Georgina Brett - Biography
Born in 1970 Georgina Brett began her days in the quiet country lanes of Norfolk.
It was whilst she was at her girls' day school in Norwich that she began studying the Oboe at 10 years old, the clarinet at 12 and the piano at 14 years old. At 15 her mother told her she really ought to switch to studying music for her "GCSE" level, and her talent for music began to shine. She was a member of the school choir and orchestra. At age 12 she sang in Mozart's Requiem and at 14, played Oboe in St. John Passion by Bach. At 16 she transferred to a new school, where she studied maths, electronics and music. In her own words "It wasn't cool to be a musician then, so my studies slipped a bit.", However Georgina performed in many concerts in and around North Norfolk including a solo performance of the first movement of Mozart's Oboe Concerto with full Orchestra.
Georgina went on to Study Music at Edinburgh University where she obtained
a Bachelor of Music Degree with Honours 2:1. Her preferred subjects were
electronic composition, acoustics, Modernist and Avant Garde music, performance
and counterpoint. Georgina was also Music Director of the University Theatre
Company between 1990-1992 and performed in and wrote music for award winning theatre shows. She composed " Formalism" a piece of music exploring reflection and retrograde in a graphic pattern, which had fascinated her to the present day.
After winning a bursary to study composition at the world renowned Banff Centre
in Canada, where she continued her fascination with reflection and retrograde in the composition "us two too", Georgina obtained a second bursary, the Fraser Scholarship from Edinburgh University, to further her studies at Birmingham University, where she studied Electronic Composition and Aesthetics at MA level. She was involved with the surround sound system, Birmingham Electro-Acoustic Sound Theatre (B.E.A.S.T.) she performed in Momente by Karlheinz Stockhausen at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. In particular, studies into the work of Iannis Xenakis and the theory of "Semiotics" made a great and lasting impression on her.
Between 1995 and 1997 Georgina wrote music for several plays including, "Someone Waiting" by Emlyn Williams at the Richmond playhouse, "Cymbeline" by Shakespeare at the Central school of Drama,and "Marathon" by Edwardo Erba for the Fringe Festival at Edinburgh.
Between 1997 and 2001 Georgina wrote many compositions, including dance tracks from the point of view of a modern day avante garde composer (dance tracks in 5/4 not the common 4/4, and a "never dropping" symphony for the high hat). She wrote compositions with Disinformation's Joe Banks, summited music for "Rumble", an exhibition at the Royal Sculptor's Society she also completed a couple of remixes for the band "Phantom", and one for the band "The Jeep Grrlz".
Between 2001-2003 she joined the "Cosmic Jam" band, a concept in jamming, which helped her to use her knowledge in spontaneous music making which makes one aware of the whole piece of music in the moment and not limited to music notation or learning a song by wrote. This was a liberating time for Georgina, where she began to pick up the microphone and, sing, something she had always wanted to do. Gradually finding her feet she took some lessons in singing.
2003 - 2006 Georgina joined "Olinclive" a band which allowed her to learn totally set 'indie-style' songs and perform them with a large ensemble. She began, in this period to work with Steve Finnerty (Alabama 3) with vocal and guitar improvisations.
Between 2003 - 2006 Georgina ran a label called 'Solidsilence' which produced 4 albums of live binaurally recorded music from Buddhafield and Small World Solar Stage Festivals in the UK. Both festivals have a capacity of under 3000 people and the fascination in these works was in the human element, the relatively large amount of people in the same space with no electronic or mechanical noises. Both Festivals are run wholly on Green energy, solar and wind. The phenomena of large groups of people together without the noises of modernity are few and far between in the UK and in most 1st world countries. Also the interaction between the crowd and the band is often lost on even the most authentic sounding 'live' album. So another preoccupation here was to expose and feel the flow between audience and band.
2006 - 2008 Georgina became aware during a recording session, that she most liked to work with her voice and delay units, creating instant choirs of sound in an hypnotic style. The point of this music is not only to captivate with extraordinary timing and melodic style but also to help the listener to relax, the pace of the music can be slow, in our ever increasingly fast world, this music is set to help us relax, the music is restful and intellectually it adheres to some modernist principles but using harmonious parameters, instead of dissonance. In her own words Georgina says "I sleep to my music sometimes, it's so calming."
2008-2012 This live-looping work has taken over Georgina's musical life, most of the time with pure unaccompanied live-looping singing performing at Festivals in the UK, USA and Europe. In late 2011 and 2012 she is beginning to branch out into further experimental work, sometimes using instruments in the live recording and also returning to the editing table, with many remixes and collaborations in the pipeline it is going to be a good year!