Home

Biography- Juliette Daum

 

I was born in a log house that my father built on the shore of Red Cedar Lake, Wisconsin, on August fourth 1984. I am the fifth and youngest child of my parents. When I was three, my mother died of cancer and I was then raised by my father and my step mother Vicki.

I liked to sing a lot as a small child, especially when riding in the car. I made up tunes as I went along. You wouldn’t call them regular tunes, more like very abstract strange sounds woven together. They didn’t make a lot of sense to others, but must have to me as I kept on doing it for years. I didn’t actually start to play an instrument until a bit later, starting with the flute and then the violin. One of my older sisters was living in Prague and bought a beautiful old violin for me with a carved lions head on it. I really liked playing it but had some trouble with playing in ordinary tuning, sort of like my singing as a small child.
So in learning to play the violin, I played a lot of what might be termed as free notes that bent the limits of the twelve tone western system. The sounds I was producing nearly drove my mother crazy and my father in an effort to save her sanity and help me to learn conventional music gave me an English concertina that had the same range of notes as the violin. Except that the notes were fixed by the tuning and they could only be bent a little with bellows pressure. This helped me a lot to play regular music, which I have come to love as much as the stranger sounds that still live inside of me. It is a little like speaking to different languages. I think in some way this influences what I do and what I hear when I play.
I played for the Wisconsin State Music competitions held in various counties of the State in 1999 and received a top score for my playing, though the judges had never had anyone play the concertina before. At 16, I graduated from high school and received a small, but very important music scholarship award from the Ashland, Wisconsin, Music Boosters. That fall I went to study music in Holland at the Fontys Conservatory in Tilburg, Holland where they had offered a study program for the classical style of concertina. While there, I also attended classes at an Art school in Tilburg. It was suggested that I apply for entrance to the Fine Art Academy in The Hague, Netherlands. I was accepted and studied there for the next two years. During this time I did not play the concertina due to a very bad experience with a teacher at the music conservatory.

I supported myself in Holland by posing for art classes, painting houses, designing and sewing clothes, caring for children, illustrating music books and anything I could find to do. My father was ill and couldn’t work full time and though my parents helped me as much as they could, it was a difficult time for all of us.

But due to a lack of funds, I had to leave the Art Academy and returned to my parent’s home in France in January 2005 and with my fathers encouragement I returned to my concertina studies. While in France I attended an accordion Festival and heard Natalie Bouche play. She was the director of a special French accordion school not far from where we live. I was accepted and attended the school for several months until my father became very ill and I came home to help. While at the accordion school I was encouraged to play in the style that I now do, by a wonderful player and composer, Sebastian Farge. It was he who wondered why I didn’t play more notes at the same time on my instrument and though I only managed to take two lessons from him, they were very important lessons.

When my father heard me playing in this new way, he realized that I could play the English concertina could in a way that it probably had never been played before. He introduced me to the classical guitar and lute repertoire which I have really been having a wonderful, though difficult time learning. Though he is disabled with a nerve problem in his hands and he can’t work or play an instrument anymore, his many years of experience help him to communicate to me ideas about music that seem very magical. He believes that the art of music and all the other arts as well, are the real magic’s of the world.

My father is a great help to me as a coach and he is very gentle in his approach to helping to shape my playing. He cautions me against over practicing and encourages me to pursue my other interests each day so that I can bring a more complete personality to my playing and interpretations. So I continue my artwork, I love gardening and going for walks, especially hunting mushrooms. I enjoy biking, swimming, and cooking baking, designing and making clothing. I try to eat well and avoid alcohol and all drugs as I cannot play the concertina in complicated ways without a very clear head. Maybe some people can do it, but I know I can’t.

I like to busk on the streets as this gives me a chance to play for people and to see their reaction to my music. It was really scary at first, and still is, but it can be fun too and it has paid for our groceries more than once. But the big idea is to help me to prepare to play in front of concert audiences much in the same way that solo classical guitarist do.

 

 

Juliette Daum

Home