Gabriel Cabezas (Cello ’13)
By: Curtis Young Alumni Voices
Tags: Multimedia, New York City, Cello, Patreon, Collaboration

Portrait by illustrator Kirsten George

Interviewed by Ali King

Director, Marketing and Business Development

Curtis Institute of Music

December 7, 2020

AK: Where are you holding this Zoom call with me today?

GC: New York City. I’ve lived here for about five years. I love it a lot even though it’s of course gone through some changes this year.

AK: It seems like you’re staying busy despite the pandemic. Duende is one of your projects that I’m curious to hear more about.

GC: I have a lot of interests and get bored easily! With Duende it’s a meandering story, but I got involved playing a Live Connections show in Philly the year after I graduated from Curtis. Mary Javian, Curtis’s Chair of Career Studies, had curated a concert that I was in with a dancer, Chloe Perkes, and a composer, Alyssa Weinberg. Over the years the three of us have put on a few evening-length productions in Philly, and with Curtis’s Ensemble 20/21. We were supposed to be working on a residency at the Performance Garage this year, which unfortunately didn’t happen. We’re interested in building some video collaborations with original music, but Chloe is currently pregnant, so things are a bit on hold for now.

AK: As a cofounder of the group, what other roles do you play besides cellist?

GC: Whenever you venture out onto your own and try to make something, it requires a certain fluidity. I tend to do more of the nuts-and-bolts scheduling of rehearsals since I’m usually involved in them. Otherwise, the administrative work is pretty equally distributed.

AK: What have you learned about marketing projects like Duende with a small team?

GC: I think classical musicians might be the most unfairly maligned when it comes to having to market our own work. Because I’ve worked a lot in other genres, I’ve seen that those musicians tend to have more support than classical musicians do. This idea that as freelancers we’re supposed to be a one-person business is limiting. I wish there were better resources available for people who understand and are good at marketing to partner with classical musicians to help us identify what will sell or how to spin it.

AK: Is social media your primary marketing channel? I see some Curtis alumni really embracing being their own promoters and treating followers very much as an extension of their audience.

GC: I’m comfortable with it but posting on social media for my projects is usually retroactive; I kind of need someone telling me to do it. There are certain aesthetics and formats of social media storytelling that are popular, but I tend to gravitate towards narratives that are stranger and more personal.

AK: Along the lines of marketing, how does YMusic, an ensemble you’re a part of, utilize Patreon?

GC: YMusic as an entity has been around longer than I’ve been involved with it. It first began with the goal of creating readymade instrumentation for singers and songwriters, and from there inspired other people to write music for the ensemble. In the last three years we started writing our own music, right around the time we started working with Paul Simon. All six of the ensemble members went to conservatories, but none of us had a degree in composition so it was a bit daunting at first. We started to build a musical language and style, and now have written about ten pieces together. When COVID-19 hit, we wondered how we’d continue writing remotely and knew we needed accountability measures. I think we defined our own metrics of success with Patreon. It was less about earning revenue and more about a structure to stay connected with our audience, along with deadlines to keep producing. By the time we can meet in person again, we will have created a decent amount of high-quality content that we can use for the album we’re building towards and its promotion.

AK: Tell me about working on and recording Lost Coast with Curtis alumna Gabriella Smith.

GC: Gabriella and I were the same year at Curtis, and I remember when we met during orientation freshman year. Since then we’ve been good friends and always wanted to make music together. I became fascinated by her compositional process as she got more comfortable working with music notation software, and especially her mockups. Lost Coast is an album of her music that blends voices, percussion, and strings. It tracks a journey, a musical hike, and is a collection of little tableaus. We recorded it in two sessions last year with Bedroom Community in Iceland. The first time was during the endless light of summer, and the second was near the winter solstice in December. Maybe it’s confirmation bias, but I hear that atmospheric split on certain tracks.

AK: What’s next for the album?

GC: We’re working on a release date; it’s mixed but not mastered. We’re going to have a cool video premiere led by videographer Darian Thomas in early 2021 as part of The Great Northern Festival, which usually takes place in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. The album will be available in the usual digital channels.

AK: How can Curtis foster lasting relationships with its alumni?

GC: I love the idea of staying connected with Curtis. Our musical world is small, so there’s a natural amount of intersection we can expect with each other. There are so many surprising alumni stories — people who are doing unexpected things and even leaving music. I’m big into food culture and was reading an interview about Alexander Smalls, who I had no idea went to Curtis! When you’re at Curtis it’s easy to feel really secure in the way that you think your life is going to go; it would be gratifying as an alumnus to see Curtis help students open up any assumptions about their career early on, while still allowing them to focus on their craft.