An interview with musician Phoebe Coco
The Urban Tree Festival’s Paul Wood talks to tree-inspired musician, performer and singer Phoebe Coco.
PW: Can you tell us a bit about yourself and what your interest with trees is?
PC: I am a music maker, creator and artist. I adore trees, and over the years they have woven themselves into the work I create.
Now more than ever I feel a new kind of appreciation for these beings that have lived through times we’ve not seen and will never see. There is a tide of awareness of just how much trees do for us and the harmony of the planet which we share. They have been guardians to us and I feel we owe them too.
PW: You're a musician, performer and a composer, which of these is most important to you and why?
PC: For me they feel interchangeable, interlinked and feedback into one another.
The music I write sometimes stems from the feeling of performing or sometimes from more internal moments.
Although I adore collaborations, being able to switch between these roles working independently allows you a lot of creative freedom at early points of an idea. Performing something that one has created is a very special feeling- it is your voice speaking out, and I believe that there is something in the element of live experience that is truly meaningful and really conveys its message to an audience.
PW: Some of your recent work has focused on trees, like the song ‘Sycamore Trees’, what was your inspiration behind this?
PC:Sycamore Trees speaks of the cityscapes we see, with tall walls and the bursts of green within it, is a song I wrote inspired by the very joy of being; that we have and that I believe trees to have. A happy go lucky, dancing in the spinning sycamore helicopters and being in that moment wherever you are with it.
I think that the presence of trees can mother feeling and inspiration in us and it has been proven that trees really do improve our well being. Some of my work stems from these personal experiences we have- personal experiences that build up to create something expansive. These are themes I’ve explored in recent releases such as in my song Wild and to which I am now creating new work to investigate.
PW: Some readers may know Robert Macfarlane’s ‘Heartwood’ as a poetic charm written during the Sheffield tree protests, you arranged it for voice and performed it as part of the campaign to save the Queen’s Wood oaks in north London. What inspired you to get involved with that campaign?
PC: This actually grew from a personal experience. There is a dear little apricot tree in my garden, planted by my father some years ago. Most years it has a bountiful harvest, hundreds of delicious apricots. It became threatened with felling and, having been a fan of his work for some time, I came across Robert Macfarlane’s charm-against-harm Heartwood, in fact via twitter. That very same day, I recorded a vocal arrangement alongside a video of the apricot tree’s green leaved branches, which I sent across to Robert Macfarlane. He forwarded it on and I had a wonderful response to the song as he connected me to other tree protectors and broadcast the recording live on Radio Four’s Front Row. It seemed the charm-against-harm worked its magic as a tree protection order was put on the tree and it is still there now.
It all seems quite connected, as funnily enough he taught my sister Dorothy at university who performed the song with us at recent live renditions underneath trees threatened with felling. It felt powerful to sing this song with the voices of my family, along with my mother Sophie and my sister Grace.
This led us to perform together at Queens Woods- where oak trees that are part of London's ancient woodland have come under threat (which have been so far saved until at least late 2021) and Wornington Green Estate in West London where there are currently protests to save 37 mature trees threatened by developers.
PW: Can you tell us about your future tree-inspired projects?
PC: I’m looking forward to unveiling some of the tree projects I have been working on this year. This is a project called Tree Song– a project that connects music, new experience and our local trees… I feel that there is a yearning to connect with the trees and the growing things around us and now it is certainly needed.
It’s an exciting time for trees too, with the launch of apps such as TreeTalk, who connect people with local tree walks, and also with recent scientific investigations that further unfurl our knowledge around the ways trees exist and communicate.
Using music– specifically in song and voice– with the trees taps into something deep in the fabric of our very being, something ancient, something almost unknowable.
Tree Song plans to go live later in the year with much more to come so please either sign up for email updates here or say hello to me via my Phoebe Coco social media accounts and I will keep you posted.
See and hear more of Phoebe’s work on her website, her Soundcloud, her YouTube channel and her Instagram.