The Voice of Mullum

Three years ago Byron Shire’s most famous brother-and-sister duo, Gabe and Cecilia Brandolini, found themselves selected for the Mullum Music Festival’s Youth Mentorship with Lucie Thorne.

This year saw them hit screens nationwide with mentorship from Will.i.am on The Voice. With a sell-out return show a few weeks back Gabe and Cecilia are looking forward to playing Mullum Music Festival, this time as a headline. It’s amazing how far these two have come in such a short time.

Seven spoke with Gabe about the Brandolini star, which seems to have an infinite capacity to rise.

How would you describe the last 12 months?

Otherworldly. I think we surpassed our own expectations time and time again, which just made it incredibly exciting and shocking at the same time.

It’s been utopia and it’s been torturous, and if there was one way we could describe our experience it would be that we pushed both ends of the emotional spectrum to places we didn’t know it could go. It was the best and worst thing.

The most unbelievable euphoria and also the most extreme anxiety, fear and nervousness.

Have the last twelve months, being on The Voice, having all that national attention, changed anything in the way you approach your music?

No, not really. That’s what we sort of had to fight for while on The Voice – the integrity to play how we want to play. If anything it helped us establish a bit of an identity to our style because we finally had to own and defend it.

The national attention can change a lot of things. But the way we work creatively and the way we write and play music hasn’t been changed. If anything it’s just been identified.

You developed a strong working relationship with Will.i.am – what was it like for you working with an international artist of his calibre?

Every day you would struggle to believe you were living the reality you were living. It was an honour to work with him as much as we did and we couldn’t count ourselves any luckier. Obviously it was somewhat intimidating but he would never critique or change what we were about. He would always just ‘add’ or ‘contribute’.

Never take anything away. He instantly loved everything that we brought to the table and he was very supportive of us as musicians and also, as we got to know him more and more, as people.

How do you two complement each other?

In terms of complementing each other creatively… While we were on The Voice we had to have a kind of rushed system (given only one day to create a rendition of a song to then record for the iTunes sales).

I would do the sketch of the song and Cecilia would colour it in. I am better at creating interesting rhythms and progressions where as Cecilia is stronger at creating powerful melodies and deciding on harmonies.

So under pressure we operated by both concentrating on what we were strongest at to make up for each other’s weaknesses.

Outside of The Voice world though we both play all of those roles… sometimes even the exact opposite of what I’ve said for some songs, and with time can usually make any role work for either of us.

What are your achilles heels when it comes to making music?

Cecilia: Taking a long time to finish a song. Gabriel: Struggling to feel original.

What did you get out of the mentorship last year with Mullum Music?

A great enjoyable experience where we got to hang out with Lucie Thorne. She really helped us focus on the performance aspect of things, which was something we were really, really shy about paying attention to. So character building ultimately.

What advice would you have for other young emerging artists about finding their feet in the industry?

We’re still finding our feet in the industry so we’re by no means the experts. There’re 100s of different things that are forever changing in terms of marketing promotion and trending so we can’t really answer the business side of that question.

We just got on The Voice roller-coaster. As for the artistic side, we might be able to shed some light! Don’t entertain other people’s ideas about rules, regulations and formatting that they believe to be acceptable or normal.

Celebrate your imagination and create something no-one’s ever heard of before. Quite frankly, to stand out from the crowd you’ve got to be the best at something or the first at something. And there are some musical gods in this world so the latter seems like the better choice!

Invent something that identifies with you so that when you do eventually (with persistence) grow an audience, or find other musos to collaborate with or business related people to work with they are exactly the right kind of person. And you will have manifested the perfect environment imaginable because of your honesty. Don’t be what someone else wants you to be.

How important are events like Mullum Music Festival in helping to nurture talent?

Crucial in the sense that you need to get that experience edge, but also it can be done in a local supportive and encouraging environment. Along with all the programs they run for emerging artists there doesn’t come a festival more relevant and nurturing.

You had a massive 500 roll up for your Mullum Civic Hall show recently. What was it like to return home to a crowd like that?

That was the most wonderful gig we had ever played. It topped any of our Voice performances because of the intimacy of the relationship we had with the people who came.

These were all people who had to come to see us. Not Ricky Martin. Not a television concept. Not someone who would play after us… US. And so we were overwhelmed with gratitude and it felt like such a personal concert despite there being so many people.

How does it change how you play, if at all?

We both play better when we feel comfortable.

Basically every Voice performance we were affected negatively by the nerves, and so without that stress hanging around and when there is so much encouragement and support in the room, we are able to focus on how we play and actively consciously be aware of what were playing and singing, as opposed to The Voice, where you would just freeze and fall back on your second nature like instincts and sort of play on auto pilot, and hope to the universe that you had practised enough.

What should we expect for your Mullum music show?

We will be playing all the songs from both of our CDs, plus many in the works and a few antiques, as well as all our Voice performances! We hope that we can show people something they’ve never seen before, a new form of artistry but also still relevant enough for people to enjoy.

Gabriel and Cecilia are one of the featured headlines at Mullum Music Festival this year and are a shining example of the talent that has been nurtured over the past seven events. Stay tuned next week for Youth Mentorship program announcement, application dates, categories, and of course mentors!

For tickets to this 20–23 November event and mentorship enquiries go to www.mullummusicfestival.com.