perform all over the world
Martin: I think about this often not just in terms of music but in terms of cool people. You know when you hear of someone cool and you go on their Wikipedia page, they never have anything to do from when they’re like 21 to 30. Like these cool people, they’re like presidents or heads of cool organisations and they never say like “yeah they worked like a shitty cafe job for three years” or whatever. I don’t think we hear about like the middle bit of the process.
Lauren: Interestingly, that’s why I created this blog. Is because, of that in-between process, where you’re not really anything exactly. It’s trying to create a space that is not defined by a particular type of musician in terms of genre or job, because not often do you get to read about or hear about people who aren’t either famous or like the up and coming people, you know? They have to either be on a journey or be at the end of a journey, but there’s not much space for people who are just kind of floating around.
Hayden: that’s a great opening paragraph for you. That’s cool, I really like that, I really appreciate that
Can you tell me about the ways you make music? The scenes, jobs, or the genres you’re involved in.
Hayden: Oh yeah, I’ll go first. In a nutshell, I’m a violinist primarily. I’m in the classical music scene in Wellington. I grew up going through the Suzuki method, I did chamber music here, orchestra here and then went to music school at VUW. I’ve just finished my five-year conjoint degree and now I’m freelancing and teaching. So that’s me pretty firmly planted in the classical music scene.
Lauren: Do you want to say a little bit about the teaching you do?
Hayden: So I’ve taught for a long time, but right now I’m really interested and really excited about the more chaotic approach that comes with teaching in a really big group. I teach with Arohanui strings, mostly in the Hutt Valley, but stretching out into town now, and Virtuoso strings, in Porirua. They’re like, charity programmes that provide free music lessons, mostly with violin, to children who usually wouldn’t be able to afford them, or to parents who don’t have the time or interest to support kids through it. That’s really close to my heart because I was really lucky to have real solid parents who would never let me quit basically. Violin was a parent motivated thing for me for 10 years basically, before I took it myself.
Lauren: Vibes
Hayden: Yeah, which I’m really thankful for, I had a lot going for me when I was younger, and a lot of things I liked better than the violin, but this is a really cool topic we can come back to, but music or classical music at least is a really well funded and supported thing in the western world. In casual terms, there’s a lot of money in it. You can play music casually and still make a bit of money with it, but you can’t really play basketball or volleyball or do other things that casually and make money out of it. So that was a little bit of a motivator and why I’m still doing things.
Martin: Do you find that teaching and playing are connected art forms? Or do you look at them separately? I don’t do a lot of teaching so I don’t know.
Hayden: For me, very connected. The more I teach, the better I get at practising. Something that I’ve been really lucky to figure out I guess. I’ve talked to a lot of people who also teach, a lot of performers go through a teaching phase, especially while they’re studying. Maybe not Lauren. When I talk to them it’s very much a side job, not connected to themselves. I maybe look at things, in general, I look at a lot of things in like a connected way. The biggest thing I got out of uni was the deeper I got into getting to know how to play, and getting to know the music, like listening to other forms of music and getting better at listening in general, I appreciate other forms of art a lot deeper. It’s a lot easier to understand things that I never really got into before. So for me, they’re very connected. It also goes the other way, while I’m teaching I want to not just teach violin, I want to teach music education holistically, and also character building is a big thing, especially in Suzuki, and trying to bring that in as well. Arohanui strings and virtuoso strings are first and foremost community building and strengthening charities through music, so… yeah I think I’m in a good position to see how everything connects together.
Martin: I grew up with a very musical dad, and a very musical family, so I listened to a lot of things growing up. I knew I wanted to do music, I really liked composing, I really liked performing, and I got persuaded to do a jazz degree, which I don’t regret at all, it was absolutely the right thing for me to do. But I don’t really like defining myself in that as a genre, specifically. After going through uni and having 9 months of doing the full time performing thing, I wasn’t enjoying it THAT much, I didn’t find it too fulfilling, it’s just not the life for me, and also COVID hit, and we all got to look at our lives in a much more broad scope. So I went to just doing it part-time and working on the side, and now I’ve carved myself a little niche of composing and conducting and performing in jazz and classical circles, and just doing my own big projects and I really enjoy it.
Hayden: You were convinced into doing a jazz degree, but what do you think your trajectory was before that in terms of music?
Martin: I came not knowing if I wanted to do composition or jazz, but I felt this way I could keep on doing both more than if I was only doing composition. I didn’t want to be stuck in a room on my own writing all day. I wanted to be out there. And also I sort of felt that classical music has a very clear trajectory of how to learn, you get lessons with good people and there’s lots of writing on it. Jazz pedagogy just doesn’t really exist yet. So I didn’t really know how to get better. In fact I still kind of don’t. So it was nice having uni for that part of it to guide me in that direction while I knew sort of what to do to get better in the other realm.
Who do you like making music or art with the most? What relationships are most important to you in your music-making?
Hayden: Friends, peers, people who write music for you - ie Martin. Until you came along and I didn’t realise how fulfilling or exciting that would be, doing something like that
Martin: Yeah performing original music is really fun, so fun. We had in town, about 2 years ago, the Arthur Street Loft Orchestra run by Jake Baxendale, which was a huge step for me in terms of having a group of people who gathered every week to play original music, which is just so exciting, when the person is there, who wrote it and they’re hearing it and they’re really excited about it, and you feel that everyone just gets on board.
Lauren: Yeah for classical musicians as well, or for myself at least, what’s so exciting about it is that it doesn’t come with this massive history of the music as well, you get to decide yourself what the music will be, and there’s not a bunch of rules or expectations for how you play it.
Hayden: That’s something I think about when I’m teaching in Pasifika and Maori settings because they get to be in this really cool position where they don’t have to know about the whole tradition of playing violin, you just give them their instrument and then teach them how to play it and let them figure out what they want to do with it. The tradition of playing violin, because it’s hundreds and hundreds of years old can be really restricting, and I’ve been playing a lot of cellos recently. There’s a really interesting thing I’ve found recently where I pick up the violin and go to jam, like I’ve been trying to just improv recently, no music, just whatever comes out of my head - and on violin I just freeze, nothing wants to come out because I’m so locked into this, put music in front of you, learn it properly. But as soon as I pick up a cello, which I can barely play properly, it’s just so much more freeing. A lot more comes naturally to me, and I have a lot more fun with it, at the moment, at least.
Hayden: Friends are probably at the top of my list of people who I like to play with. Although, there is an element of playing with someone who’s much much better than you or in a group that is a lot better than you are, and having that feeling of what you could create if you got better, or if everybody is on the same page and everyone who has the same goal. So that’s why I like chamber and orchestra better than playing on my own.
Martin: I really like playing with people who have a more academic outlook on performing. Not, necessarily, in the university “you need to write papers on this” way, but I find it really satisfying when someone has clearly put a lot of thought behind what they’re doing. I just think those people are interesting. And people who have firmly held convictions about what art they are creating are very satisfying, even if you don’t agree with them. It’s just great hearing it… to a point.
Hayden: If you want I can name specific, poignant moments of inspiration?
Martin: That would be beautiful
Hayden: I won’t name any names, but I will name Donald Armstrong, when I played in a chamber music group with him and I saw a high-level chamber rehearsal get run, and just, I guess the lack of ego I saw in him. He was never like “this doesn’t sound great, you guys aren’t playing this right” it was all like he had all of these ideas and suggestions and he loved to share it with us and elevate everyone in the group even though we all knew he was the best player in the group, he didn’t treat us like he was the best player there. So there was that experience that made that performance a really amazing moment for me.
There was also the Adam Summer School that we were at, and we were playing a piece with this pianist, and rather than the performance side of things it was the rehearsal side that had been the most transformative for me. This pianist was just so in love with the music and what sounds he could create and what we could create together and the way he thought about things was never technical and I think that was really important for me. And there was an idea where he said he does the practice and everything but right at the end he doesn’t play anything he’s always singing in his head, he sings everything he’s playing at the same time and when I started applying that idea it changed so much. When I used to play in string class and performance workshop, my peers would say they could see me thinking, and it was like that. I would be performing but I would be calculating everything like I practised this this way, and I need this much pressure here and don’t use too much vibrato, just like I was measuring everything, and everything sounded okay but I could see you thinking. And then this pianist who, really lovely guy, coming from the other side saying “I’m not thinking I’m just singing everything”. That was a really important thing for me.
Martin: I love how you said “I’m not gonna name them” but then say only positive things about them
