My Seaside Notebook: an interview with composer, pianist, and instructor Angeline Bell
When Covid struck and most of us were trapped in our homes binge watching shows or scrolling through social media, Angeline Bell became a composer. A lifelong pianist and piano instructor, isolation brought forth an entirely new aspect of her musical abilities. Since composing her first piano pieces in 2022, Bell has released a fountain of instructional music, each collection unique and each one highlighting her astonishing ability to create interesting, delightful music with very few notes.
My Seaside Notebook, one of her most recent collections, offers musical excursions for late beginner and intermediate pianists of all ages. From peaceful piano to jazz, pop to rock, this collection highlights lyrical melodies and surprisingly intricate rhythmic patterns.
I’ve watched Angeline Bell’s continued success over the past two years and have enjoyed reading her informative and helpful guest posts on quite a few other piano blogs. I’m honored that she agreed to share her music and her thoughts here on No Dead Guys.
I understand that you started piano lessons when you were six years of age. What was it about the piano that drew you to it?
My mother was taking piano lessons and one day, she asked me to go along and have a trial with her teacher. I soon overtook her! My mum told me that I responded to music as a baby and could sing in tune from a young age. I loved playing the piano from the start. The instrument is so versatile; it can convey so many emotions and be used for any style of music. When I was 12 years of age, my cousin came round to our house and taught me how to play her violin. My father said to me, “If I paid you some money, will you stop playing?” So I just stuck to the piano!
At what point in your musical training did you decide to make music your career and what convinced you to do so?
I had passed my Grade 8 piano at 14 and ATCL Performance Diploma at 16. As there were no music colleges in Malaysia, I had to go overseas to study music. My family thought it would be a good idea to send me to a boarding school in the UK to study for my A levels so that I had a better chance of getting into a good music college or university. Although I was offered a place at Trinity College of Music, I decided to study music at University of East Anglia as it was a more academic course. It was then that I decided that music was going to be my career path. When I was at UEA in Norwich, I would travel every fortnight to the Royal Academy of Music to have piano lessons with Ruth Harte. After I graduated, I stayed another year to do my PGCE. I wanted to be a music teacher as I love working with children.
One of the things that I find most astounding about your work as a composer is that you only started writing piano music in 2022 while you were recovering from Covid. Had you composed anything before this date?
I had composed Christian songs for my church in Malaysia and when I moved to the UK, I continued writing Christian songs for Three Bridges Free Church. They are free to download from christianmusic4kids
What composers have had the most influence on you?
Probably Ola Gjeilo, Yiruma, Alexis Ffrench, Joe Hisaishi, Chopin and Debussy.
In researching you I was thrilled to read of all the support you’ve received from Nikolas Sideris, the gifted composer, pianist, and publisher of Editions Musica Ferrum. What can you tell me about how you two started working together?
I am a big fan of Ben Crosland’s music, and I love the artwork on all the EMF books so when my friends encouraged me to find a publisher, I googled for the telephone number and got through to Nikolas. He loved the demos I sent him and was very enthusiastic and supportive. He performed and recorded the pieces in My Lyrical Notebook and My Quirky Notebook. The beautiful artwork on my Notebooks were created by Rebecca Harrie, a gifted graphic designer.
For someone who has only been composing and publishing since 2022, you have turned out an extraordinary number of compositions and collections. What is your composing process, and why do you think your creativity led you this way at this point in your career?
I like going for walks and sometimes a tune would come into my head. I am inspired by the beauty of nature; flowers, trees and animals, as seen in My Garden Notebook. My Arboream album released by Blue Spiral Records has pieces named after trees. Usually, from a small musical idea or ‘seedling’, I would improvise and work on it until it becomes a structured composition or ‘tree’. In the case of “Maple” which was released by Digitality Records, I just pressed ‘record’ and it was 99% how I played it for the first time.
I had bought a Kawai piano that had a USB port, and I found it so easy to record onto a memory stick. From that, I learned to upload my music onto social media where I had a positive response. Amie Webster discovered my music on Facebook and made a YouTube video of Squeezy the Squirrel that attracted a lot of attention.
Congratulations on one of your most recent releases, My Seaside Notebook, which is a collection of surprisingly diverse educational pieces for pianists of all ages. What can you tell me about your inspiration for this collection?
I love the seaside, and I wanted a theme that would inspire me and unify my ideas into an album. I thought of all the interesting things I had seen on my beach holidays and put the emotions I felt into music; the excitement of seeing dolphins, the romance of taking a walk under the moonlight with my husband and the exhilaration of standing at the edge of a cliff at Land’s End.
From jazz to rock to gospel to peaceful piano (and more) My Seaside Notebook offers styles for most tastes. I’m particularly impressed with your lyrical melodies and the rhythmic complexity you offer in the accompanying patterns. What or who most influences you regarding these two things?
When I listen to pop or jazz music, I like to recreate them on the piano by ear. The strumming rhythms of the guitar and the beat of the drums are translated onto the piano. I listen to all genres of music, and I am influenced by them all.
The educational pieces in My Seaside Notebook also cover a range of difficulty, which offer something for intermediate pianists of all levels. How difficult was it for you to write such interesting melodies for the less challenging pieces in this collection?
I find writing for intermediate level quite easy. Writing interesting music for beginners is more challenging and writing for advanced level is very time-consuming. The test of a good melody is whether you can hum or sing it.
My favorite piece in this collection is “Funky Crab” a blues-based jazzy rock tune featuring some very sophisticated jazz chords. What is your own experience with this style of music and how challenging was it to translate the feel for the intermediate classical player?
I think this piece has Jamiroquai, Stevie Wonder and the “Mission Impossible” theme all mixed in! I just imagined a crab dressed in disco flares doing a casino heist and this came out!
Another favorite is “Rising Tide.” What can you tell me about your masterful use of rhythm to build tension?
I think I was just improvising, and I found myself playing this immediately almost by accident. When I was little, I was trapped on a sand bank by the oncoming tide and when I tried to wade back to shore, the water level was already above my head. Thankfully, I was a good swimmer and made it safely. I wanted to create the tension of an unstoppable wall of water.
Where might we purchase My Seaside Notebook?
Musicroom stocks the hard copies and musica-ferrum sells the PDF single downloads and studio licenses which allow photocopying for your students.
What current and future projects are you most excited about?
Last year, I had a new student who turned out to be a talent scout for Naxos Music. She asked me to write some Oriental-inspired pieces which have been compiled into an album named Echoes of the Orient. I asked Katie Yao Morgan, my ex-student, child prodigy and winner of the Gracten Festival, to play the piano for me and we also recorded a piano duet together. I had also composed three Erhu pieces which were performed by Xiao Wang who has played in the soundtracks for Kung Fu Panda, The Mummy and Shang Chi. We spent a very exciting day at West London Studios recording the album which will be released in 2025.
What advice can you offer other aspiring composers?
Platforms like YouTube and Spotify have made it easy to put your music out there in the world. Setting up your own website and selling your sheet music is also the fashion nowadays. Getting a record label or a publisher is much more difficult, and a lot of patience and perseverance is needed. I have been very richly blessed indeed.
Angeline Bell is a Malaysian piano teacher and composer residing in Crawley, West Sussex, UK. She started composing piano music in March 2022 while isolating with the coronavirus. She has written My Lyrical Notebook, My Quirky Notebook, My Garden Notebook and My Seaside Notebook published by Editions Musica Ferrum. She has received glowing reviews from The Piano Magazine, The Pianist magazine, Pianodao, David Barton Music and Julian Lambert. Eight of her pieces have been broadcast on the “The Sleeping Forecast” by BBC Sounds. She has released five albums and has signed record deals with Blue Spiral Records, Digitality Records and ARC Music (part of Naxos). You can listen to her music on Spotify and other streaming platforms. Her website is angelinebellmusic.com