Detta Danford and Natasha Zielazinski represent a generation that seems equally at home with the notion of collaboration and with single-author work. This approach to music-making has been the trigger for their work with the two ensembles they have created. The two women work closely together on the projects and they share a desire for certain principled working conditions and methods as much as for a particular musical identity. The four female authors who wrote the famous 1986 study of female intellectual development Women’s Ways of Knowing: The Development of Self, Voice, and Mindlater described their joint authorship as ‘a chorus of voices which was to sing the story we wanted to tell; there were to be no solos’.Perhaps this ‘chorus of two’ operates in a similar way, leading to a unique relation with the musicians and communities they work with.

We are two musicians who experienced a similar journey. Though growing up on different sides of the Atlantic, we had both learned our instruments (cello and flute) in the classical tradition from an early age, and we enjoyed playing in ensembles and orchestras. We entered conservatoires, which were full of the things we loved about making music. But we were soon confronted with an unsatisfying world, which seemed to place little emphasis on playfulness or creation, but instead emphasised the preservation of tradition and the importance of winning competitions, preparing for auditions and getting a job. So we began to search for better space, in which we could question and challenge, experiment and take risks.

Pathways

In 2006, we met at the Masters in Music Leadership course at the Guildhall. There we had exceptional mentors and we played and devised projects together. By then, we were sure we didn’t want a career in conventional orchestras. Smaller ensembles gave us more creative control, both musically and artistically, and opened up the possibility of closer collaboration with other performers and composers. As we explored this on the Guildhall Leadership course, we realised that we wanted to play and create, as well as work with different kinds of musicians and artists; discovering how well and enjoyably we worked as a partnership, we set out jointly to form two contemporary music ensembles: Jetsam and Future Band.