She'll Make You Crazy About Classical Music with Humour
Tasmin Sarkany is a high-performing musical comedian. She plays the violin, appearing in character as the oblivious Amelia Crochet. We spoke ahead of her Edinburgh show, Perfect Harmony.
We are all wired differently. Some, after many micro lifetimes of indecision, and then perhaps after a short nap, will have an idea drop into their lap that can propel them forward for years, maybe decades to come.
This may well be the fate of Tasmin Sarkany, who created positive reverberations in 2024, when she came 3rd in the highly contested West End New Act of the Year competition, proving that the capital city has an appetite for comedy explored through the lens of classical music.1 She performs by using her violin as a sort of puppet, with whom she has musical, rather than ventriloqual conversations, donning her pseudonym: Amelia Crochet.
There’s much to be said of our bow-proficient subject, but do you hunger to know what you do not know?.. I bloody hope so. My interview with Tasmin is both transcribed in words and uploaded as audio below.
The Interview
I’m allowing you to listen in on our conversation, or you can scroll to read it with pictures, like a kids’ book.
How important is music to you?
It’s a big question. It’s very important to me. I feel a connection to music when I play and when I listen to it.
“Music was a big part of my social life growing up, playing in youth orchestras. It’s similar to comedy in that I became a part of a niche community.”
The classical music community is very much a niche thing.
So, you relate to classical musicians quite strongly, then?
I played alongside people who have gone on to be professional musicians. So, I can’t relate to them now, but I was very much on the same track at the time, and got a glimpse of what it would be like. When you reach your late teens, it becomes something you have to commit to, perhaps at the expense of taking other subjects.
And you had other interests that pulled you away?
…I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. I should say, I’m still not sure. I briefly considered going to a conservatoire when I was 16, but I asked around, and it didn’t sound right for me. I wanted to go to university and meet a range of people instead.
I study physics as a PhD student, and I’ve always had an interest in science. My parents have quite science-y jobs too.
“Physics and music were two competing sides of my personality.”
And people said I could always play music whilst studying physics, but that it would be quite unusual to do it the other way around. Plus, I was getting very, very nervous before the concert auditions, so it didn’t seem like a natural job for me.
Has humour helped you to perform? Because people are laughing, it’s presumably less intense.
It has. I actually started doing stand-up comedy without any musical element.
I was watching a lot of comedy and remember becoming concerned that I was watching it more than I was doing my degree. Sometimes I’d have ideas for sketches, and felt inspired by quite old, usually British sketch shows of the 70s and 80s.
“It became obvious that I wanted to do stand-up, or give it a go. This was completely separate from my interest in music.”
I only did one performance at a uni night before COVID. There, I met the hilarious alternative stand-up Caitriona Dowden. We got on very well, and I messaged her during COVID, saying, ‘I know we only met once, but would you like to do some comedy writing over Zoom?’ It became a very unofficial group called the Oxford Comedy Workshop.
After COVID, I started doing open mics, but I didn’t know what I was doing. I suppose it was observational stand-up, but it wasn’t really working. During that summer, I became obsessed with Nina Conti; I love Nina Conti and her ventriloquist humour.
“I realised that most of the comedy I like is not straight stand-up. It’s either musical or alternative.”
I can’t do ventriloquism, but I love the idea of it. Of having the extra character who’s actually you and playing around with that. I also think I love puppets, but I didn’t feel compelled to learn the technique. I had my music…
“I thought, ‘Maybe my ventriloquist doll can be the violin, and somehow we can figure out a language between us.’ The goal was to have a conversation with the violin.”
A weird idea, but I thought it would be quite surreal and funny. I didn’t try it out for months because I wasn’t sure quite how it was going to work.
Can you tell me about your character, Amelia Crochet, and do you relate to her?
It freaked me out the first time someone asked me this, because I thought, ‘Maybe I am like her, and I just don’t realise.’ That would be very bad, because I don’t think she’s an exemplary person.
I started just playing the violin on stage as myself, not as a character. And the first thing that worked was the musical puns, e.g. mentioning archery and playing the theme from The Archers. It was really exciting when that worked, but it was still very embryonic at that time.
Amy Webber, a musical comedian, came up to me afterwards and said I arrived on stage in quite an introverted and casual way, and that because of the violin, she expected something quite formal. I realised I could play into that expectation, beginning each set with a seriousness, and then turn it on its head and make it silly.
So, I started doing a posh voice and wearing the floral dress. I love classical music, but I find some of its culture quite funny. And if you’re not in that world, it’s a minute slice of society, and therefore quite inaccessible. When you go to the massive opera houses, it feels very intense and old-fashioned. They’re extremely luxurious and slightly separated from their surroundings.
When I was in orchestras, the joke was always, ‘What’s the dress code?’ (for performing). Because…
“You’d always get women in dresses that looked like a pair of curtains. So, I tried to look for a dress like that.”
Amelia is in a comedic setting, but she doesn’t understand why people classify her as a comedian. I didn’t like her at first because she represents everything that I find slightly annoying about that world. But because I’ve spent a lot of time being her on stage, I’ve ended up sympathising, because she means really well. She just has zero self-awareness.
She thinks everyone will respond the way she does to things, but she’s quirky. I suppose I do sometimes fall into that trap of thinking everyone responds the way I do, but I hope I’m more self-aware. I do find her optimism quite charming.
Why have you chosen to do a show all about Bach?
There actually isn’t a lot of music written for solo violin, and Bach is the most famous example. He wrote sonatas and partitas. Other composers, such as Ysaÿe, have done it since, but Bach’s solo pieces are the ones every violinist goes back to, and they’re the ones every violinist learns at some point.
But I’ve just been listening to a lot of Bach, and I really like it. People used to say Bach was very mechanical or mathematical because so many of the tunes fit together in clever ways. This can be a misleading opinion because it’s incredibly emotional music. Especially Chaconne, his most famous unaccompanied violin movement. It’s speculated that he wrote it after his first wife died, and although that hasn’t been confirmed, it’s an intense piece.
Bach’s music goes to places that you aren’t expecting, and then makes a dramatic return to where it started. He’ll tease a build-up 4 or 5 times before it reaches the climax.2 I now appreciate that complexity. When I was younger, I was all about Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. It might be why I wanted to play the violin.
“I always joke about The Four Seasons, but I genuinely think, ‘What a banger.’ ”
I enjoy writing from the perspective of revered literary or cultural icons, e.g. writing a diary from the point of view of Proust. So, I ended up writing quite a lot from the perspective of baroque composers, and it just makes me laugh. So much was different about their culture; they all wore wigs. So, I’d write about Bach having a rave with Vivaldi and Handel, and say, ‘It got so mad. We all threw our wigs off and were dancing the night away to the Four Seasons.’
It sounds like an ambitious step forward to go from puns to creating fictional scenarios.
Ha-ha, the good thing about my PhD is that it’s very flexible. So I can take a weekend off and go to a cafe to write.
“Amelia is such a strange character; she can get away with saying this stuff because you never know what’s true and false with her. Why should she explain? That’s the audience’s problem.”
If Bach were a piece of pasta, which pasta shape would he have been?
I dunno, man. It’s a good question. He’d either be penne or the butterfly one. The butterfly pasta (farfalle) is quite ornate and baroque. Yet his music is built on solid bass parts. If you listen to the beginning of the St Matthew Passion, the bass is relentless. It wouldn’t work without the bass. Does that make him penne? I dunno. *laughter*
You’re doing an Edinburgh show, aren’t you? Why should people come and see it?
Yes, I’m doing a mixed bill in Edinburgh, as a work-in-progress of the full show, and it’s structured like a classical concert.
“Amelia has organised this concert, and she doesn’t know why everyone keeps classing her as comedy.”
*More laughter* She’s just like, ‘Whatever, I’ll go with it.’
She’ll tell you about the history of Bach, but she also gets very distracted doing self-promotion. Unlike my plans for the complete show, we have an interval, where two alternative comedians will come on and do 10 minutes each. To entertain the audience whilst Amelia takes her beauty break.
You should see it because it’s going to be very fun, it’s funny, and it’s unusual.
“It’s very punny too, so if you like puns, you should come.”
I’m just looking forward to Amelia running the show for the first time. I wanted to present classical music in a lighter way that everyone can enjoy. You can avoid going to a concert hall, worrying about whether you’re clapping in the right places… because I do see people getting confused about that at concerts. If you’ve never been before, why would you know?
It’s also age-appropriate, I’d say 14+, just because you might not get all the jokes if you’re younger. Although…
“There is an insinuation that Amelia and the violin are ‘involved’ ”
So if you’re not okay with that kind of relationship…
*laughter*
But y’know, it’s all fake.
How vivid is your visual imagination?
Interesting question.
“I think quite vividly, and I imagine things in my head a lot.”
It’s useful in science to be able to visualise what’s going on. In comedy terms, my audio memory comes into play. I might not remember entire scenes, but I remember a lot of quotes from sitcoms, and the voice appears in my head, not just the words.
I also have to picture what people might want from my performances, and so I have to visualise what it will look like.
Would you prefer to hear a plop or a ka-pow?
I don’t even know. I don’t even know. It depends. How long has it been since I last heard a ka-pow? Have I ever heard a ka-pow? Could you define it…
*she laughed*
Like a comic book sound effect.
Okay, probably a ka-pow. Yeah, yeah.
Is that because you have a taste for fighting?
No, I think I have a slight taste for the theatrical. *Dan laughed*
But it depends on the context. I think the subtext of your question is: ‘Do I like deadpan or non-deadpan comedy?’ right?
I don’t know. I don’t know what the subtext is. *laughing* I think the worst plop would be y’know, a toilet one.
Again, it depends on the context. *Dan laughed*
How?? How could it depend on the context??
In the film The Shawshank Redemption, Andy gets a delivery of library books and music, and he plays this beautiful Mozart aria from the opera The Marriage of Figaro over the speakers. The guards get mad at him because he’s making the prisoners feel a sense of freedom. But he only manages to do this because one of the guards goes to the toilet.
So, you hear the drop, and then this beautiful music comes in.
It’s amazing, you could bring that to mind after such a question.
I operate based on references.
“For the longest time, you couldn’t say anything to me without me going, ‘Oh my god, there’s a Mitchell & Webb sketch about that.’ ”
People would say, ‘It’s amazing, have you got a Mitchell & Webb sketch for every occasion?’, and then another friend pointed out that it’s less amazing on my part, and more amazing that they wrote that many memorable sketches.3
Which classical piece would provide the best soundtrack for tickling someone’s feet with a feather?
Something on the flute, probably. Because it’s like “blululu” *she imitated a flute and I laughed*. There’s a suitable flute part in Peter and the Wolf when the bird appears.
Or if you wanted to be properly funny, then something serious like Verdi’s Requiem. *We laughed a final laugh*
…I’m deep in a floaty haze, having doubled up on my blood pressure medication by mistake, so I hope I’m suitably tasked by writing this outro. I can hear the flute from Peter and the Wolf, although it isn’t playing. If you’d like to hear Tasmin, y’know, playing… and joking, and swaying, unless it’s me doing that. You can purchase tickets at the following links. She’ll be in Oxford before Edinburgh. A guest to be remembered, although I’ve entirely forgotten where I am.4
If you have any questions for Tasmin or my self, feel free to ask!
I’ve previously interviewed 2023’s winner, Shalaka Kurup. Tasmin was also a Musical Comedy Awards finalist in 2023. As was another former guest, Christian Jegard.
Click here for a Limmy video that reminds me of this.
The duo, perhaps better known for Peep Show, though the sketches are a lot of fun.
I wish this were just “a bit”, but it’s based on truth, like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Great Dan x