About Catherine Shrubshall
In 1983 I packed up my beloved saxophones and clarinets and left my rural Essex home to study music and performance arts in London. From there I embarked on a wonderful and entertaining professional life as a freelance woodwind player, composer and educator, travelling all around the world for many years. I have lived predominantly in London, with brief sojourns to North Yorkshire and Rome along the way. However, In 2015 I decided to return to my Essex roots to embark on the next chapter of my professional development (this paragraph hasn’t changed)
I expected life in the countryside to be lived at a much slower pace than in London, in line with my accumulation of birthdays!….however I was UTTERLY wrong!! I have met SO many amazing artists, eccentrics and like minded souls here in Essex…my creative and social life has never been richer! I am constantly collecting material for exciting new work, and finding opportunities to collaborate on a huge variety of projects in all sorts of surprising venues. I am joyfully sharing and developing my skills with others, flexing my compositional and improvisational muscles, and collecting lots of new instruments from around the world to toot, hoot and bash! Bringing many new projects and enterprises to light here is constantly keeping me on my toes: writing music for production company, film, and documentary briefs, improvising sound journeys for festivals and retreats, running workshops with an array of artists from different art forms…and delivering lively consultation lessons and improvisation coaching. My life is full of creative variety, the air is fresh and the sea is near - I am in the right place at the right time
HIGHLIGHTS OF MY CAREER
Some of the highlights of my varied and diverse career are:
Playing contrabass saxophone on the “Strange Cargo” tour with William Orbit, leading 400 saxophonists on an improvised musical march through the City of London, backing Lovers Rock icon Barry Biggs, being rowed around the Highgate ladies pond while improvising, developing an exciting new musical as part of a “Glyndebourne Opera” outreach project, touring with Ballet Rambert and Shobanah Jeyasingh Dance, opening the 1st Royal Festival Hall’s “Meltdown Festival” with “Icebreaker”, guesting on BBC2’s “Later...with Jools Holland”, being appointed as an associate musician for ENB's “Dance for Parkinson's” programme, winning an award at the Valencia Film Festival for co-writing my first feature film score, public speaking at Westminster Cathedral at a "Help Musicians UK’ fundraiser, arranging and recording music composed in 1908 by a friend’s amazing Great Uncle Lazar, staying with indigenous tribes in South America and sharing our music traditions...etc etc
These are just a few of the highlights from the amazing life as a musician I have chosen to live... I am so very privileged
