Spotlight on... Simone Seales

Back in August, in the heat of Edinburgh’s festival season – not so much summer though, because, you know, Scottish summer – I had the pleasurable introduction to Simone Seales through Jan A.’s piece on the remarkable cellist and their creative partner, dancer and choreographer Mele Broomes.

On Seales' debut album Dearest, Broomes and Seales both perform spoken word poetry written by Seales over the last three years. Seales’ poems have offered an avenue for them to process their first queer love, and the inspiration behind Dearest and the process of creating the album has allowed Seales to move into a resilient space of autonomy. Seales can now hold onto the memories of that relationship, even though they hold pieces of joy, turmoil and trauma.

With Dearest set for release tomorrow, we caught up with Seales to learn more about their background as a cellist and poet and get a deeper understanding of the record itself.

When did you begin playing the cello? Is this instrument your core musical background?
I started playing the cello when I was 12 through my school orchestra programme. I found the violin to be incredibly uncomfortable to hold, so I mainly chose to play the cello because I could sit down and play.

What is your earliest inspiration for creating music and writing poetry?
Before I started playing the cello, I had imagined I could be a writer. I wrote a lot of short stories and fan fiction about whatever teen book series was popular at the time.

I’ve always had a slight obsession with dialogue and how words feel in my mouth too, so I started moving towards poetry in high school thanks to my English literature teacher. It became a way I could express myself and hint at my queerness, without being explicit about it.

My desire to create music came from an improvisation workshop I had at 17 when I was in a summer music camp called Sphinx Performance Academy. It’s a full-scholarship summer music camp for young people aged 11-17.

This introduction to improv completely changed my relationship to music-making – it opened up my world. I felt such a sense of excitement at creating music straight from my brain, away from standard notation. I still remember the feeling I had; this fizzing that happened inside of me when I was tasked to create a short pizzicato loop, and the freedom I felt from jamming with my peers.

Are there any artists in particular that made you want to become one yourself?
As a classical cellist, I was obsessed with Jacqueline du Pré. I loved her expression, her movement, her ferocity. I wanted to be just like her and listened to every recording she made, trying to emulate her playing as best as I could.

Once I started moving toward my own mode of expression, I started to love Andrew Bird. I love his style of looping and layering and improvisation. I love how open and vast his sound is, while still having a sense of groove and playfulness.

What was it like to go from working with Mele Broomes during the production of Dearest to then performing together at Edinburgh International Book Festival in August?
It was quite an easy transition to go from production to performance. Thanks to the great minds of Scott Mclean and Amaya López-Carromero, I was able to record a large chunk of the tracks in the same way I would perform them live. This meant that when I was working with Mele to create the live performance of Dearest at the Book Festival, we mainly had to think about how we would rework some of the tracks where there is layered vocals, such as on you seek resolutions and I release you. It was fun to explore singing together, as that was not something that happened in the recording studio!

Mele Broomes (L) and Simone Seales (R). Photo: Matthew Arthur Williams

Are the poetry and the instrumental pieces of this album newly created work or has this project been a long time in the making?It’s a mixture of both. I’ve been working on the concept of the album for the last three years, with a few poems being written here and there over time. Thanks to some funding from the RCS Innovation Studio, I was able to work with Victoria Adukwei Bulley to develop my poetry further and ended up writing the poetry last year.

It wasn’t until I was about to head into the recording studio that I locked in on what the music was, and for a couple of tracks it wasn’t until we were days into production that I figured out what the sound of the poems were.

How did Todd Haynes’ Carol inspire your debut record’s title track, and the album overall?
Carol is a beautiful depiction of lesbian love as sensual and tender. The visuals are gorgeous and feel so real due to the grain of the film and the colour palette it follows.

The film came out a few months after my first heartbreak ten years ago, and it was my first time seeing soft romance between two women. I felt so much like Therese, the main character, in the film and it actually helped me process a lot of what I was going through at the time.

In the film, there’s a letter which Carol writes to Therese which begins “Dearest, there are no accidents…” and further along she mentions a “perpetual sunrise stretched out before us…” Over the last decade, I would often think of this letter and recall my own experience of seeing the sunrise once with my first love. It’s a memory I cherish deeply but had somehow always felt too painful to speak about.

The title track, Dearest, is my reclamation of that warmth and nostalgia. It gives me permission to reflect and honour that which shaped me. The rest of the album follows suit, each poem being a specific memory from the relationship which sticks out in my mind and that I can still feel in my body today.

Dearest is a journey through love, the tension that forms within that relationship and the fact that the first one cannot last forever. How does playing the cello allow you to explore all the emotions embedded in your first queer romance that ended some time ago?
The cello is my voice. It’s the one thing I’ve been able to turn to and express myself on without fear of judgement. During that time after the breakup, I really dedicated myself to practicing and finding my voice on it – this wooden box with strings.

I would spend a minimum of four hours a day in a practice room, working on scales and excerpts and concertos, and improvising in between. The cello was my place to process, so it felt natural to use it as a method of exploring the various memories from my first romance.

As you prepare for Dearest to be released into the world tomorrow, what's inspiring your live performance? Will you be gigging a lot to celebrate the release?
I’m continuously inspired by embodied feelings. I have a deep desire to articulate emotions through sound, whether it's via repetition or extended technique. Live performance, for me, is about inviting people to hear and feel the world as I do.

To celebrate the release of Dearest, I actually plan to rest! I hope to tour it in 2026-27, though so watch this space.

What does the rest of the year look like for you as 2025 comes to a close?
I don’t have many gigs before the end of the year, and I’m grateful for that. It’s been a whirlwind of a year, and I’m looking forward to reflecting on it and planning for the year to come. I plan to spend time with my partner and my family, read books, go climbing, and practice scales and bowing techniques!

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Dearest by Simone Seales is available to buy on Bandcamp, and on all major streaming platforms, from 21 Nov
simoneseales.com