Bridging Art Forms: When Strings Meet Frames
Long-time Artlist contributors Brianna Tam and Sam Newton are equally talented in two very different fields. This summer, the cellist and the filmmaker took this partnership one step further when they decided to join forces. They spent the day in an LA studio, creating an audio-visual project with Brianna improvising electric cello over Sam’s cinematic collection of moments from Norway, aimed to reflect the feeling of awe Sam feels whenever he visits the country.
The result went way beyond anyone’s expectations — and left some members of the Artlist team wanting to learn the cello themselves. We caught up with Brianna and Sam to learn more about this project, their distinct but complementary creative processes, and why they’re now determined to team up with artists in different disciplines in the future.
Brianna Tam: Redefining the sound of passion and resilience
Although Brianna and Sam’s crafts are very different, both of them had to pave their own way to get where they are today.
Based in LA, Brianna Tam is a classical cellist, electric cellist, and composer. When she started playing cello at age 8, her music teacher told her she was too passionate and needed to calm down. “So I made my energy smaller and smaller over the years,” she says.
Brianna always knew she wanted to pursue a path in music, so she worked hard, eventually competing in concerto competitions, performing with world-class musicians, and attending a competitive music conservatory.
She dropped out after one year due to burnout, and during her time off came across Apocalypta, a heavy metal cello band. That’s when she realized her energy might fit in after all. “I got back into cello through the loop pedal, which means I can record and add layers live,” she says. “I can build a world of music on my own.”
Brianna mastered the art of improvised live-looping in non-classical performance, and it wasn’t long before the music world began to take notice. Her unparalleled energy and passion combined with her imagination and flow led to a killer live show. She was hired as Principal Cellist of the Spartanburg Philharmonic and Assistant Principal Cellist of the Fayetteville Symphony Orchestra.
Brianna started working with Artlist in 2021 after a friend encouraged her to send her debut album, Growth to the team. “Their contact person said he loved it and listened to it in his own time and had it on repeat,” she says. “I was like, okay — well, that means a lot.”
Now, Brianna is one of Artlist’s most popular musicians. She works with Artlist Originals to create original music for the catalog, and her gift of building and illustrating worlds through sound has added depth and texture to hundreds of film projects—including some of Sam Newton’s.
Sam Newton: Turning bold beginnings into global adventures
Sam Newton started working with Artlist in 2019 after spending five years traveling around the world and documenting his experiences. Just like Brianna, he had to get creative in order to make things happen for him. When he started out, he emailed over 500 companies to ask them if they might need his services. Three got back to him, and that was enough to kick-start his career.
Since 2019, Sam Newton and Artlist have been creative partners, working on dozens of film projects around the world, with a big part of his work and ethos centered around collaboration. “It’s great to meet other people who have taken that risk and broken the norms, whether they’re musicians, filmmakers, or visual artists,” he says. So when the idea to work with Brianna on his new travel film arose, he knew it would be a positive experience.
Both artists say that working with Artlist has helped amplify their creativity and explore new horizons, and both love the sense of connection with the community. “Artlist creatives who use my music want to feel connected to the person who is infusing energy in their project,” Brianna says. “They see my face, see what else I do, and see me as a person, not just a number. So I’ve had filmmakers reach out to me from Artlist to say I’ve scored a couple of their films.”
And Sam has been working on joint projects with Artlist for close to a year. “I’m working on a series where I get to interview and highlight Artlist’s incredible creators,” Sam says. “So it was really cool to actually see my footage with Brianna’s music and get to collaborate at that level.”
The art of collaboration
This project came about after Brianna performed at an Artlist event in LA. “I was telling the team how I wouldn’t be in LA right now if it wasn’t for Artlist,” Brianna says. “And they suggested we spotlight that and work on something together.”
A few weeks later, she received an email suggesting the joint project with Sam. “They said they think our styles would work really well together,” Brianna says.
In September, Brianna, Sam, and a few members of the Artlist team gathered in a recording studio in Hollywood. They only had one day to nail the premise of the project, so after some quick introductions, Sam played Brianna his footage, and she ran with it.
“I really like powerful, overwhelming, emotional music to align with the films that I make,” Sam says. “What she brings to the table with that cinematic genre and what she does with the cello is something that I really look for. That’s why I’ve used a lot of her music in the past.”
One of the key challenges was time limits — they just had one day to finalize the music. But Brianna felt right at home improvising music alongside Sam’s visuals. “I often do two-hour shows where I’m improvising the whole time,” Brianna says. “So I’m used to coming up with things quickly.”
She played to align with Sam’s imagery of Norway’s grandiose natural landscapes.
“His footage is really dramatic with intense, poetic, and introspective dialogue, so I played with that mood,” Brianna says.
As soon as Brianna started playing, it became clear that their two distinct styles were very well suited. “It was kind of a perfect match,” Brianna says. “The music he uses in his videos is the kind I create, and the drone shots of mountains and oceans were gorgeous. It was kind of hard not to be inspired by it, so it was pretty intuitive.”
Sam says he felt just as inspired by Brianna. “We both live in the moment and allow creativity to flow — and it was really cool to see the way she operated with making her music,” Sam says. “We looked over the footage and she closed her eyes and just started playing. It was really, really powerful how she came up with this incredibly emotive music right on the spot.”
The result: Creating magic through partnership
Brianna’s track is called “Nor Way.” It’s a 4.5-minute journey through the full spectrum of human emotions, starting slow, low, and melancholy before building to an emotive crescendo that evokes feelings of awe and inspiration. It’s a classical masterpiece that fits perfectly with Sam’s drone cinematography landscape shots rooted in Norway’s natural beauty, taking Sam’s visuals to the next level.
“Brianna’s music elevates my new video in so many ways,” he says. “It creates the atmosphere that I always look for. Even standalone, the music just takes you on a journey and really helps elevate my footage in a way that’s harmonious and cinematic.”
To finalize the footage, Sam used Premiere Pro color grading and DaVinci Resolve Video Editor. “When you find editing software that you can use quickly and easily, then stick with it and just become a master at that,” Sam advises. “I used Premiere for the sound design, and watched the whole thing come to life.”
Brianna hopes this video inspires people to collaborate with other artists outside of their field. “Whenever we’re in turmoil, we can always turn back to art, music, and nature,” Brianna says. “And I think the video ties that together really beautifully.”
Both Sam and Brianna are excited to work with more artists in the future and push their creative limits in new ways. “As artists, we can block ourselves from collaborating and working with other people,” Sam says. “So when I have the opportunity to meet people outside of my little niche, outside of my filmmaking world, in a completely different genre of art, it’s really, really powerful. It’s opened my eyes to a lot of different ways that I could be creating.”
The film is available to watch now on YouTube, and we hope it motivates the Artlist community to team up with an artist from a different field. “It’s great to be inspired by other artists, see different perspectives, and work together to create something better than we could have on our own,” Brianna says.
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