Composer

Born – London 2001, Gabrielle Dalsan is a composer and visual artist studying an MA in Music

Composition at The Royal College of Music, under Dr. Catherine Kontz and Dr. Dai Fujikura. Her work is centred around mystical themes, dark material and folklore, and is heavily influenced by her synaesthesia and passion for the visual arts, painting, philosophy, psychology and feminism. She primarily composes for small and intimate ensembles, such as chamber group, voice or solo piano. Prior to studying at the RCM, she graduated from King’s College London with a BA in Music, whilst receiving vocal lessons at The Royal Academy of Music under Sarah Champion, going on to work at the Royal Opera House the following year. She has also completed her ABRSM Grade 8 certification in Piano and Singing, with a piano performance at Fairfield Halls. In January 2024, she performed her solo work ‘Wolf’ for voice, and in February 2024, chamber work ‘Black Ring’ was premiered at the RCM in the Chamber Festival, alongside the Head of Composition – Dr. Jonathon Cole. Gabrielle’s ‘Puppet Nuit’ has been performed by the professional Lontano Ensemble and she will write for students at the ENB, for a performance at The Wallace Collection during spring 2024.

Gabrielle’s compositions aim to weave feeling, sensation and movement together, carrying the listener through a naturally evolving experience, like a hypnosis or passage of time in which they are being guided by sound. It’s through this mystical atmosphere, that she delivers uncomfortable messages. At the core of her sound is a tense, struggle with conflict, that is often pulled into a fine and gentle resolution – a blend of beauty and unease. However, in recent electronic works, Gabrielle has stripped away precision and ornamentation to reveal brutality in its raw state. Her recent work ‘The Pursuit of Man’ takes cuttings of archived, misogynistic footage, and sews together the audio to lay bare the misogyny for people to hear. A similar work (under a working title), uses layers of audio files to confuse and mentally spin the listener to create overwhelm, with the purpose to demonstrate the bombardment of modern culture on our minds and our nervous system. Gabrielle’s work captures violent and distressing themes, delivered with compassion. She does not seek to attack the listener, rather to create a warm space whereby discomfort is just bearable. She aims to unlock our shadow side, so that we can sit in discomfort whilst demonstrating loving compassion for our self and each other. Her work also has a provocative and sensual nature, centred around the body. Her piano piece ‘Die Unarmung’ depicts the interwoven state of two bodies, and her recent vocal piece ‘Carmine’ exposes the intimate relationship between woman and blood, anger, sacred ritual and frustration. Similarly, her layered vocal sounds for ‘The Witch Trials’ explore an eruption of ‘witch’, the supernatural, the terror within one soul, or one’s spiritual essence that becomes separated from the body. The work includes mutterings, mummering’s, whispers and a chorus of non-compliant singing – with no rigid form – to suggest an eruption and subsequent pulling of the terror back inside the body.

Her piece ‘Amy’, inspired by the photograph ‘Amy and The Twins’ by Sophie Smith, explores the “obstetric violence” placed on Amy’s body throughout her birth. Gabrielle’s work lies between reality and mysticism, healing through bloodshed, life and death, sex and the self, darkness and beauty, all with the intention to explore unearthed parts of the psyche, through vulnerability, and discomfort.

Grapheme-Colour, Chromesthesia, Spatial-Sequence Synaesthesia and Number-Form Synaesthesia are present throughout her compositions. She writes harmonies based upon natural and overwhelming colour schemes and structural forms that appear in her mind. She will often compose in response to paintings or visuals, pulling music from the tones of a painting. Instead of using specific key signatures, Gabrielle uses colour palettes, imagery and intuition to direct her tonal choices. In the piece ‘Black Ring’ (inspired by black holes, the destruction of twinkling stars in the night sky, and the artworks; ‘The Metempsychosis roundel’ by Denis Forkas Kostromitin, and ‘Dreams VII’ by Albín Brunovský), Gabrielle’s synaesthesia “manifested in this work as ‘colourless’, like dark matter. The opening piano passages are white and twinkling, with a silver band of glissando that stretches into thick, dark double stops. The piece descends into a blackness, a chaos of uncoloured piano harmony – the black hole.” – (from her programme notes). Her synaesthesia’s are a constant, unique tool to connect and enmesh sound with tangible art. Gabrielle seeks to mould, bend and shape sound around us.

Artist

The London Mall Galleries have shown two of my oil-paintings. She has a passion for romance, spirituality and eroticism, with her work predominantly revolving around the female form and nature. She focuses on life-drawing, oil painting, Japanese ink and watercolour work.

She derives inspiration from works by Mark Demsteader, William Turner, and more recently from the joy, ornamentation and complexity in Klimt; and in Schiele the honesty and angst in his very expressive, intimate works, which she had the privilege of seeing in Austria last year. In complete contrast, Gabrielle enjoys the simplicity of Japanese line drawings and Zen paintings in which essences are expressed and reduced to minimal forms.

Mind & Body

Gabrielle has a love for the mind, body and soul, learning and practicing wellness modalities. She honours the female body and feels strongly that we should value our natural rhythms and cycles. We should practice sensuality and a connection to our bodies, priotising healing and self-love. Midwife, Jane Hadwicke Collins and Sophie Walker, Sexologist’s - Juliet Allen and Kim Anami, Author’s - Clarissa Pinkola Estes and Maisie Hill and Ina - May Gaskin, Artist’s Hitomi Mochizuki, Anastasia and Julia Vanderbyl are among many women who have inspired her through her own spiritual growth.

gabrielledalsan@gmail.com
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