I'd studied piano first and switched over to cello when I was about seven. I played mostly chamber and solo classical music. I got really involved with rock music when I was a teenager. I wired up my cello.
I started piano lessons at age six but didn't take music seriously until I was a teenager, when I thought about a career in music. I studied classical music, and my instruments were guitar and piano. I played keyboards in bands, and after high school I went to Vienna to study at the Academy of Music. I also became a session player, which culminated in my work with Tangerine Dream.
I've always been a lover of classical music ever since I was an early teenager I suppose. I remember the very first piece of classical music that grabbed me was I bought an LP of Daniel Barenboim performing Mozart's piano concertos and I would have been about 14 or 15 at the time and I remember I played it over and over again.
Even in classical music, the cello doesn't get a lot of respect because the piano and the violin get it all.
But it's funny, I really was quite introverted as a child. I just liked music, so mum and dad bought me a piano when I was seven - I actually got up to Grade Seven at the London College of Music on piano.
I particularly enjoy cello music because our daughter plays the cello. I have listened to her practice for so many hours that I am familiar with the music written for that instrument. I am also fond of the popular music of the 1930s because my future husband and I danced to it so many Saturday nights when we were in college.
People don't think of cello as a rock instrument, really, and we want people to know all the possibilities that the cello can offer.
I guess I'm interested in pushing the boundaries of the cello without giving up on the idea of playing the cello, if that makes any sense. I have no real interest in putting the cello through different effects to make it sound like a guitar or other instruments.
When I was very young, I played in a punk-rock band, but I also studied music theory and classical music.
I love Bach cello suites, I love punk music, I love old blues, negro spiritual quartets, Muddy Waters' 'You Need Love.' There is a simplicity but also a bite that connects all that music, from the growl in the cello to the timbre in Muddy's voice.
I played tennis. My older brother, Joseph, was a cello player, and I played the cello, but he was better than me at the cello, and he was also a better tennis player than me, so I was always like, 'I wish there was something that only I did!'
I had 12 years of classical music as a child, playing piano competitions as a teenager, playing in blues bands and rock 'n' roll bands, country and jazz bands. I played in about any situation.
There are a lot of ways to be expressive in life, but I wasn't good at some of them. Music, for instance. I was a distinct failure with the cello. Eventually, my parents sold the cello and bought a vacuum cleaner. The sound in our home improved.
Actually, music gave me the support when I needed it. I would never have gone to college unless I'd gotten a piano scholarship. And now I'm so glad I got to learn to play the cello, which is a different experience, you're flexing a different muscle, but it's beautiful because it is music.
If we just stick to one kind of music, our creativity is limited. We wanted to extend the audience for the cello, especially the younger people, and to show them how cool and how powerful and how diverse the cello can be.
I started to play noise on my cello because I felt a deep personal connection to it. I mean, I still love all the beautiful sounds of the cello as much as anybody but it's only when I play certain sounds I know that the cello really presents who I am; not my emotions but who I am as a person.
Because in classical music cello is not regarded as a popular choice, it's always playing the long, boring notes.