Interstellar Duo comprises sisters Charlotte Sterland (piano, voice, and viola) and Heather Sterland (piano, voice, and violin). The pair have made a name for themselves through hard work and performances that have drawn admiration from the audiences and critics alike, and they occupy a musical space they have crafted for themselves through originality and adventurous composition.
They have taken part in concert tours, film soundtracks, live stage and dance productions, and their music has been used by the BBC and Channel 4. The pair continue to develop new creative ideas (see later).
Nature is at the heart of their music. Experiences gathered on travels throughout the UK and beyond are transformed into richly textured sonic landscapes. Unstable moorland underfoot, shifting sunlight across a hillside, gathering storms, rolling surf and the hidden dangers that exist alongside natural beauty all find expression in their compositions. Through carefully crafted harmonies, changing dynamics, and evocative melodic lines, the duo recreates images not just of places, but of the emotional responses those places inspire. The result is music filled with atmosphere, emotion, and movement. It is music that breathes, shifts, and evolves, much like the landscapes that inspired it.
Beautifully unboxable – the music has elements of folk, jazz, pop, and classical. Adventure 112 is their second album release, and the music also serves as the soundtrack to eight stop-motion short films titled the same name.
The album is an acoustic release of ten tracks and features the duo’s observations and musical interpretations of a range of adventures, from a forest chase to a search through an ancient desert, to a moth that flies with a secret truth; this takes the listener to some of nature’s boldest places.
‘Ancient Lake’, with its flowing melodies and beautifully pitched harmony, includes some beautifully worked string solo. And just check that rhythm pattern on the piano! There is a range of contrasts in this album, from the gentleness of ‘Ashkirk Loch’ or the mesmeric beauty of ‘Cave Song,’ to the dark intensity of the piano on ‘Storm Everest,’ contrasting with the floaty, soaring violin and the harmony of the vocals.
The emotive ‘Dark Forest’ tells of a journey through a secret forest and includes a wonderfully reflective middle section with piano and strings, while on ‘Moth and I’ the music is gentle and contrasts with the beautifully pitched, emotional singing that flows across the top. The flow of the melodies perfectly matches the perceived flight of a moth, while ‘Sun On The Moor’ is a track of harmonics and exploration.
What this music does is bring to life landscapes that the sisters have seen on their travels – and some imagined perfect images of perceived landscapes – they do this using sonic tonality and harmony where needed and introduce surprises, contrasts and sudden depths that add texture and layers. Like nature, this music will never sound the same every time you listen.
The sisters’ creativity extends beyond the music. Attend one of their performances, and you may find yourself playing board games, joining a stargazing session afterwards, or even sitting for a portrait done using the Alla Prima Method, which involves painting and completion of the portrait while the paint is still wet, in one sitting.
Heather has also been putting together some compositions for an idea based around Maria Merian, a Dutch-German scientific illustrator and botanist/entomologist who was one of the first women to create detailed drawings of plants and insects) and her travels to Suriname back in 18th century, to document the species there. Heather envisages a ballet short called The White Witch (after a moth), with a female principal dancer portraying Merian (and choreograph her) on stage and introducing audiences to the work she did through music, ballet, and circus. Incidentally, the sisters have a circus/climbing background. Heather told me, “It could ideally involve multiple disciplines sharing the stage. We are generally very keen on sustainability in live performances, and the messages that shows and venues are giving. With the idea, it could be interesting for theatres to introduce some live plants on stage as backdrops (although in practice I admit this would be really difficult because keeping a backdrop alive sounds frankly impossible…but it would be nice if people could buy music and plants in the show’s interval rather than always sugar and alcohol – and wouldn’t it be cool to have fragrance and mist as part of the show, really adding to the multisensory approach to live shows?
Sounds good to us at Platinum Mind – almost as good as the music itself.
