The making of Ottawa’s heavy metal cellist

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At an age when most children are playing with Legos, Raphael Weinroth-Browne was practicing his cello and already deep into heavy metal.

The Ottawa musician wasn’t even 10 years old when he picked up the instrument that he still plays more than two decades later. Then, as now, he was determined to blaze his own trail.

“Everybody learns guitar or piano, growing up. Cello is, like, different,” he says. “I think I’ve always had this very intuitive desire to set myself apart and do things that are not common. That was one manifestation of that.”

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At that same tender age, although Weinroth-Browne was already a voracious listener with diverse tastes, he was especially keen on bands like Metallica and Tool, a heavy rock band for true connoisseurs.

“I collected a lot of metal records from a pretty young age,” Weinroth-Browne says. “I had the entire Tool discography when I was 11.

“That type of music is really at the core of my sensibility,” the 32-year-old adds.

Fans might already have discerned that if they’ve seen Weinroth-Browne in concert, especially since he let his hair grow to a proper heavy-metal length about eight years ago. “I kind of never turned back. It became part of my identity,” he says of his long locks.

Weinroth-Browne has played gigs large and small over the years, ranging, somewhat dizzyingly, from playing 200 shows before the pandemic with the globe-trotting Norwegian prog-rock band Leprous to giving a solo concert at this year’s Ottawa Bluesfest to performing last week with the Ottawa-based improvisatory chamber-music quartet called Collected Strands at the National Arts Centre.

A special showcase of Weinroth’s eclectic talents is coming up soon. Presented by Ottawa Chamberfest next Monday at the Gladstone Theatre, Weinroth-Browne plans to demonstrate as many aspects as possible of his musical self.

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In addition to presenting some solo pieces, Weinroth-Browne will play with his self-described “dark chamber folk trio” called Musk Ox. He’ll also play entirely improvised duets with the Toronto-based Kurdish-Iranian musician Shahriyar Jamshidi, who plays the kamanche, an Iranian bowed string instrument. Then, he’ll collaborate with Siaka Diabaté, a Burkina Faso native who relocated to Ottawa, and who plays the kora, a West African stringed instrument.

“We’re delighted to champion him with a whole feature, showcasing his many facets,” Carissa Klopoushak, the artistic director of Chamberfest, says of Weinroth-Browne.

“I appreciate that he seamlessly and organically integrates Western classical art music with Middle Eastern music, heavy metal, and everything in between,” Klopoushak says. “His spirit of collaboration will be showcased in full force.”

“That will be a real kind of a buffet, that Chamberfest show,” Weinroth-Browne says. As a warm-up of sorts for that concert, he is to play ambient music for yoga enthusiasts on Saturday at 9 a.m. outside Ottawa City Hall.

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Weinroth-Browne, 32, grew up in Ottawa, the son of parents who were casual musicians and also “super-supportive” of his youthful pursuits. “They were always very liberal … letting me explore music and do it in my own way,” he says. “There was never any weirdness about composing or improvising or what I listened to.”

There were lots of albums in his household, everything from classical music to Middle Eastern, Indian, and African music, sounds from obscure reggae to Scandinavian folk. Weinroth-Browne couldn’t get enough, and he discovered even more music on the CKCU show This Island Earth, an outlet for host Tony Daye to profess his love for world music.

“There was always the most amazing stuff on this show,” Weinroth-Browne says. “He found all the good stuff before streaming existed before all this stuff was being recommended to us.”  

More commercial radio introduced him to rock, and his love affair with metal continues to this day.

“I really fell in love with rock music at a very, very, young age,” he says. “It was really a central part of my idea of how to create music. For me, learning an instrument and listening to this music, those two things were interconnected.”

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He went to Canterbury High School because of its strings program, and took a lot of additional private music lessons as a teenager, gaining proficiency in not just cello, but also piano, drums and even flamenco guitar.

There was never any doubt about what Weinroth-Browne would do when he got older. “I always had the sense I could be a musician, have this kind of life, it always seemed possible,” he says.

At the age of 16, he made his first record, a progressive metal album for which he wrote all the music and played all the instruments.

At the University of Ottawa and later at the Glenn Gould School of Music in Toronto, Weinroth-Browne honed his technical facility and command of the cello, even if he already knew a career in classical music wasn’t in his cards.

“I have a complicated relationship with classical music … I never wanted to play in an orchestra,” he says. “I didn’t feel there was a creative component to being in an orchestra, like being in an assembly line. I was never good enough at following instructions to be that kind of classical musician.

“You can call it ego if you want … I wanted to be known for something, creating something unique,” he says.

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Indeed, Weinroth-Browne considers himself more as a composer and improviser who gets to play his own work. “I always felt I was more of an intuitive composer. That’s more where my ability lies. I’m always working on the playing part to catch up with that,” he says.

In 2020, he released his first solo album, Worlds Within. He’s in the process of recording a follow-up, traveling to Toronto for sessions, and creating extremely layered music that he describes as Middle Eastern-influenced, cinematic, extroverted, rhythmic, dynamic, and intense. 

“I’m pushing the cello pretty hard,” he says.

Weinroth-Browne speaks as if music is a path that he’s on, rather than a pursuit.

“It took me on a certain journey. That’s so typical with the arts. The path takes you there and you just follow its momentum in a way and just trust in it. That’s really beautiful, actually.”

He says he tries not to overthink the development of his idiosyncratic career. Instead, he tries to make the most of every musical moment.

“I try to stay in tune with that and not think about what would appear well in the eyes of society, or what people want from me, or what the industry wants right now.

“I don’t give a s–t about any of that,” he says. “I want to still be doing this in 20 to 30 years in a way that intuitively feels good to me, and not try to follow the trends.”

phum@postmedia.com

Raphael Weinroth-Browne: Parallel Worlds

When: Aug. 5, 7:30 p.m.

Where: Gladstone Theatre, 910 Gladstone Ave.

Tickets: $39 at chamberfest.com

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