‘I LONG TO RETURN TO THE STAGE’
SOMETHING of a virtuoso, Sharon Helga Corr started to learn to play the violin at the age of six. She still plays, and she also has a beautiful baby grand piano in her home in Madrid. “My dear friend,” she calls it.
And it’s her constant companion. “I write every day. I wrote an instrumental for my daughter the other day, my flower. I’m working on one for my handsome brave boy right now.
“My music has changed a lot over the years. It’s bound by my truth and experience — and I express it in all its beauty, difficulty and sometimes ugliness. I follow the flow of my heart and it pours out of me,” says Sharon, whose last solo album was 2013’s beautiful The Same
Sun.
“I’ve been making plans for my new album; thankfully it’s recorded and mixed. So right now I’m working on artwork and a promotional campaign. I long to return to the stage.”
Will The Corrs — whose last album was the brilliant Jupiter Calling in 2017 — tour or record next year?
“We’ll let you know!” of the plug sockets with the vacuum cleaner. Holy God! What next?”
How about pizza for breakfast with a beer? I joke. Like the rest of us during lockdown, I ask, are you becoming an alcoholic and binge-eater? She laughs.
“I’m definitely enjoying a few Friday or Thursday night beers with my friends and family at the online house party. It’s great to connect and relax with friends and laugh and be silly. We are munching down on the crisps every night, but that’s nothing new. Being a complete carnivore I’ve surprised myself by a craving for lentils. Bizarre but true. I love making curries. But I wouldn’t say no to pizza for breakfast!”
What does Sharon see when she looks in the mirror after two months of lockdown?
“I see me, a human being, woman, mother, trying hard to be calm to make the most of things. My face could do with a trip to the beauty parlour for sure — not to mention the rest of the body! More than anything I need fresh air, walks and sunshine. Covid puts a reality check on vanity. Though wearing a nightdress halfway through the day had to be stopped.”
I ask Sharon to tell me a story that illustrates the kind of woman she’s been over the last few months.
“Every day is a story. These last few years have brought many changes that I’ve embraced, not without difficulty,” she says, perhaps referring to the end of her marriage, or the death of her beloved father in 2015, “but with the knowledge I was on my right true path.
“I am changing. The world is changing. We have been out of sync with the universe and out of control, over-consuming, hurting our beautiful environment with our careless disregard, and not being in the moment… constantly hooked up to a smartphone so we can never concentrate on any one task. Something had to give.”
Sharon muses that maybe the silver lining of “this horror is we will learn true appreciation for this beautiful world we live in, for the kindness of strangers, for our friends and family, for a kiss or a long deep hug, for our children’s laughter.”
She thinks this is an opportunity to “quieten ourselves”, and to learn how to “live properly”, and therefore feel better by being more “connected” to our “true selves and to others”.
“I certainly welcome this,” Sharon continues. “Life has been too hectic. A time to recharge and focus on what’s really important is good.”
Sharon’s mother died at the age of 57 in 1999 (her father was 82 when he died), succumbing to a rare lung condition. What does Sharon think her parents would have made of the global pandemic?
“My mum was so earthy,” she says. “I think she would not have been happy with the effect we’ve had on our environment: how we carelessly disregard nature , by over-consuming, littering, not respecting the wildlife, the elements that are essential to our very own existence.
“Dad always said, ‘keep it simple’. He loved Mum and us and he went to work and came home — then cherished the music he made with Mum; that was their magic. It’s not complicated, rather it’s concentrated only on what’s important. There are lessons to learn in that.”