She began performing as a singer-songwriter when she was eighteen and released her first studio album, Under A Piano, in 2005, after which Indie Sounds NY named her one of its Top Ten for the year. She performs throughout New York City at such venues as Rockwood Music Hall, Caffe Vivaldi, the Sidewalk Cafe, and Goodbye Blue Monday, and has also performed in Pennsylvania, California, Minnesota, and Michigan. She second studio album, In Place of Arms, will be released in mid-September 2010. She also made two experimental albums, February (2008) and Love is Just a Crack in the Place of You (2009) for the RPM Challenge.
Her songwriting grew out of a history of writing poetry, and studying both voice and piano. She began receiving awards for her poetry as early as the second grade and most recently had a poem published by the Tasmanian literary journal, Famous Reporter, in 2009. She studied piano for ten years before transferring her attentions to studying voice. She has studied opera and classical singing with Lise Carlson, jazz and musical theatre with Fran Carbonaro, and has briefly studied jazz with Rhiannon, and extended technique with Joan La Barbara.
She performs regularly as an experimental vocalist, culling from a wide range of techniques and styles to create her own performance works, to literally voice those of contemporary composers, and to explore improvisation. She created an hour-long, site-specific song cycle called Song Cycle in Time/Space (2005) and a suite of works for voice and boom box called Telephone Songs (2006). She is currently developing a set of songs to be performed in public or private bathrooms called Hearffft: Bathroom Songs. She is a core member of the new music ensemble thingNY, with whom she has premiered over a hundred works. Now in their fourth season, they have performed at such venues as the Stone, the Tank, Judson Memorial Church, ABC No Rio, Nuyorican Poets Café, and Secret Project Robot, among others. She has worked with composer Tom Swafford to develop his fifteen-minute solo opera “This is the Real Me,” which she premiered at the Douglass Street Music Collective in 2009. She has worked as a songwriter and performer with the postmodern dance collective Urisov in both San Francisco and New York, and has performed in countless other musical and theatrical contexts at such venues as the Kitchen, PS 122, and Dixon Place, with such folks as Claude Wampler, Banana Bag & Bodice, and Hoi Polloi.
With an insatiable desire to explore the voice on all levels, she is a doctoral candidate in Performance Studies at New York University in addition to a performing vocalist. Her scholarly work focuses on the voice, song, twentieth-century music and performance, contemporary philosophy, technology, the quotidian, speech pathology, and social justice. She has the pleasure to work with scholars Allen S. Weiss, André Lepecki, and Barbara Browning and is currently working on a dissertation tentatively titled “Voice-Acts: Performance, Philosophy, and Relationality in the Vocal Activities of Cage, La Barbara, and Lucier.” In addition, she is the Critical Acts Editor, with T. Nikki Cesare, of TDR/The Drama Review: the journal of performance studies, edited by Richard Schechner.
Gelsey also has a sense of humor and strives to not take herself too seriously. She apologizes for this bio’s seeming momentary lapse and thanks you for your interest in her activities.
Sweetness
Gelsey Bell Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
To make your knees buckle and shake
And I want this song to do what it needs to
To kiss the back of your neck at the end of a long long day
And to put its hands through your hair
When your head is hanging low
And to give you, to give you
To give you
A little sweetness
Sweetness, sweetness, sweetness
A little sweetness
I want this song to hold you when I'm not there
To do it myself
And when I play this song, I'm holdin' you
Though I'm not there to do it myself
And I can play it clean or messy
Depending on what you need
I just want you to know you've
Always got a place to go when you need a
When you need a little, when you need a little
When you need a little, when you need a little
When you need a little
When you need
A little sweetness
Sweetness, sweetness, sweetness
A little sweetness
The lyrics of Gelsey Bell's song Sweetness evoke a deep sense of affection and longing. The singer wants the song to do what it needs to in order to create an emotional response in the listener. She wants the song to be so powerful that it makes the listener's knees buckle and shake. The song is meant to provide a sense of comfort and affection, to be like a lover kissing the back of your neck after a long, hard day.
The song is meant to provide a sense of connection between the singer and the listener, even when they are not physically together. The singer wants the song to hold the listener when she is not there, to be a source of comfort and support. She can play the song clean or messy, depending on what the listener needs at the moment. The refrain of the song is "A little sweetness", repeated several times. It serves as a reminder that even in the darkest moments, there is always a little bit of sweetness to be found.
Overall, Sweetness is a song about the power of music to connect people and provide emotional comfort. The lyrics represent a longing for human connection and affection, and the song serves as a reminder that even in difficult times, there is always a little bit of sweetness to be found.
Line by Line Meaning
I want this song to do what it needs to
I want this song to fulfill its purpose
To make your knees buckle and shake
To evoke a powerful emotional response within you
And I want this song to do what it needs to
I want this song to fulfill its purpose
To kiss the back of your neck at the end of a long long day
To give you comfort and relaxation after a tiring day
And to put its hands through your hair
To give you a soothing feeling of being cared for
When your head is hanging low
When you're feeling down and in need of comfort
And to give you, to give you
To offer you something special
To give you, to give you
To offer you something special
To give you
To offer you something special
A little sweetness
A small but significant gesture of love and care
Sweetness, sweetness, sweetness
A repetition to emphasize sweetness
A little sweetness
A small but significant gesture of love and care
I want this song to hold you when I'm not there
I want this song to be a comforting presence when I'm away
To do it myself
To offer you comfort in person
And when I play this song, I'm holdin' you
When you listen to this song, imagine that I'm holding you
Though I'm not there to do it myself
Even though I can't be there to offer you comfort
And I can play it clean or messy
I can perform this song carefully or passionately
Depending on what you need
Depending on what kind of emotional response you're looking for
I just want you to know you've
I want you to understand
Always got a place to go when you need a
You can always turn to this song for comfort
When you need a little, when you need a little
When you need some comfort and love
When you need a little, when you need a little
When you need some comfort and love
When you need a little
When you need some comfort and love
A little sweetness
A small but significant gesture of love and care
Sweetness, sweetness, sweetness
A repetition to emphasize sweetness
A little sweetness
A small but significant gesture of love and care
Contributed by Isabella N. Suggest a correction in the comments below.