Then, two weeks later, his wife called me to say that the maestro has died. And I just could not believe it. I was so upset because he was an amazing man. He was just a lovely, funny, irreverent, fun person who was so clever and so good at what he did. And I was just devastated.

It took me another couple years to even think about what I was going to do. And then I decided, rather than try and find somebody else, I wanted to try and do something of what he might have done, so that’s when I started doing the arrangements and recording it all myself. And I decided I just needed to do it all by myself.

I'd been so well looked after by Max Richter for Lookaftering — he had just done everything for me and taught me so much — but I just thought I needed to try and figure out if I could do it myself. That’s why it took so long, because I am so very slow.



Did Lookaftering’s title come from the fact that Max Richter looked after you so much, as you said?

No. It came about when we were mastering the album and the person who was mastering it turned around and looked at me and was like, ‘So what’s the title?’ And I was like, ‘I don’t know.’

And then we went through a few things, and I was like, ‘Well, there’s this phrase my family uses for taking care of people or things or animals or whatever: look-aftering.’ And everybody in the room said ‘Yes! That's it!’ So that’s what it became.

And then after that I thought, ‘Oh, that’s such a stupid name. I never should have said that. I'm really daft to have done that.’

So I called the guys at Fat Cat Records and said ‘I’ve changed my mind’ and they said ‘Too late.’ They liked it so it went on the album. I often think I should have called it this, or I should have called it that, but its Lookaftering forever now.

What about Heartleap? Is there a story behind that title?

Yes, the cover of that album is a painting done by my daughter, as was the Lookaftering one of the rabbit. She painted the Heartleap one about five or six years ago and it was on my laptop as a desktop background for a long, long time because it was just one of my favorite things she's ever done.

And I was looking at it one day and this song came to me all in a rush. I asked her if she would mind if I called my song “Heartleap” and eventually the album was called Heartleap, too. She was very good about it and said ‘Yes, of course.’ So it was sort of a collaborative effort.

When you released Heartleap, I read that there was a note in the press release that mentioned it would be your last album?

That was because when we were mastering the album in London, when we got to the end of the last song, this wonderful woman who mastered it — she had done Lookaftering as well — she turned to me and said, ‘So when we do the next one, we're going to do this and this and this.’ And I said, ‘I’m never doing this again!’

Because it had been such hard work. Those few months getting it finished had been really intense, and I think to have it finished, it was like falling off a cliff. And I decided I’m never doing this again.

David Cawley from Fat Cat Records was there, so he put it in his press release that “Vashti is adamant that this is her last album.”

I didn’t really think anything of it until I realized that practically every interview or article about the record would mention that this was my last album. And I was like, ‘Oh, well, OK then. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t.’ It’s amazing how you can say one thing and it gets picked up and that’s it. You can't really take it back.

Well, I think that’s what happens when you're that famous. Because you are famous, Vashti.

Well, 30 years without doing anything at all is still very much in my head. And it’s always a surprise to me that anybody has ever heard my name at all. It’s especially a surprise if somebody knows the music.

That’s still with me and I don’t feel at all remotely famous.