Audrey Riley

Photo: James Poke

Audrey Riley trained at the Guildhall School of Music in London with Leonard Stehn. Since then she has lived and worked in London as a professional 'cellist and arranger.

For the last seventeen years she has maintained a parallel career as a professional 'cellist with a special interest in contemporary music , and that of an improvising musician working with the creative ideas of pop musicians. She has led her own quartet for the past fifteen years and, as an arranger, has added her playing, and that of her quartet to many recordings and projects.

These include:

The Cure, Terrorvision, Blur, Dubstar, The Sundays, The Smashing Pumpkins, The Christians, Mark Almond, Nick Cave, Barry Adamson, Terrorvision, Michelle Shocked, Ian McCulloch, Adamski, Jerry Burns, New Order, Horse, Catherine Wheel, Swervedriver, Shed 7, Shakespears Sister, Marcella Detroit, Strangelove, Manic Street Preachers, Mojave 3, James, The Dandys, Feeder, Echobelly, Babybird, Tom Jones, Moloko, Lush, Scheer, The Cranes, The Swans, The Apartments, Ozark Henry, Muse, Blue Merle, Dave Matthews and Coldplay.

Mostly working away from the more commercial aspect of pop music she has also contributed to more diverse projects on 4-AD Records such as the most recent This Mortal Coil album 'The Hope Blister' and the Pieter Nooten/Michael Brook album 'Sleeps With The Fishes'. She continues to be in demand both here and abroad and maintains long-standing professional relationships with producers such as Gil Norton and Stephen Hague.

Highlights include conducting a 52 piece orchestra through music by The Cure for the film 'Judge Dread', being on the road with Terrorvision, writing the string arrangement with the Smashing Pumpkins for their single 'Tonight,Tonight' in Chicago and then conducting the strings of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra through the session, conducting musicians from the Seattle Symphony Orchestra in her arrangements for Dave Matthews while he sang and played the guitar live for the recording, playing live and on the edge with Cathal Coughlan in Dublin to a deafening crowd, performing a set for solo cello and voice with Paul Fredericks of Family Cat and Jack Adaptor at The Waterats and being able to hear a pin drop, hearing the applause from Lush in the control room after having heard the weirdest of intros to a song performed by her quartet on the album 'Split', playing her cello upside down, backwards, with a plectrum and finally as a drum for the new Ozark Henry album, and hearing that her arrangements for Coldplay were performed by the New York Philharmonic at the 2004 Grammy Awards.

Most recently she has contributed  her arrangements, directing, and her playing to the albums 'A Rush Of Blood To The Head' by Coldplay, 'Comfort In Sound' by Feeder, 'Statues' by Moloko, 'Absolution' by Muse, 'Some Devil' by Dave Matthews and, very recently, the new forthcoming Coldplay album.

Since 1989 she has been the 'cellist in Icebreaker, a contemporary music ensemble which specialises in the music of Dutch composer Louis Andriessen and other new music composers of hard edged rhythmic idioms. With them she has performed and toured extensively. The group have recorded five CDs. These are of works by Andriessen, Lang, Gordon, Le Gassick, Torke, Godfrey and Wagenaar.

In 1998 she performed, with Icebreaker, David Langs piece 'Cheating,Lying, Stealing' for solo 'cello and ensemble at the Barbican Theatre, London with the Royal Ballet. The work was recorded for the CD 'Rogues Gallery' and appeared on Channel Four. She has subsequently toured it with Royal Scottish Ballet. Most recently Icebreaker has performed the Stewart Wallace concerto for Icebreaker and The American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie Hall and collaborated with the Dutch group Orkest De Volharding in a joint tour, 'Big Noise'.

She has also worked extensively with dance companies: Siobhan Davies, Royal Scottish Ballet, Random Dance. Since 2001 has toured with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company performing Gavin Bryars 'Bi-ped' and the solo work for 'cello, 'One 8'  by John Cage performing in Paris, Mullhouse, Berlin, Dublin, Reykjavik, Bergen, Hong Kong, Brazil,  and at The Barbican, London. She recently took part in the first performance of a new work 'Views', music by John Cage, will continue to tour this with the company through 2005.

She also plays a five string electric 'cello which she had made in 1993  in order to add a new sound world to Icebreaker through the use of effects. Since  2000 she has also used it to perform and record with Cathal Coughlan as a member of his Grand Necropolitan Quartet.

The thread running through her experience as a musician so far has been a desire to find and move towards what is challenging and new. Taking an early influence from experimental music she has deliberately moved towards areas of music which offer exploration, challenge, learning and the development of the new. Whether that is a piece to be unravelled and played for the first time, a pop group working with a 'cellist for the first time, or an area of music where there is a new sound world to be explored and absorbed. At the moment there is the sense of a desire, musically and through conversation, to meet and exchange amongst contemporary and pop composers and musicians. Through this collaboration of 'A Change Of Light' she currently feels she has the opportunity to draw from her explorations.

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