Izzy Austin And Her Journey to the Cello
Izzy Austin is a classically trained cello player from the UK. Through career decisions, illness, and rebirth, Izzy talks with passion about the cello and life.
“On my 6th birthday, I was just so excited to see the little baby cello on my bed”. When Izzy Austin talks about music and the cello, it’s with both happiness and passion. She says she can not remember a memory in her life where she DIDN’T want to play. “My dad played when he was younger and he kept hold of the cello, so it was in the house, I guess that’s where it all started, it must have been love at first sight” she laughed.
“I just thought I HAVE to give this a go because I’m going to regret it for the rest of my life if I don’t”
And yet. Even though she’s been playing since she is 6 years old, it wasn’t until quite late that she decided to take it seriously as a career option. “I made the decision to do a business management undergraduate degree. I guess I felt the job opportunities were so limited, and I didn’t think that I was good enough to start a career in music” she reflects.
But after finishing her degree, she didn’t feel fulfilled. “I have a very strong memory of playing my cello after my undergraduate final exam and I just felt this incredible feeling of happiness and lightness that I haven’t felt at all from any of my business studies. That’s when I just thought I HAVE to give this a go because I’m going to regret it for the rest of my life if I don’t”.
And try she did. The first 6 months studying music were bliss. She worked extra hard to catch from the “break” she’d taken for her undergraduate degree. And yet, she felt amazing about it: “I’ve never felt that kind of passion and excitement for life, every day was just an incredible gift”.
Battling towards music
That’s when Izzy fell seriously ill. Aluminum toxicity is when you have too much aluminum in your body, to the degree where it’s almost poisoning you. “It caused a lot of havoc in my body. It messed up my muscles, all of my organs, I was in pain all the time”. Izzy couldn’t eat, sleep, sit without being in pain. She was extremely weak, and on top of that, she was losing her short term memory. “That was really scary because I actually thought that I was getting dementia early. And it was very embarrassing because I was having conversations with people and I wouldn’t be able to remember what we were just talking about”.
For the first 18 months, no one could tell her what was wrong with her. Everybody thought it was something that she was going to have for the rest of her life, and probably get progressively worse as she grew older.
“Thankfully, an absolute miracle, I managed to find a diagnostic of what was actually wrong with me. From then on I started to build myself up, physically and mentally.”
It took her at least 18 months to start functioning as a semi-normal person again, but it was about three years until she felt truly back, not worried about any kind of weakness or effect of what had happened to her.
This was again lost time to catch up on her cello. But at the same time, “cello was also one of the main things that helped me keep motivated, and to cope with what was happening. I was so determined that it would not stop me to become a cellist, I was not allowing it to happen in my head”.
Izzy slowly started to build up her playing. It began with one minute, three times a day. Then 20 minutes, three times a day. From that point on, she could increase her practice time at a much faster rate. But there was a catch.
“I realized that I would have to play my cello with a completely different technique, so I had basically to learn again from scratch, and this was quite frustrating because my progress felt very slow due to having to take it apart and relearn every aspect of it. I had a pretty tough time”.
Moving forward
Overcoming this was her biggest accomplishment for a while. The fact that she never gave up on herself: “it required so much mental strength and willpower to get me through each day when it would have been easier to do nothing and cry in bed”.
But she powered through, learned to play again, and eventually went back to college. And life went on. New accomplishments could be claimed.
“A year after having returned to college, I actually got accepted to an international student program for an international cello festival. Only 12 people were selected from Europe and I got the position. I couldn’t believe it after all the setbacks I’ve been through. For me, that was a huge accomplishment”.
“It’s not the kind of job that you can come back from the office and forget about it, there’s never a finish line”
Now Izzy is all in. She’s juggling her postgraduate studies, a business starter course, and teaching course online. She’s doing recordings, either remotely or in the studio, live performances such as concerts, live touring shows and weddings, and she’s teaching. “It’s very varied, every day is done differently” she rejoices, talking about rehearsals, performances, recording, practicing, admin, planning, exercise. She went from 6 to 8 hours of daily practice when she was trying to get back on track, to a more relaxed 3 to 4 hours now. “It’s not the kind of job that you can come back from the office and forget about it, there’s never a finish line”.
Her incredible love for life
But on top of this truly amazing path, one of the most striking things about Izzy is her peaceful acceptance and happiness about the little things in life.
“I feel very happy about my life. They were a lot of time when I wondered, what if I didn’t do the undergrad degree, what if I hadn’t fallen ill, all of that was a lot of time for me to be in a different position than where I am now. But I have reassessed it and I think that going through these experiences has taught me so many life lessons, led me to incredible people. It helped me find gratitude and contentment in everyday life”.
“I want to make sure to stay open to things that come my way because I don’t think we should limit ourselves”
It led her to know herself better and that makes life much easier to navigate. “It taught me a lot about life and what is actually important, taught me to trust myself and to trust the process of life. It’s nice to be able to feel like that”.
When asked about the future and her plans, Izzy is just as comfortable and philosophical:
“If the last few months have taught us anything, it’s that you never know what’s around the corner, you can’t possibly even imagine. As long as I’m able to adapt to whatever comes, and continue to stay happy and healthy, for me that’s the most important thing. I want to make sure to stay open to things that come my way because I don’t think we should limit ourselves.
Everything is a journey: it’s not about the destination, it’s what’s happening on the way to somewhere, and that’s a very lovely thing to think about because it means you don’t have to be anywhere, you can just enjoy the whole journey”.
— -
