The Scene Room
The Scene Room Podcast spotlights the movers and makers redefining the performing arts—focusing on innovative marketing, leadership, and the importance of collaboration. Hosted by Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bowman, with a keen eye on audience trends and cultural shifts, the goal is to explore how artists and organizations are connecting with communities, shaping the future, and redefining what it means to engage and inspire.
The Scene Room
Defying Convention — Sarah Slean on Music, Inclusivity, and the Creative Process
Sarah Slean, a 4-time JUNO and 2-time GEMINI-nominated performer, composer, poet, and modern renaissance woman, joins host Elizabeth Bowman in The Scene Room to share her inspiring artistic journey. From early piano lessons to arranging her own string compositions, Sarah's story is one of resilience, boundless creativity, and defying convention.
In this episode, Sarah opens up about resisting the commercialization of art, championing inclusivity, and advocating for music as a universal language accessible to everyone—regardless of social or financial barriers.
Listeners will hear Sarah’s personal insights on navigating the ever-changing music industry. From signing her first record deal at 20 to adapting to the digital age and the rise of streaming platforms, she reflects on the invaluable support of mentors and the challenges of sustaining a career amidst industry mergers and shifts.
Sarah also shares her passion for orchestral music, discussing creative inspirations, overcoming writer’s block, and the importance of fostering community through art. Her journey highlights the power of personal connections and grassroots efforts to build a lasting audience, underscoring the vital role of art in both personal and societal transformation.
All episodes are also available in video form on our YouTube Channel. All episodes are hosted by Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bowman.
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Don't hesitate to reach out to us with guest ideas, information you'd like covered, or any ideas you might have—the hope is for this to be a continuous resource and dialogue with our listeners.
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Hi, I'm Elizabeth Bowman and welcome to the Scene Room, where I am diving deep into the business of the performing arts, one conversation at a time. My inaugural guest is none other than Sarah Slean, who is a four-time Juno-nominated and two-time Gemini-nominated artist. She is a composer, a singer and a poet. She does all the things. Her influences span from classical to cabaret, to pop to jazz. She has a little bit of everything in her creative canon. I was so excited when she agreed to have this conversation with me, as I believe her insights are really invaluable to artists, fans alike. So let's get started, Sarah. Welcome to the scene room.
Sarah Slean:Lizzie, thank you for having me.
Elizabeth Bowman:This is really exciting. We got to know each other a little bit on the Black Flowers tour.
Sarah Slean:Oh my God, that was, it seems like so long ago, 2000 and something yeah, yeah, that must have been 2009.
Elizabeth Bowman:10, yeah, something like that, something like that. And, for those listening, that was a project with the art of time ensemble and Andrew Burashko, so that that was really fun, and I knew you beforehand from your music. I had listened to your music, so this is really exciting. I've always really admired you, especially for just like the breadth of your creation, all of the influences in your music, from classical to cabaret, pop and you name it, whatever you seem to see it comes out. So that brings me to, I guess, my first question what was your beginnings Like as a child, your interaction with music and creation, or poetry? What came first and where did you come from?
Sarah Slean:Who are you, you weird creature? Yeah, I had a musical beginning, not unlike most musicians. I feel like a lot of you know people from my neck of the woods. You grew up and your parents tried to help you find something that you enjoyed, and I had early music instruction. That was the only thing I liked everything. No athletic gifts over here, zero. I was just really interested. It just fascinated me and I studied piano all throughout high school and elementary school, loved it. It was solace, it was refuge, it was connected to something. I think that's what a lot of musicians describe. When music sort of captures them, it's like it reaches a layer that kind of nothing else reaches, gets in there, and I loved that and I thought that there was some very significant power in it, although you can articulate those things at that age.
Sarah Slean:But I went to university for piano, oddly because I was, you know, really, really into it at the time, very dedicated. But I was also writing songs and I didn't, you know, I had no designs on becoming a songwriter or performer or anything really, I just loved playing the piano. So I studied with Christina Petroska for a year at York University and that right around that time I started playing in clubs in the city, much to my parents horror, switched to U of T to be closer to the venues, and then I got signed to Atlantic and Warner and went on a 20 year journey of touring and recording. But yeah, I mean, as as a child becoming interested in music, my gateway was the music I was studying as a very small child. You know that's when the language of it, the sort of parts, the DNA of music sort of enter you and then as a teenager you discover well, I discovered a lot of popular music. But I mean at that beautiful age when you are still pure enough to not be totally and I mean this is an age too before iPhones, before the internet, right, there was enough stillness of mind for me to be drawn to purely what I was drawn to.
Sarah Slean:So I would listen to the third symphony, the symphony of sorrowful songs, by or whoever. I would listen to the Hilliard ensemble, I would listen to Tori Amos, I would listen to Mozart's Requiem, I would listen to all this stuff with no sense of allegiance to any of them, no sense of like this means this or none of the other baggage that comes with what you listen to. And, oh, I prefer classical music or I prefer etc. Or I'm a punk kid or rock or whatever. There was no extra layer to what I was drawn to musically and I think that really, because I was fortunate enough to have that very pure experience of just being drawn, it has sort of kept me blind to genre and given me, I guess, a permission to explore these other areas where some people are like I'm a pop artist, I can't do that, I can't work with orchestras, I can't blah, blah, blah, you know, yeah, I love that, because a lot of people are afraid to go to the opera, go to the symphony, because they feel they have to say a certain thing or react a certain way and ultimately it's just about letting it wash over you and taking the inspiration from what it is you're seeing.
Sarah Slean:And there's no right answer or wrong answer. And we have to resist at all costs the moneyed hijacking of artistic expression, the corporate hijacking of artistic expression, like it does not belong to a, a very, you know the one percent. It does not belong to them, even though they are the only people that can buy and sell great works of art, etc. Et cetera, like music is for everyone, and I think we have to resist those sort of cultural cues and the sort of you know ivory tower messaging that we get about things like opera and classical music, because if they are going to remain relevant, they need to speak to more people.
Elizabeth Bowman:Definitely, and all the stories that are told in most of the works are incredibly relatable and not highbrow and not elitist as advertised Exactly.
Sarah Slean:I remember. So I was so young, it was like 2001 or 2002. I forget I was, I was, I was doing my you know the requisite backpack across Europe, kind of thing. You know. I had broken up with a boyfriend and I was like soul searching and I went all over Europe and I I saw I think it was Salome in the opera house in Vienna. Way, way at the back, when you can buy like the 10 euro ticket and you stand for three hours.
Elizabeth Bowman:But, I.
Sarah Slean:that remains one of the most incredible, vibrant artistic experiences I have ever had as a spectator, because everyone was you know, reacting and everyone was unafraid to. You know, it's not like we were all decked out in furs and diamonds, we were all back there into the story. It was so exciting to collectively feel with those people, being so close, being all standing, moving, breathing, talking. It was amazing.
Elizabeth Bowman:Standing room tickets are the best. Everyone they are really. I mean you're in it together. It's sort of an endurance sport. Cycling back a little bit to the development as an artist. When we grew up, there was a lot of this draw inside the lines. You are a specific kind of artist. You're a Baroque singer, you're a pop artist, you're a jazz artist. You can't cross lines. Thankfully, this philosophy is changing and genuine creative outlet is being respected, even if it crosses genres. So I'm curious about your career as someone with such diverse influences and how you've navigated during those times and to the present time.
Sarah Slean:Yeah, I think a lot of it when I was young and I was making my first recordings and I I just knew what sounds I wanted to hear.
Sarah Slean:I wanted to hear strings so badly, I was so in love with that sound and I would walk around the foyer of U of T looking for the right case and then I would walk up to that person and say, would you like to be on a recording? Like that is literally how I did it and I think a lot of it when I was young was just simply the ignorance of youth. Like I would write string arrangements knowing absolutely nothing about writing for strings, learning as I went. Yes, I was in school for music. Yes, I was training, but I was never, I never received explicit training on how to write a string arrangement, how to write a string quartet, how to write an orchestral score. Like that happened much, much, much later, after I had made so many failed experiments right. Like I listened to those early recordings with, with string, my string arrangements that I wrote in my teens and early twenties. And you, I can literally hear over the progress of my body of work, the language of it, changing and absorbing things that work, rejecting things that don't work. Starting to understand you know what I mean Like, and I feel like my seriously, I've. I've got a master's in music Now I have done so much formal education in music and by far the most instructive experience has been to do it, To do it and get better. By experience, you know, and I've been very fortunate enough to hear the results of my experiments. So I would.
Sarah Slean:And again, the ignorance of youth. Well, why can't I do those? I'll just do it, and maybe the first three years you're doing it. They're all not that great, but I would get to hear them because I would be performing with the NACO and I'd say, can we do three or four of my orchestral scores? And Alain Trudel would be like, of course, and we do it. And and then I would go, oh, this doesn't work here, this needs to be different, these guys should be doing this. And you know, and I would just absorb.
Sarah Slean:But yeah, in terms of like crossing genre and and feeling um allowed to, I didn't question it. It was the young, it was the ignorance of youth. It's this blessed thing like now I experience much more hesitation when I feel like I've got enough of a body of work in classical, that I get asked, I get commissions, I get asked to do things. But you know, when it comes to jazz, like I don't know that language and some of it seeps in. But now I know I have colleagues who can be like, oh, and I can write someone and they will explain something to me. You know, and all of these, all of the rich cultural heritage that is out there, all of these musical languages, like there's, there's so much. The only worlds I'm feel I'm like able to step into at this point are the ones that I know something about.
Elizabeth Bowman:How old were you when you signed your first record label?
Sarah Slean:19 19.
Elizabeth Bowman:Yeah, and was the who? Which which record label was it?
Sarah Slean:It was so this is an interesting time. I think I signed up maybe I was 20. Yeah, I was 20. I signed when I was 20. I had made my own independent recording called Universe this was in 1997. That's how old I am and I got signed and then they allowed me. This was a time when there were huge budgets and record labels were very. It was the old days. They said, oh, you don't need to make your debut just yet. Take two years, we'll fund it. Make another independent record, which is just. It doesn't happen anymore. But they gave me some money and in 1998, I made and released Blue Parade, which was my first independent recording. And I didn't make the debut for Atlantic till another two years, like 2000 was when I recorded that album.
Sarah Slean:And that was Nightbugs, which was my official debut on that label. But right around that time that turn of the decade was Napster and digital media and the birth of all that label. But right around that time, that turn of the decade was Napster and digital media and the birth of all that stuff. So there was so much tumult and upheaval. I recorded my album in upstate New York, bearsville, very, very celebrated studio. Like a $300,000 US budget, like a $300,000 US budget. Just like absolute, complete and utter insanity. It's insanity. I'm grateful I got to experience that. I mean, Hawksley Workman and I were driving a U-Haul down the interstate with timpanis in the back. It just doesn't make any sense. But made that album. Incredible experience with a world-class facility, world-class engineer, incredible musicians.
Sarah Slean:And then, like a year later, everyone I worked with at Atlantic got fired and and Time Warner bought AOL or AOL bought Time Warner, something like that happened and the whole house of cards started to crumble. And this is. I watched in real time the, the effect of digital media and I mean it's even. It's even more I don't want to say catastrophic, that's not the word more disruptive now right, streaming, spotify, all these things. It's just has been escalating and escalating. But yeah, that experience I was so young and I you know. You think when you get signed to a co-venture between an American and a Canadian label, you're like this is it, this is the big time lookout world. And then, literally two years later, or however many years later, like my record that I made for them was not even released in the States. 300 grand on it. But here you go Sorry, we're not going to put it out and thankfully Warner loved it in Canada and they released it. And then I started my Canadian career.
Elizabeth Bowman:It's just wild. What's going on with the music industry, with all of the digital media, and it's ever transforming. It's continuing to transform. What would you advise emerging artists about their careers in the current climate, Lizzie?
Sarah Slean:this question kills me. So I presently teach at a university here. I teach at York University. Teaching and mentorship has always been a big part of my life too, because I truly perhaps naively believe that art has incredible social power and it's as nourishing as clean water and clean air. Like we, we need it, we make it all the time in every culture on earth. It is part of being human. So I have immense faith that it will always be here and it will always have that transformative power.
Sarah Slean:But I say to my students how can I advise you with my experience of a world that bears absolutely no resemblance to the world that you live in and will live in? Yes, there are universals. Yes, there are nuggets of sort of unchanging human wisdom that we can try to impart. As an older colleague that's how I like to think of myself, as you know, like an ally and an older colleague I'm not judge and arbiter and like A plus or D minus. But at the same time I just say to them you know, like any wisdom that I've gleaned that would be universal is a back pan on an ever-changing, constantly changing planet in constantly changing industries, and particularly in this time where we see such a I'm just going to say it baldly malevolent force pulling resources, pulling, pulling, sucking, sucking resources to the top and leaving everyone else out to dry. I think we're in an incredible moment in history where people as you see, when any disaster strikes, like LA, et cetera when people become a community again of people that have mirror neurons and experience empathy and can connect with each other and behave quite nobly and beautifully and honorably, that is going to need to coalesce and erupt and I feel like that's kind of what's underway.
Sarah Slean:So I we tend to talk about this in my classes because I think guys like if you feel this way because I mean there's a lot of kids that feel the opposite way they throw up their hands. They're like Trump and Musk rule the world and I'm never going to buy a house and screw it. That's how they feel some of them. But to the ones that are passionate and still have all that youthful energy and hope, I say pour this into your work. You are not great If you can play the violin and the piano faster, more precisely, more beautifully than anyone in the world awesome, that's amazing and valid and to be admired.
Sarah Slean:But if you are an artist that feels and is present in the world and these thoughts and feelings and worries, anxieties and passion, all of that is inside you. Put this into your work somehow, create, create, because I really do believe that artists are like imaginal cells that they are. Everybody loves to go like who cares? Art is this extraneous, trivial thing that isn't also, if you have the, the money to do it or whatever, in your spare time kind of thing and I disagree. I think it's the exact opposite. We are the people, creators, who are putting into the collective imagination new ideas about the way to live, to be, new ideas about how to be Like. That's what we need right now. Right, we need to hear from all of those voices that we have not heard from, that have resulted in a world where there's so much such a malevolent force.
Elizabeth Bowman:I absolutely agree. I think that I always try and bring things down to the lowest common denominator, like in terms of whenever I'm thinking of a big problem and community is the word.
Elizabeth Bowman:Like amen as artists, you need to connect with a community, you need to build a community and you need to build that audience. Like we need to get back to almost like really early days, like long before these big budgets and and whatever, where people really did create the old school vibe. We just need to have person-to-person connection, the touring in small venues, and you need to show up and it's sort of that incremental work each day, a little bit each day, and grow your community from that and using I mean, I'm a digital media person, that's my specialty, with, obviously, the singing background, but those email lists are invaluable and speaking to people, like people and not like you're a big corporation, because I feel like artists, like the whole game has been lost in this sort of tornado of big business.
Sarah Slean:Absolutely. I feel like the whole world has been lost in the tornado of big business. Well said, right Like we, because when it comes down to it, I feel like LA is a perfect example. When it comes down to it, however you feel about that, it's tragic that people have lost their homes and or lives in some cases, but when those things happen, who comes to the rescue? I mean, we're all up in arms like that government, hasn't? People, your neighbors, the people that are that live in your town.
Elizabeth Bowman:So can I ask you a little bit about your creative process, because you do perform with symphonies and chamber ensembles and also with yourself and your band. I'm performing myself. You know. I mean there's a lot of different Sarah Sleens out there. What's the difference? Like, how do you feel creatively when you're performing in these different environments? Like, what would you pinpoint as sort of the experience for you?
Sarah Slean:solo tours, which is, you know, a whole other experience, and I haven't done that in so long that I think if I was asked to do it now I probably would be too afraid Just putting that out there, which I may do in October of this year. I've performed with bands, but that whole period where I was touring very heavily from 2000 to about 2018, like almost 20 years of constant touring, constant touring, international touring I'd say my favorite is around that time was the ensemble we landed with for Land and Sea, the album. That was two albums One was the pop that I had become known for and then Sea was this true expression of that, my deep interest in strings and orchestral writing. That had really come to flower on that record. Land and Sea. That was the maybe like.
Sarah Slean:I look at that as kind of a turning point, that project where I was like this is where I want to go See, like it was a 21 piece orchestra of total rock star classical players in Toronto, my sort of lyrical songs, but set to string orchestra.
Sarah Slean:I mean it was a dream come true. I had written four of the charts and John Goldsmith, my longtime mentor and colleague, had written the other three and he was producing and I was just like this is, I couldn't believe that it had actually happened in the flesh number one but because I was on a small boutique label too, like how is this happening? But it really cemented for me that that was where my intellectual and spiritual interest lay and that was going to be the next phase of my career, because it just was challenging. You know, like I'd I'd done lots of band stuff and I was kind of I didn't feel like I could expand any further in that and say anything different, you know, and the, the orchestra just captured me. I'd say my favorite now in this, that sort of second chapter from, say, 2012 onward, is to perform with an orchestra. I mean, there's really nothing like it.
Sarah Slean:You know this. It's just, you know you have 40 to 80 Ferraris behind you doing their thing that they've spent, you know, 30, 40, 50 years doing, and you're playing some of the greatest music. I mean, like I've done a lot of those Joni Mitchell with orchestra shows, vince Mendoza's charts, which are just mind-boggling and outstanding and so lush and beautiful. A lot of jazz language in them too, obviously. So I just I love that because it's really an atmosphere of excellence. You feel the collective commitment on stage to like this thing. That is music that we all just love so deeply in our own ways. But it's, it's humbling, it's not. That's why I love an orchestra.
Sarah Slean:It's not about what everyone's wearing, it's not about who their famous friends are. It's not about are they, you know? Is this the sort of pop aesthetic du jour in music? Is it like the sort of weird production tricks du jour uh, you know, of this year that everyone's doing and that's why all the records sound the same, right, right, like it has nothing to do with that stuff. It has everything to do with the few parameters that you can adjust and perfect in music notes, rhythm, expression and articulation and dynamics, and that's about it, and it's very, it's pure. It's very pure and yeah, I mean standing. I use a microphone because I'm not an opera singer, obviously, but it's that music is some of my favorite music in the world. I've performed my own stuff with orchestra too, which is is a different headspace, because I'm always like shouldn't have used bassoon there, like this is, the inner monologue is always on, but yeah, there's nothing like playing with an orchestra.
Elizabeth Bowman:I think it also then brings us back to that idea of this community. It's so key when you go to hear an orchestra, a symphony, an opera or whatever. I think that that X factor that is happening is when everyone is on the same page, working together and then creating that energy that goes out to you. So that's really like 90% of the experience.
Sarah Slean:It gives me goosebumps even when you're talking about it, because it's not about any particular individual in the orchestra, it's not about the conductor, it's not even about the soprano, it's not about the soloist, it's not about the set designer, it's not about any of those individuals. It's about this higher aim, this higher expression that everyone is deeply committed to. It's this offering of all of that excellence put together, which I just find is like, really kind of like makes me verklempt. Right, you know, this is is what, this is what humans can do when they work together, you know.
Elizabeth Bowman:Can I um ask you, do you ever suffer from writer's block?
Sarah Slean:oh god, yes oh god, oh long periods like agonizing. Agonizing, yes, I do. What's the solution? Everybody's like what's the sound bite? Okay, well, I I went through a really bad one this year. I find that it's never about like.
Sarah Slean:Creativity is a thing that happens when the way is clear, if I can speak like you know, guru. When the way is clear, it is always happening and it's just like you take one and you take another one and oh, thank you, you just dip your hand in the river, right. But when the way is not clear, you will go mad sitting in front of your instrument, in front of your computer, just trying to go come on, is it in there? It's not in there. If the way is not clear, how do you make the way clear? You can't deliberately do it. You've got to go out into the forest and put the birdseed in your hand and wait For me.
Sarah Slean:I mean, I've had such anguished periods of writer's block where I literally start going what am I going to do instead of music, looking to apply to different jobs or give up, and I think what ends up happening is when I look at my own body of work. I write best when something in me has been metabolized or shifted spiritually by life, by being, by relationships, by struggle, by challenge all these things right or experiences in nature that move something in me, that push the furniture around in a different way, and I really do think that the reason all that stuff starts to come when the shift has happened is that art is part of the process of metabolizing what happens to us, of taking the raw materials that life gives us the wounds, the stress, the pressure of life, the stress, the pressure of life and art helps to digest it and turn it into something else.
Sarah Slean:That doesn't happen on a nine to five schedule.
Sarah Slean:And I just got to the point where I accepted that I don't make a project of my own with that version of creativity every two years. And the beginning, when I was young and I was on the treadmill and I was, you know, I was just overflowing with ideas and things and it just came out quickly but it got. They got longer and longer and longer between projects as I got older, because I would accept things in between. I wouldn't force myself to make another record. I would just be like I'm going to do some clarinet trios for the Irish trio, I'm going to do this brass commission, I'm going to do some rearranging Clara Schumann for the NACO, I'm going to, I'm going to do these other things which would exercise other parts of my brain and my creativity and would also unlock me from my need to have this output speak of me, speak of my transformation be linked to that sort of shifting and metabolizing that I'm talking about.
Sarah Slean:I would compartmentalize commissions, as this is skill, this is exercise. Yes, I'm being expressive. Yes, melodies are arriving into my life and I'm working with them, but this was really hands in the clay. It wasn't like spiritual transformation, and I try to think of my albums as I only do them when something like that has happened and that's why I look forward to them and if it takes longer, so what?
Elizabeth Bowman:That makes total sense, you know. Funnily enough, like during the pandemic, which was horrific, let's not go back there, let's not. But you know, I never, ever. I mean, I trained as an opera singer and did my entire training was in classical, everything, classical piano, classical singing. You know nothing whatever but the the trauma of that pandemic, with all the stages closed and no live music and all the musicians struggling. I ended up writing a lot of songs during the pandemic and you know, when it ended, I have nothing. It's like this box opened and then, because of this shift and yeah, you know, but it was such a shift that it was like, yep, I couldn't listen to classical music during that time because it was just too traumatic, because, yeah, that was always my source of joy and all the things, and I'm back and I'm okay, I can listen, I can listen again, but I also don't write anything anymore. It's just, it's just funny. It's like there was this weird period and all the songs I wrote were like weird, like a folky, I love weird, but it's just.
Elizabeth Bowman:I mean, yeah, I guess it totally makes sense that the creative process would be magnified and intensified by changes in your life. The way wasn't clear.
Sarah Slean:The way was not clear, right, yeah, once we got back, once the world got back online. I watched a very interesting documentary the other day called Hypernormalization, and it was about as the Soviet empire was crumbling. All of the political leaders were like deeply invested in making the public think, no, everything's cool, all all as well, and it's like I feel like post pandemic that is. That is what's happening. We, everyone's trying to oh, no, it's all good, everything's cool, like we're back to normal, we're back. It's like what? Yeah, like no.
Sarah Slean:That, as, as you say, it was highly traumatic and I think that you know we are we're beings, we're nature, we are nature. Jackson pollock, I love that quote when someone asked him like oh, does nature inspire you? And he's like I am nature, um, but we are, we're natural beings and you cannot have something of such massive psychological and spiritual impact simply be like thank you, very much done. No, it's going to deeply impact our systems. The digital transformation is deeply impacting our systems too. I mean, I remember my brain pre-internet. I remember my brain pre-iPhone, and I don't necessarily think that these changes or shifts are terrible and just like blanket put a bad sticker on it, but I do think that we cannot pretend that we're not nature, we cannot pretend that we're not biological beings, number one, that are deeply like, inexorably tied and interrelated, connected to not only each other but to our environment, to the living, breathing world around us.
Sarah Slean:I always felt like technology kind of had this sort of nefarious hope underneath every transformation. It was like one day we won't die, yes, yes, we will. You too, busk, you're going to die, right. Like it's just like this weird, weird denial of mortality and I, I, I think like what a crazy psychology, what a what a twisted world it would be if no one died. And I don't mean just strictly on a practical level, I mean on a practical level, I mean on a psychological, spiritual level. If, if, if there was no sense of an end, so so much would be philosophically different, radically different. Like the day-to-day experience of living, would and and struggling or whatever would, would make no sense to our, our current minds, it would have no context, it would have no meaning. We are meaning-based beings because we are mortal. Yeah Right, like, anyways I'm digressing massively but like, why not? It's Tuesday morning.
Elizabeth Bowman:I exactly, Although I think I'm going to put this out on a Thursday morning.
Sarah Slean:Do you want to know what I did for my last round of writer's block, where I was just like, oh my god, I have absolutely nothing. Yeah, I, I just whipped out some old books of music that I learned when I was a student, like the great conservatory or whatever, or Beethoven symphonies transcribed, and I just kind of walked through them and I found that I got out of my frontal lobe. Do you know what I mean?
Sarah Slean:I got out of like analyze, think, think, think, think, think.
Sarah Slean:And I went to that beautiful flow state where I was just playing and I was just, I wasn't thinking about the music, I was just experiencing the music and playing it and getting that muscle memory back in my fingers. And I did that, for I had to do that for a few days and I had to be like I'm just going to close the computer and stop worrying about this. Because you know, as you get, as deadlines approach and you know your days go by and time is so limited when you're our age, especially when you have a child, that you're just like you start to get frantic like oh my God, oh's just. Oh my god, what, what, if you know? And then it's a spirals. You know, if you still sit at the computer where you're in that state, it's just diminishing returns. You have to close the computer, put down your instrument or whatever and try to get in a flow state some other way. Sometimes for me that's just like you lie on your back with your headphones on and listen to glenn gould play the gulper variations 81 version.
Sarah Slean:You know like yeah either listening or playing and it helps me. It just kind of greases the wheel and, yeah, it gets that brain out of this gear and back into a flow state which is just utterly it's like night and day right.
Elizabeth Bowman:When I get into a state of writer's block in a different way, because I'm not writing any music, I often will phone someone who inspires me. So, whether or not that person does anything to do with what I'm doing, I will phone them and just have a conversation with them and I find that brainstorming just or talking about the industry for instance, is in in what I do for a living.
Elizabeth Bowman:It's like a lot of times I've got to think about you know ways to connect with new audiences, or you know ideas for a client or a project or something, and so I'll phone someone who's maybe in the industry and I'll be like, so what's going on with your audience? And yeah, and then suddenly I'll think I usually have a patent paper and these people have no idea what they're doing for me. So surprise, that's wonderful.
Sarah Slean:I love it so surprised.
Elizabeth Bowman:that's wonderful, I love it. And then I'll usually have a lot of thoughts by the end of that conversation where I've written down, you know, various, various things that I could experiment with or and it's not necessarily anything to do with them, it's like it just opens something up in me, yeah, so I highly recommend that. And that also brings it back to this whole idea of collaboration and community and the idea of really connecting with those around you and 100% have you ever read that book?
Sarah Slean:The War of Art, Steven Pressfield.
Elizabeth Bowman:I actually haven't. I've heard of it and it's on my list, so I should definitely read it next.
Sarah Slean:He's an author, but he describes in exquisite detail the experience of feeling blocked. He calls it resistance. Right, and this could apply to any, any discipline really, where you have to sort of generate. And people ask me about writer's block all the time and I always talk about that book because he's just like put your butt in the chair and go and like just spew, and eventually you know he's just like there's nothing, nothing replaces you know sitting and doing. You know you can. And Margaret Atwood actually once I love this quote, I forget I will butcher it, but she said I would rather like wash dishes than than sit down and write. Like you can. Your brain will come up with 3 million other things to do than the thing that you want most to do.
Sarah Slean:We talk about discipline in my classes but again, like, I've gotten to that point where I forced myself to sit into the chair, in the chair and it's just like torture, like nothing comes.
Sarah Slean:I really think that when you uncouple, specifically for musicians, when you uncouple your instrument and the sheer enjoyment of music from this like need to produce, then you can return to that flow state which is essential for making anything of value. I had a friend who is now producing records in the States. She used to live here and she used to tour with me as a backup singer and a keyboardist Karen Kozlowski, she's doing extraordinarily well in Nashville and she used to say to me you don't want to quit music. Because I've wanted to quit music at least a thousand times and she would say you don't want to quit music, you need to change your relationship to it. I still think that is a brilliant piece of advice, because when I get stuck, when the way is not clear, is usually when I have packed onto music all this other shit identity, like the you know economy, like your income and living, and it has to like you know, dance, monkey dance. You know it has to do all this stuff for you.
Elizabeth Bowman:And you.
Sarah Slean:Really, whenever I guest lecture creators, I say protect that inner kernel that's got the flame or the light going and we all know what I'm talking about. Right, you got to protect it. Yes, it's magical. Yes, it can earn you money. Yes, it can really deeply inform your identity. Yes, it can connect you with like-minded people. It could be the core of your communities. It could be your livelihood, your passion, all these things. But don't let it get torn apart by all of those competing interests. Protect that inner core, right. And I think what I'm doing when I sit down and play a Haydn sonata that I haven't played in 25 years, is I'm returning to that core. I'm putting a shell around it and going you can exist just like this. I don't need to record you and put you on TikTok, I don't need to monetize you. I don't need to do this in front of other people. This is just. I'm going to protect this little flame.
Elizabeth Bowman:I realize I've seen Steven Pressfield on the Rich Roll podcast, which is one of my favorite podcasts, so you know.
Sarah Slean:God bless Rich Roll. I know why doesn't he have a young single brother? Why?
Elizabeth Bowman:Yeah, go listen to the Rich Roll podcast once you're done this one.
Sarah Slean:He's the best. I love him. I love him.
Elizabeth Bowman:Yeah, he's definitely an inspiration. We should probably wrap this up soon, but I would love to know about your mentors. There are so many.
Sarah Slean:There are so many. Well, I mean, I also I've been self-managed since 2009. So I've experienced kind of the gamut of music industry existence. I've had managers I still have agents and reps in other capacities but I've been self-managed for the bulk of my career now, and I mean doing all the administrative stuff, learning all the business side. I'm a director on the board of SOCAN now. I've been for four years.
Sarah Slean:Thank you for your votes. I really participate in that side of things. I really run my business, as you do right, and there have been many mentors female, most of them female. Shauna de cartier, who runs six shooter records, built an absolutely extraordinary business that includes festivals. She reps all these amazing artists and she's just been ever since I met her like a million years ago in the late 90s. She's just been a badass. She's just like always full of ideas and a person of possibility. She's always like why not? And she a can-do kind of person, very, very inspiring, thinks big. And her partner, helen Britton, who's been one of my dear friends for many, many years as well. She's extraordinary Leaders, right Like unabashed leaders.
Sarah Slean:John Goldsmith, as a composer, has been a lifelong mentor and friend. We regularly, when Select Bistro was in its heyday. We would go there for dinner on a monthly basis and just have a great old gab. We're just like-minded souls too, like we sort of culturally love the same things. John Herberman I have had some private orchestration instruction with John Herberman, who also does a lot of the Ravel sessions in Toronto, which are for extraordinary orchestrators like Aaron Davis and Amin Bhatia, who I've worked with as well. . Also mentors in the screen composing world yeah, like most of my music mentors have been guys. Yeah, but in the business Music mentors have been guys. Yeah, but in the business it's been all women, interestingly enough, and you've been guest hosting on CBC.
Elizabeth Bowman:So how's that going, and are you still doing that?
Sarah Slean:I haven't done that in a few years. I think they sort of experiment with guest hosts and sort of cycle them. But they actually had me do Drive for a while and then they had me do Shift, which has now become. Shift was sort of pop and classical and now it's About Time, which is only classical and I love, love doing it because it really intersects with all the things that I'm doing.
Sarah Slean:And when you have to write a radio script and you've got to write really, really fast, you have to do a blazing amount of research in a short period of time. But it really just informs my scholarly work, it informs my creative work. It tips me off to composers I don't know about. It introduces me to more people in the classical community in Canada like performers, particularly where I'm like, oh my god, who is this player? And then I find out and I find their work and it's just, it's, it's a big piece of the ecosystem in Canada. So I I really love doing it and I love the people that are doing it. Isaac Page is making those playlists now. He's an extraordinary musical mind. So that that's just been a nice piece in the overall bouquet of things. That all kind of overlap for me.
Elizabeth Bowman:Have you ever done? An episode of This Is my Music.
Sarah Slean:Yes, I have. In fact I think I've done two. Amazing Malcolm, God bless him. Yeah, and I love listening to those of other people. Love so fascinating. You always find some new gem. Yeah, that's a great show.
Elizabeth Bowman:I'll leave a link to those shows wherever I'm, where the links are. Thank you for having this conversation with me. Thanks for coming to the scene room and very excited to have you as actually my first guest.
