In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Dr Kate Kennedy, a distinguished cellist, musicologist, and Director of Oxford University’s Centre for Life Writing chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about her choices while crafting Cello: A Journey Through Silence to Sound.

Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode:

• Kate Kennedy’s inspiration for crafting Cello: A Journey Through Silence to Sound
• Why Kate chose Pál Hermann, Lise Cristiani, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch and Amedeo Baldovino as her biographical subjects
• Why Kate criss-crossed Europe by train with her cello strapped to her back to retrace the footsteps of the four extraordinary cellists
• Why Kate wrote Cello as an experimental mix of memoir and object, collective and quest biography
• Why Kate included fascinating interludes, sharing her personal experiences, musings, historical research and a cello’s physical and metaphysical characteristics
• Why Kate introduced various voices into the interludes, including cello makers and dealers, a physicist whose garden houses a cello-turned-bee hive, and cellists such as Steven Isserlis and Christian Poltera
• The literary devices Kate employed to craft poetic, evocative and at times, electrifying narrative
• How Kate rediscovered her voice and identity as a cellist by crafting Cello.