New In Music This Week: April 21^st has some outstanding releases for you to explore. 

My top pick is:

JAZZ: SILENT, LISTENING – Fred Hersch  – ECM Records

I’ve been listening to pianist/composer Hersch’s album for about two months now. I can’t stop listening to it. For nearly 51 minutes, I get to do exactly what Hersch implores us to do with his title:  be silent and listen.

Of course, he’s being relatively silent and is listening as well. Listening to his deepest thoughts and expressing them through what seems a largely improvised series of recordings.

He opens with the Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington composition Star-Crossed Lovers. He follows that with six exquisite originals before performing Russ Freeman’s The Wind. The album’s last three tracks are another Hersch original and songs written by  Oscar Hammerstein II and Sigmund Romberg (Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise) and Alec Wilder and Ben Ross Berenberg’s Winter of My Discontent.

There’s no discontent to be found here. This is a truly beautiful solo piano recording.

The rest of my selections for New In Music This Week: April 21^st are:

CLASSICAL: ALL THESE LIGHTED THINGS – Elim Chan, Antwerp Symphony Orchestra – Alpha Classics

The title of this album comes from a three-movement work by Elizabeth Ogonek that is sandwiched between Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet Suite and Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé Suite No. 2.

All These Lighted Things was commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra were Ogonek was Composer-in-Residence. It was there that she had her violin concerto In*Silence given its first performance under the baton of Elim Chan.

I really like All These Lighted Things. The nearly 15-minute work has three very different movements, but they coalesce nicely into a potent composition and recording.

Chan makes some interesting choices with Romeo and Juliet and her Daphnis et Chloé is equally convincing. But the highlight remains Ogonek’s work.

CLASSICAL: CHOPIN: ÉTUDES, Opp. 10 & 25 – Yunchan Lim – Decca Classics

South Korean pianist Lim plays these 24 works by Chopin with such dexterity that it seems impossible that he’s so young. Though it shouldn’t. In 2022 was the youngest person to win gold at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.

Études Op. 10 were published in 1833.  Chopin was only a few years older than Lim so perhaps these works, amongst the most challenging in the classical repertoire, are being performed by someone so young – though much older musicians still find these works challenging. It is worth noting that some of these études were composed when Chopin was a teenager. Two years later Études Op. 25 were composed. Each set has 12 études.

Lim has been widely praised for his seemingly effortless skills. This album is only going to further that reputation.

CLASSICAL: DELIUS: HASSAN – COMPLETE INCIDENTAL MUSIC – Britten Sinfonia, Britten Sinfonia Voices, Jamie Phillips, Zeb Soanes – Chandos

This work was a discovery for me. Frederick Delius composed incidental music for a play by poet James Elroy Flecker. The work, whose full title is The Story of Hassan of Bagdad and How He Came to Make the Golden Journey to Samarkand, had its world premiere in 1923.

This recording, featuring narration by Soanes, has every note of music written by Delius and runs 80 minutes. In an interview published in the Christian Science Monitor in October 1923, Delius said, “At present my music is bound up with the drama for me that I cannot think of it apart from it.”

This recording would certainly have changed his mind. The narration (by Meurig Bowen) is never intrusive, but I found myself longing to get straight to the music. 

CLASSICAL: SORABJI: TOCCATA TERZA – Abel Sánchez-Aguilera – Brilliant Classics

Composer Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji is not a household name. yet his deeply challenging compositions are clearly catnip for pianist Sánchez-Aguilera whose previous album was 2020’s Toccata Seconda per Pianoforteby Sorabji. 

Both works are lengthy (each over two hours) and require a level of playing that both works require. The Toccata Terza was composed in 1955 and was rediscovered in 2019 after it had gone missing.

I wasn’t familiar with Sorabji but the playing on this album and the compositions themselves mean I will be listening to more of his works. In the hands of Sánchez-Aguilera compositions that can seem dense and lengthy turn into fascinating explorations of the keyboard and all it can do.

CONTEMPORARY CLASSICAL: MAGNOLIA – Aleksander Dębicz – Warner Classics

Polish composer and pianist Dębicz first came to my attention with his 2015 album Cinematic Piano. Film music and Bach have been hugely influential to Debicz and his albums leading up to Magnolia have reflected that.

This album is the first album of solely his music. He is joined on Magnolia by horn player Konrad Gołda, guitarist Łukasz Kuropaczewski, countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński, folk flutist Michał Żak and cellist Marcin Zdunik,

Magnolia feels like a soundtrack to a film. But perhaps that was the point, to encourage us to create that movie in our own hearts and minds.  To sit with this beautiful music and let our imaginations run free.

If so, this is beautiful music to do just that.

JAZZ: ORCHESTRAS – Bill Frisell – Blue Note Records

Guitarist/composer Frisell has long accomplished so much with his choiceful consideration of musical partners. For this album his finest choice proves to by arranger Michael Gibbs who has partnered with Frisell to create concerts with two different ensembles that achieve huge success.

The first is with the Brussells Philharmonic led by Alexander Hanson. Frisell is joined by bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Rudy Royston for a performance that includes four songs written by Frisell, two by Gibbs and Billy Strayhorn’s Lush Life.

The second album and concert is with the much smaller Umbria Jazz Orchestra. Two songs, Ron Carter’s Doom and Frisell’s Electricity are performed with both ensembles. It’s fascinating to hear the differences and the similarities in both performances.

Either way, this is a richly satisfying album that is a must-have for Frisell fans. Blue Note has also released a 3LP set that includes material note included from the concerts.

JAZZ: PERPETUAL VOID – Marta Sánchez Trio – Intakt Records

Drummer Savannah Harris and bassist Chris Tordini join pianist/composer Sánchez for a massively impressive album. The album tells you with the first track what to expect. I Don’t Wanna Live the Wrong Life and Then Die. 

Okay. We’re not taking things easy here. And they don’t, but the music is utterly compelling. Other titles include Prelude to Grief, The End of that Period and This Is The Last One About You might make you think this is all darkness. 

Sánchez is smarter than that and her musicians go along with the story here. This is Sánchez’s first trio album (having worked a lot in the quintet format). I hope there are more trio albums in her future. I wouldn’t mind be trapped in this perpetual void waiting for another trio album, but I hope I don’t have to.

OPERA: THE HOURS – KEVIN PUTS/GREG PIERCE – Renée Felming, Kelli O’Hara, Joyce DiDonato, The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus, Yannick Nézet-Séguin  – Erato

I’ve written a few times about this wonderful opera based on Michael Cunningham’s novel. Now you can hear exactly what’s so special about it in this recording made live during a performance at the Metropolitan Opera.

DiDonato, Fleming and O’Hara a terrific in this story of three women in different times within the 20^th century. The whole cast is in fine form in this powerful opera. Fans of Virginia Woolf, the novel or the feature film will find this story being told in a unique and powerful way.

That’s all for New In Music This Week: April 21^st.

I hope you enjoy the music!

The post NEW IN MUSIC THIS WEEK: APRIL 21st appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

“Yes, 100%,” he told me last week as we discussed his LA Opera debut in the role of Don Basilio in Rossini’s The Barber of Seville. The production opens this Saturday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and runs through November 12th.

He continues, “I learned this very early in my career. I was 27 years old in Salzburg singing Masetto [in Don Giovanni]. And I thought, small role, I’m Italian, this is going to be a walk in the park. It turns out that between Nicholas Harnoncourt conducting and Martin Kušej director, I learned very quickly there is no such a thing as a small role. If you put enough effort, you can make something interesting in anything you sing. I’m very pleased that I had that chance, because it made the difference in my career right away.”

Don Basilio is not a large role at all. Certainly not for someone who has sung the title role of Don Giovanni at the Metropolitan Opera. It wasn’t the size of the role that appealed to him.

“I like to choose roles that I think are interesting dramatically,” he said in a conversation last week. “In the buffa repertoire Basilio is one of the staples. When they asked me if I wanted to do it, I said immediately yes! It’s a fun role. [There’s] a great tradition of great singers singing this role. So I want to challenge myself and do it.”

At this point it would be good to point out that this is also the first time Pisaroni has sung this role. Though he’s no stranger to Rossini’s work as he counts Il Podestá in Gazza Ladra; Alidoro in La Cenerentola; Mahomet II in La Siege de Corinthe and Mustafá in L’Italiana in Algeri amongst the over thirty roles in his repertoire.

His approach to the mostly comedic role of a music teacher in The Barber of Seville to be a more of our time than might usually be seen.

“I can go 1950 Italian comedy. But I think in 2023 we can probably add another layer in trying to make it a bit more modern,” he revealed. “It’s a challenge. I come with a fresh approach and [am] trying to be as honest to the character that I can be. I have a great cast to work with here because a lot of them have done the role so many times: Isabel Leonard as Rosina and Josh Hopkins [as Figaro]. It’s my intent to try to make it a more sober and modern character.”

When asked if having something in common with his characters was essential, Pisaroni immediately said no.

“It’s called acting for a reason – because you act,” he said a bit surprised at the question. “It doesn’t have to be you. You just have to find the motivation to portray the action of the character. It’s not that because I play Don Giovanni I mistreat women or because I play Basilio I try to make a joke every time I say a phrase. You just have to do your job. One thing that I do is to find, in my life experience, something that I can use to either make a joke or convey something and sometimes it helps.”

Once reminded that there is a movement afoot to suggest that casting now should be based on lived-in experience, Pisaroni made the argument for allowing actors to do what they do.

“For me, the great thing about being an actor, it’s actually the opposite. Meaning I can try to play somebody that is completely different than me. Understanding this person makes me a better person because then in real life I can take that experience and say, Oh, you see, they went through this. So I will be even more kind and even more understanding in real life. If we go down that road it’ll never end. Then there is a sub category of subcategories and then your repertoire is going to become so small that then what? I can play only Italian roles because I am Italian? We need to give us credit to have sensitivity to be able to say something even about subjects that are so far away from us.”

What isn’t far away from Pisaroni is the presence of music teachers in his life. One particular instructor played a prominent role in his development as an opera singer.

“His name was Renato Sassola and he was a great tenor of Teatro Colón for 30 years. I met him by chance in Milano. It was a difficult period for me because I was in the conservatory singing a repertoire that was not really my repertoire. I felt I was not ready to sing the kind of stuff like Nabucco. Like Ferrando from Trovatore. I wasn’t happy and he really changed my perspective. He helped me really free my voice, free my technique and my relationship with music and how to produce it. I eventually moved to South America for six months to work with him. He really did make a big difference for me. He passed away some years ago, but he has a really special place in my heart.“

In The Barber of Seville Don Basilio has one very major aria: La Calunnia E’Un Venticello which is about how slander and rumor can have far too much power. In our world today, where anonymity and freedom to express yourself anywhere, anytime without major repercussions, Pisaroni finds the aria to be applicable to a multitude of people.

“Everybody has a telephone. I wish people were a little bit kinder to be honest with you. There are so many performances of great singers that nobody ever knew. They went to Bologna or Parma, it just was a relationship between the singer and the audience in that night. Now you can do a terrible concert in the middle of Brazil, in the Amazon, and everybody is going to know because somebody has a phone and recorded it. Which puts, I think, an incredible stress on performance today.”

Then there’s the subject of reviews with which Pisaroni has a very firm point-of-view.

“I think we need to be a bit more careful when we criticize things so harshly. I think for the young generation, there is only one way to protect yourself. Don’t read it. Because at the end of the day, even if it’s a bad review [from] the Los Angeles Times, it is one opinion of somebody that didn’t like you. Doesn’t mean that you are not worth it or that you should stop singing because one person doesn’t like it. Even people that I think are gods like Luciano Pavarotti got bad reviews. If he got bad reviews, Luca Pisaroni can be trashed. It is fine, because he was God for me.”

Not that it was always fine with Pisaroni.

“At the beginning of my career I would do Figaro and I would get 19 good reviews. But the only one I remember is the one that was a bad review. I don’t remember the good ones. Don’t read them and don’t be confronted. But doesn’t mean that you don’t have to have critical thinking. I think you need to be critical and you have to be brutally honest with yourself. And when you’re unhappy about something, work on it. Also you need to have a circle of people that are brutally honest with you who can say this is not good. You need to work on that or you didn’t sound very good, so that you can actually keep working on yourself and grow as an artist, as a singer, as a performer.” 

To see the full interview with Luca Pisaroni, please go here.

Main Photo: Luca Pisaroni in The Barber of Seville (Photo by Cory Weaver/Courtesy LA Opera)

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Musicals, operas and plays are regularly being reimagined. The recent production of Oklahoma! on Broadway; Michael Mayer’s production of Rigoletto at the Metropolitan Opera and the production of King Lear in which Glenda Jackson starred as Lear are just three examples. Enter director Phil Chan with Boston Lyric Opera‘s production of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.

For the uninitiated, Madama Butterfly tells the story of Cio-Cio San, a young Japanese girl who falls in love with a US Naval officer named Pinkerton.

Unbeknownst to Pinkerton, she has a baby – his baby. Unbeknownst to Cio-Cio San, he’s gotten married.

Chan has changed the setting of this tragic story to 1940s San Francisco – before the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. If you know your history you know that soon after that 120,000 Japanese Americans were interred in concentration camps in America – not for being the enemy, but for looking like they could be the enemy. Cio-Cio San (Karen Chia-Ling Ho) is now a nightclub entertainer named Butterfly. Pinkerton (Dominick Chenes) is about to be shipped out to war as a result of the bombing.

It’s a bold decision, but there is so much more to Chan’s thinking as I learned when we spoke last week before Madama Butterfly opened. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview with Chan, please go to our YouTube channel.

Q: What is it about this story that you think resonates so strongly and so deeply with people?

I think it really comes from the music. Puccini has written such a beautiful opera with such strong musical characters, such emotional highs and lows. Why does one like one roller coaster over the other roller coaster? It’s the feeling of butterflies, both extreme joy and relief, and then utter despair. You just ride between those two emotions for most of the opera.

It’s always been sort of a controversial opera. In the forties, it was actually canceled for a little bit. Canceled because people were afraid that it was empathizing with Japanese people too much. Now it’s again undergoing another sort of canceling because of its rightly poor depictions of Asian people. Caricature depictions. What it reinforces about Asian women.

We’re also having a second look at this opera, especially in the light of this anti-Asian social hysteria that has come out since COVID. It showed us that our acceptance of Asian-Americans here is really just a very thin veneer, the smallest thing, and we are not accepted here anymore.

When and where did you first experience Madama Butterfly?

I probably first saw it at The Met the current production [by Anthony Minghella], which is beautiful. I think I saw it before I had much of an awareness of any of this advocacy; how we represent Asian people. I saw it as just another fantasy that was told in the dramatic way, just like there are stories that take place in Germany and other places.

But then I started to dig a little bit deeper. The way we do things in opera and ballet that we’ve inherited from Europe that don’t necessarily serve everyone. These stories have power and they’re telling us specific narratives over and over again at the expense of Asian-American voices. What do they reinforce and what do they tell us – works like Madama Butterfly, this hyper-sexual, hyper-submissive Asian woman? You know what happens when we see that on stage?

In reality Asian women are being pushed onto subways tracks and and followed home and stalked home and shot down at their places of work, blamed for a disease. How are those two things connected when the arts are a way to empathize with the other? What if our arts aren’t doing us that favor anymore because the power depicting them is from 100 plus years ago?If we want this work to still have resonance, we need to help clear away some of the 100 years of cultural baggage so that Puccini’s intentions can be kept pure. So that’s what we I tried to do with this piece.

Is there something to learn by seeing how previous generations presented themselves, others and how they presented stories? Is there something to learn from those mistakes that should allow for them to exist in spite of their flaws, in spite of these depictions that are not appropriate?

I think there’s a difference between static art forms like photography, painting, sculpture, film and the performing arts which are living art forms. The static art forms [we] need to keep them as that is right. Birth of a Nation is arguably a great American film. It’s also a very problematic film. But we need to keep it alive and look at it within a context of where it belongs, which is in a museum to understand how it changed the minds of our people in a dangerous way. 

With the performing arts, however, we have a different set of rules. The performing arts have to be a mirror to our current moment. They have to reflect who we are and of our time. And if those things don’t hold true, the art isn’t honest. It doesn’t have integrity. Think about Shakespeare. If you’ve ever seen a Shakespearean play with a woman in it, you’re already seeing something radical and very different. The reason we’ve done that is because we need the art to better reflect our times. It’s by reimagining that we get to keep these works alive.

What I’m saying is let’s use our creative imagination. Let’s imagine this music with a bigger story for more people. Then let’s use that money we make from Butterfly ticket sales to commission a female composer or a Black composer or an Asian composer who’s alive now to make new work that reflects us so we can contribute to the canon as well. That’s also the bigger picture that I’m hoping this process brings out.

Anybody who tackles a story that has suicide in it, as this one famously does, as a director, is Cio-Cio San (or Butterfly’s) suicide an act of bravery or not? 

That depends on if the character kills herself. I think we’re questioning some of these stories. So just making the assumption that Cio-Cio San kills herself, again, goes against this. What else could it be? I’m not going to give away our ending, but just asking that question. The character does have to die at the end. But what is another death that we all experience? Or is there a death that is different than an automatic ritual suicide? What is a death that everybody can feel that isn’t just this abstract other thing that we don’t do in our society because we’re not crazy Japanese people who would even do that? 

Suicide doesn’t mean what it meant in the context of this opera when [Puccini] wrote the opera. So that is something that modern directors have to deal with. I think that’s why we’re seeing so much diversity in how this opera ends, which I think is really exciting. It keeps audiences guessing and keeps them wanting to come back and see this story over and over again. 

I saw a production that Josh Shaw of Pacific Opera Project did of Madama Butterfly, where all the Japanese characters sung in Japanese and all the the American characters sung in English. The idea was that these are barriers that they would have to have faced in the real world of Madama Butterfly. Do you think this opera lends itself to more dynamic changes than other operas?

In my research, it’s the Orientalist repertory that is almost the hardest to re-imagine because we love the fantasy. Orientalism has been a vehicle for spectacle for so long. Can you imagine The Met’s Turandot as anything but this giant Peking Opera spectacle? It’s just so big. It’s so beloved. It’s so pretty. It’s beautiful. It’s problematic, but it’s beautiful, right?You want that perfume. It’s very attractive. The problem is it doesn’t hold water when we are diverse. So when you’re looking at an otherwise outside culture as an insider and going, I’m Japanese and that’s not what we look like. Or I’m Chinese – I don’t see myself in this at all. It’s a very disorienting experience. But it was not made for us. So I think the Oriental operas are the hardest to re-imagine and balance because we’re stuck in how it’s done.

You mentioned the hysteria whipped up because of COVID and the resulting anti-Asian violence. Let’s assume that this production is successful in Boston and has a life beyond Boston in other cities. What is your hope that this production of Madama Butterfly will do to change the minds of the kind of people who spat on you and made it difficult for your father to go out*?

I think art is a way to bridge differences between people. Empathy and music is a way to cut through people’s hearts. It cuts through all of the vulnerabilities of the walls. It goes right to your heart. Puccini was very good at that. This way of doing the opera is a way to build empathy for Asian people. A way to say, we are not going to do this again to anybody. We’re not going to do this to Japanese Americans. We’re not going to do it to Jewish people. We’re not going to do it to Black people. We’re not going to do this again to anybody.

If that can be part of the story we can win over hearts, not just minds. It’s not an intellectual debate we’re having. It’s an emotional one. Art is a way to get people to see each other. Man, if you saw me as a real person, you wouldn’t spit on me. So let me give you some good music to help you to see me. I think that’s what this has the potential to do.

Madama Butterfly continues at Boston Lyric Opera with performances on Friday, September 22nd and Sunday, September 24th.

*To see the full context of that question and the full and fascinating conversation with Phil Chan, please go here.

Main Photo: Karen Chia-Ling Ho and company in Madama Butterfly at Boston Lyric Opera directed by Phil Chan (Photo by Ken Yotsukura/Courtesy Boston Lyric Opera)

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The Norwegian singer made her debut at The Met in a 2019 production of Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades. She’s also appeared there in the operas Ariadne auf Naxos (which I saw and was astounded by her performance), Elektra and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. This season she will appear in Verdi’s La Forza del Destino.

Before that happens she will be one of just a few select artists to give a recital at those hallowed halls at Lincoln Center on Thursday, September 14th. She will also perform a recital at the BroadStage in Santa Monica on September 17th. Pianist James Bailieu will accompany her at both concerts.

Last month I spoke with Davidsen about her approach to recitals, how the world has changed for opera singers and the responsibility of accepting those keys that Gelb has offered her. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity.

Q: You told Jeff Linden of PBS’s Morning Edition last year that you realized it would be easier for you to take on roles because you didn’t have to be yourself. Essentially that you just could be the character and some of your fear went away. In a recital you don’t get that opportunity unless you create a world where you are a persona apart from yourself. So how do you approach recitals?

It’s a very good question because you don’t have the props, the sets, the dresses. You don’t have the other colleagues. So there’s a lot of information and role characteristic things that are not there. But I do think that I have created my world for each number that I do. Each aria, each song, there is sort of a little world that is my world. My hope is that some of it will go to you as an audience member. Maybe you know the song, maybe don’t know the song, maybe you will get completely different pictures. But there’s room for us to explore all these smaller songs – smaller in terms of length rather than a three-hour opera. 

When you were accepting your Opera News Award earlier this year, you talked about how music allows you to express yourself in ways that words could not. What does a recital and the repertoire that you choose to perform tell us about who you are?

In recital I’ll talk in between to present the songs. So I think already there the audience gets to know a bit more of me. I will bring some Grieg songs, some Sibelius to these recitals. There’s a different part of me than when you hear an Ariadne or Tannhäuser or a Verdi. It’s something else you get to know. The bigger arias that will be where people think obviously this is the Lise we’ve heard before. So I think it’s presenting different sides of me or different parts of what I do, rather than sharing the main emotion in a way. 

But is there part of of putting the repertoire together for a recital that you think not only does this music speak to each other, but this helps me tell a story about who I am at this moment as I’m performing?

I think there is an aspect. The BroadStage and the Met concert [are] both a mix. There are certain arias that I would like to do because I think about the space and the piano. You have to think about that as well. The pianist is lost with these long chords that don’t really sustain in a piano. Then there’s how we build it up, what what suits each other, what’s a good contrast in all of this. I always think, what can I bring that they haven’t heard before? What can I bring that it will be a surprise? All of these things have to be taken in.

I saw a video where you performed I Could Have Danced All Night from My Fair Lady, which I think a lot of people would be surprised to hear you singing. What inspires a choice like that?

That is a simple inspiration because it is about what can I do to lighten my repertoire? My opera roles are filled with drama. There is not so much operetta in my repertoire. I think the audience, when they hear that in a concert, it is to sort of clear the air a bit like, oh what a light little tune or fun maybe. Also, I think we need that. We need something to sort of clear it up a bit before we dig into something even more serious.

When Peter Gelb says, “Every major dramatic soprano role that she wants to do is hers as far as I’m concerned” and offers you the keys to the Met, that’s pretty heady to be told at any point in one’s career. What kind of pressure do you feel when when the head of a Met is saying such glorious things about you?

One part is unbelievably overwhelming. It’s big, big, big words. It’s a responsibility I’m not sure I can carry. But on the other hand, it’s a responsibility I would like to carry. It’s a job that I would like to have because I really love being at the Met. So if those two things can come together, then it’s kind of the perfect match. Both him and me can only see what the future holds in a way and plan accordingly.

You have so much attention on you right now which gives you tremendous opportunities. Given that a lot of people describe the time we’re living in now is a golden age for new opera, how much do new contemporary works interest you as you move forward in your career?

It interests to me quite a lot. But in terms of what I feel I can do, I still focus on the more classical, ultra-traditional operas, because I do believe I have a voice that suits that repertoire. That said, I do believe that when I’ve sort of settled some of these roles, then I hope I’ll get to do modern opera and work with a composer because it must be amazing to do a whole new opera that is made for you in your time. There’s a completely different way of communicating with the composer. You don’t have to say, Why did you write this? It means you can actually go and ask and I think that is amazing.

Is there an opera that you have so many questions that you would love to have a chance to talk to the composer? Would you like to talk to Wagner before tackling Tristan und Isolde if that were possible?

I think I’ve always liked to have a chat with them. I think the thing is both Wagner and Strauss are very specific in their writing. I think Verdi is even more interesting because there’s so much tradition. There’s so much this is how it used to be done and we don’t really know how much truth there is in that. Sometimes I wonder if they do this, why do they do it?

Renata Scotto just passed away. In 1978 she did an interview with the New York Times and she said, “I have two Renata Scottos, one working and one private. The private one doesn’t remember the artist because I really need to relax my head and have fun.” That was nearly 45 years ago. Does being an opera singer today require that same duality? 

I think that is the same. It’s just in a different way than it was for her. I think in today’s time we are even more exposed to our audience. With social media we’re connected in a completely different way, and that has its pros and cons. It’s brilliant because I can communicate with people on the other side of the world. I can get messages from people. I can give advice to young singers. There are so many good things, but I think it also requires an even stricter strategy in how to protect yourself. It’s all out there and how much do you want to be out there, How much do you want to be private or personal? And I think that is a balance I worked a lot on to find and I still do. 

In 1960, another Norwegian soprano, Kirsten Flagstad got a star on the Walk of Fame in Hollywood. Most people today probably walk around or walk on her star and have no idea who she is because opera isn’t embraced in 2023 the way it was in 1960. Do you think it would be good if if opera was embraced the way it was in 1960? Do you think that’s even remotely possible? 

I have no idea if it’s possible. I think the world has so much to offer right now. We have so many paintings and art forms available to us that to go back and be such a high percentage of what people used to do, I think is really, really hard. I don’t know if I’m naive, but I really hope that there will be a time where [there] will be even more people listening to opera. If we can manage to open our doors a bit more and make sure that it’s reachable for everyone, that is my number one wish for this art form. 

I come from a house where we didn’t know what opera was, but we thought it was not for us. We didn’t listen to it. True to my education, to my work, my family now goes to opera and they say they love it. There’s a completely different way of listening. In a time where we search for yoga or mindfulness or meditation, I want to say, “Hey, we’re already there. Just come in.”

There’s so much to look at. There’s so much to take in. Turn your phone off. When we let go of the fact that we have to know everything all the time, that’s when we are able to take in new experiences. That’s what I’ve said to friends or family that don’t normally go to the opera. It’s okay if you’re bored for a couple of minutes. You can look at those sets. You can look at an orchestra of 100 people that are playing. And we’re all there for you. There’s so many things. Eventually you will know more and, maybe as an audience member, demand more. Lean back and let the music speak.

If there was anything about this time in your life, in your career, that you would like to bottle up and have as a reminder 15, 20, 25 years from now, what do you think it would be?

It will be the fact that I have so many wonderful audience members that come to my concerts. The fact that people travel to see me sing. I wish I can sort of take that in, not just in a bottle, but, I wish I understood that because it’s pretty surreal.

Why? 

I don’t know. Can’t you find someone where you are? I don’t really grasp that. But of course, I travel to see people, too. So it’s not really connected. If I zoom out, I can say,” Oh, how about that repertoire? You like that?” Then you travel to do it. But when people come from Australia to hear you, that is for me. There’s so much love in that and I wish I could take that in and keep that because it’s this dedication beyond. It’s really, really impressive.

Both photos of Lise Davidsen ©James Hole/Courtesy BroadStage

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Prima Facie – Golden Theatre – New York, NY

Jodie Comer stars in this play by Suzie Miller that is now playing on Broadway. Miller and Comer won Olivier Awards for Best New Play and Best Actress at this year’s Olivier Awards. Could Tony Awards all come their way?

For tickets and more information, please go here.

Good Night, Oscar – Belasco Theatre – New York, NY Sean Hayes stars in this play about Oscar Levant written by Doug Wright and directed by Lisa Peterson. The show originated in Chicago and received rave reviews for both the play and for Hayes.

For tickets and more information, please go here.

TRADE/Mary Motorhead – LA Opera at REDCAT – Los Angeles, CA – April 27^th – April 30^th

These two one-act operas by composer Emma O’Halloran and her librettist uncle, Mark O’Halloran, debuted at the Prototype Festival in New York earlier this year. Now they are in Los Angeles with original cast members Kyle Bielfield, Mark Kudisch and Naomi Louisa O’Connell in tow.

For tickets and more information, please go here.

Dee Dee Bridgewater & Bill Charlap – SFJAZZ – San Francisco April 27^th – April 30^th

Rarely have two artists so perfectly melded their talents the way jazz singer Bridgewater and pianist Charlap do in concert. I’ve seen them twice and would go again and again given the opportunity. You have the opportunity to hear how great this duo is even if you don’t live in San Francisco. Their performance on April 28^th will be streaming live at 7:30 PM PT (with an encore showing on April 29^th at 11 AM PT).  

For in-person tickets and more information, please go here. For streaming tickets and information, please go here.

Champion – Met Opera Live in HD – Cinemas Worldwide – April 29^th – 12:55 PM ET/9:55 AM PT

This Saturday the Metropolitan Opera will present Terence Blanchard’s first opera, Champion, in a live transmission from the Met in New York City. Ryan Speedo Green, Eric Owens, Latonia Moore, Stephanie Blythe, Paul Groves and Eric Greene star in this opera based on the true story of boxer Emile Griffith. The production is directed by James Robinson with choreography by Camille A. Brown (both of whom were involved in the world premiere of Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones.) Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts.

To find a theater near you, please go here.

Photo: Ryan Speedo Green in Champion (Photo by Ken Howard/Courtesy Met Opera)

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CABARET

Two shows stood out for us this year. The first was Kim David Smith’s Mostly Marlene which we saw at Joe’s Pub in New York City. His gender-bending tribute to Marlene Dietrich was massively entertaining. This performance has apparently been recorded and will be released next year. Check it out. He’s got a great voice.

The other show was Eleri Ward‘s concert – also at Joe’s Pub. Her lo-fi renditions of Stephen Sondheim‘s songs seemed like just the tonic we needed during the pandemic when she first started posting videos filmed in her apartment. Ward ultimately received a recording contract and has her second album coming out next year on Ghostlight Records. She also opened for Josh Groban on his tour this year.

CLASSICAL MUSIC

This was a year in which Duke Ellington was acknowledged as being more than a jazz musician and composer. With that acknowledgment came long overdue recognition of Billy Strayhorn. The Los Angeles Philharmonic performed two different Ellington concerts in January called Symphonic Ellington and Sacred Ellington in January (with Gerald Clayton – whose Bells on Sand was one of the year’s best jazz albums – appearing as a soloist for the first and a member of the ensemble for the latter). In December the perennial holiday classic The Nutcracker was performed. But rather than playing just Tchaikovsky’s music, the LA Phil also performed the Strayhorn/Ellington arrangements of music from the second half of the ballet.

J’Nai Bridges singing Neruda Songs by composer Peter Lieberson was also a highlight at the LA Phil. So, too, was seeing Maestro Michael Tilson Thomas performing Prokofiev’s 5th Symphony and also his own Meditations on Rilke was a great way to have begun 2022.

Composer Osvaldo Golijov‘s Falling Out of Time had a COVID-delayed LA debut when this staggeringly powerful work was performed at the Wallis in Beverly Hills.

JAZZ

Easily topping our list this year are Cécile McLorin Salvant’s concerts at Blue Note in New York City. We saw two shows and had we had the time and the ability we would have seen them all. Salvant performed music by Handel, original songs, a song from Gypsy and more. It was a truly memorable show. Her most recent album, Ghost Song, is one of the year’s best.

A close second were the two shows we saw Dee Dee Bridgewater and Bill Charlap perform. We first saw this remarkable pair at Catalina Jazz Club in Hollywood. We caught a second show at the Oasis Music Festival in Palm Springs.

Terence Blanchard at the Ford Theatre and Wynton Marsalis performing All Rise at the Hollywood Bowl also easily make our list.

MUSICALS

You might quibble with us about one of these, but here goes:

Our favorite musical of the year was the Tony Award-winning musical A Strange Loop at the Lyceum Theatre in New York City. Bold, adventurous, thought-provoking and moving, this is everything a musical should be – at least to us. The show is still running but only until January 15th. We strongly recommend seeing it. For tickets and more information, please go here.

The revival of Little Shop of Horrors was absolutely delightful. Two hours of entertainment that makes you forget about everything else going on in the world. When we saw the show Lena Hall was playing “Audrey” and Rob McClure was “Seymour.” Hall is still in the show and her new Seymour is Tony Award-winner Matt Doyle. The show has an open-ended run. For tickets and more information, please go here.

Into the Woods, which began its life at New York City Center’s Encores series, was pure pleasure from the first note to the last. If you are or will be in New York, you can still catch it at the St. James Theatre until January 8th. A US tour begins in February. For tickets and more information, please go here.

David Byrne’s American Utopia doesn’t quite qualify as a musical per se, but it was another utterly enjoyable show. We also saw Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story at the Hollywood Bowl with live orchestral accompaniment by the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Gustavo Dudamel. That performance made Spielberg’s under-seen film even more powerful than when we first saw it in theaters.

OPERA

For the first time we finally saw a production at the Metropolitan Opera. Ariadne auf Naxos is not necessarily our favorite opera, but soprano Lise Davidsen’s powerfully strong voice could probably be heard in the lobby of the Met even with the doors closed. It was a staggering performance we will not soon forget.

Countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński gave an incredible recital at Broad Stage in Santa Monica. It was our first time seeing him and we can’t wait for the opportunity to see Orliński in an opera production. We also have to give him special mention for his patience. Someone’s cell phone alarm went off and either the owner was oblivious to the noise or didn’t care. Orliński stopped the show, sat downstage and said he’d wait it out.

Getting the opportunity to revisit the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Tristan Project late this year was a treat. We had experienced it when it first happened and its return was more than welcome (and perhaps a bit overdue). This collaboration with Bill Viola, Peter Sellars and the LA Phil remains breathtaking.

Kevin Puts and Greg Pierce turned Michael Cunningham’s novel The Hours into a mesmerizing and emotional new opera. Written for Renée Fleming, Joyce DiDonato and Kelli O’Hara, this is an opera we experienced through the Met Live in HD simulcast.

Intimate Apparel by composer Ricky Ian Gordon and librettist Lynn Nottage was absolutely first-rate at Lincoln Center. Nottage did a wonderful job adapted her own play for this opera. Gordon wrote a stunning score. The end result is an opera that is equally as powerful as the play.

PLAYS

We’ve always loved Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. But until the new Broadway revival, we never had such a visceral and emotional response to Willy Loman’s story. That’s largely attributable to the impeccable performances of the entire cast including Wendell Pierce, Sharon D. Clarke, McKinley Belcher III, Khris Davis and André De Shields. By now you know this is a Black Loman family. That gave Miller’s piece an added resonance that no doubt contributed to the tears streaming down our faces. The use of music was brilliant. The show is still running at the Hudson Theatre in New York through January 15th. For tickets and more information, please go here.

Perhaps nothing moved us as much as the last 15 minutes of the first half of Matthew López’s The Inheritance at the Geffen Playhouse. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house. If the second part of this mammoth work doesn’t end up resonating as strongly as the first, it was still a powerful day in the theater (It’s nearly 7 hours long).

Watching Holland Taylor as the late Ann Richards (former Texas governor) at the Pasadena Playhouse was an opportunity to watch a master class in acting.

That’s our complete list of the Best of 2022! What will inspire and move us in 2023? Come back to find out and to meet the artists, creators, performers and more who make it happen.

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

Photo: Cécile McLorin Salvant at Blue Note New York (Photo by Craig L. Byrd)

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This interview originally ran in March when the Philadelphia Orchestra was giving a concert performance of The Hours. We have updated this story with more details about the Met Opera production, clips from the production and additional comments from composer Puts. We have also posted the complete interview up on our YouTube channel.

The Met Opera production stars Joyce DiDonato as Virginia Woolf, Renée Fleming as Clarissa Vaughan and Kelli O’Hara as Laura Brown. These were the characters played by Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore in the 2002 film. Both the movie and the opera are based on Michael Cunningham’s 1999 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.

If you read the book or saw the film you’ll remember The Hours is about three women from different time periods who all have a connection to Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway.

Also appearing in the opera are Kathleen Kim, Denyce Graves, John Holiday, Sean Panikkar and more. Yannick Nézet-Séguin will conduct all but the last Met Opera performance on December 15th. Kensho Watanabe will conduct that performance. The production is by Phelim McDermott (Akhnaten).

“The idea came to me from Renée Fleming,” says composer Puts. “She was thinking about it and she thought how interesting to have an opera that takes place in three different time periods all at the same time. It was on her mind because she had just had lunch with Julianne Moore..” That’s how The Hours began its life as an opera written by Puts.

Earlier this year I spoke via Zoom with Puts who won the Pulitzer Prize for his first opera, Silent Night. What follows are excerpts from that conversation that have been edited for length and clarity.

Virginia Woolf once asked, “Why are women so much more interesting to men than men are to women?” Your opera of The Hours is based on a novel written by a man who was inspired by Woolf and is being created and directed by three men. What would you say to Woolf if given the opportunity to address her question?

I can’t answer why, but I would say for me women are more interesting as characters. I don’t know why. I love operas like Billy Budd, but these characters are fascinating and I like writing for the female voice very much.

Just before speaking with you I had the television on and I was flipping channels around and the movie Aliens was on. It’s the same thing, [director] James Cameron is fascinated with female heroines in his story. I don’t know exactly why.

My first opera was basically almost all men and now I’m starting to get my musical mind around having melodies that are essentially around middle “c” on the piano. That is a different kind of thing because then the harmony has to be in a different place, et cetera. I don’t like to get too technical, but it’s very natural for me to write for women’s voices. But that is a very Virginia Woolf thing to say and probably true as well.

You mentioned that, like the novel, your opera takes place in three different time periods. Musically how are those time periods reflected and is that necessary for an audience to stay on course with the story you are telling?

The piece has a very kind of otherworldly and kind of mystical feel to it. But definitely we want the audience to know what’s going on.

I didn’t have a real premeditated idea that there would be three different types of music, which would be extremely different and would signify the different characters. But I think it just happened naturally.

Virginia Woolf feels trapped in Richmond and she wants the wildness of the city. So there’ s a musical language and certain elements of that language which describe that for me. Then there’s her sort of manic desire for London. So there’s that kind of dichotomy in her music.

Laura Brown, the middle period character, was living outside of Los Angeles after World War II. WIth her husband and her three-year-old son, she feels trapped in sort of an alien domestic world that is not natural for her. So there’s a way of describing the world that she can’t fit into, which has its own language.

Clarissa, Renée Fleming’s character, has a kind of musical language that is characterized by Clarissa’s eternal optimism and radiance. She thinks everything will be fine if we just have the perfect party and we get the flowers exactly right.

I really do think of them as musical environments. They’re not leitmotifs, but they’re languages that I think are associated with the different characters and their situations.

This opera has been in the works for quite some time with Fleming, O’Hara and DiDonato attached. Did that allow you to write specifically for their voices?

It was very much written for the three of them because we hadn’t started writing yet. So I knew who we were writing for. I knew Renee’s voice very well having done a couple of projects with her. And I knew Kelli O’Hara’s voice from musical theater. I was talking to her a lot and finding out that she actually has an incredible range and she can sing the lyric soprano roles. And, of course, I knew Joyce DiDonato’s voice. The piece will continue to be written for the three of them over the next several months.

I really think that’s crucial for an opera to make sure that the principles really feel like they can deliver with their parts. It’s funny how minute the changes can be and sometimes that makes a big difference to them. It’s easy for me and actually really satisfying for me to develop these roles within the parts of their voice that work given the situation.

How did Greg Pierce become the writer you wanted to adapt Cunningham’s novel and create the libretto?

Greg had only done one opera, Fellow Travelers, which is a really successful opera with Gregory Spears. I read the libretto and I really liked it. I also liked the fact that he hadn’t done a lot of operas. He had done work in other areas: screenplays, et cetera. He showed me some poems that he wrote. I knew there would be a poetic element to the language. It’s what inspires me. I think that there has to be some poetry in the libretto. His enthusiasm for The Hours was clear. He had been thinking about it for years as a possibility as an opera. In our first conversation I felt like we were already writing it. It just felt natural once I met him.

In the spring of 2021 you had a workshop of the music with Cincinnati Opera. What did you and Greg learn from that session and how did it inform the subsequent work you’ve done on The Hours?

My score was marked in red. I just went to work immediately. Once you figure out what you need to do you just want to forget the past like it never happened.

I think that one of the really crucial scenes in the opera was entirely re-written. It’s a complicated scene actually. A couple of scenes between Clarissa and Richard. I need to work really hard at dialogue. I feel like it should all feel like part of a seamless musical flow and there should be real singing in the dialogue. It should flow naturally like a conversation that kind of ebbs and flows. So those scenes, in some ways, require the most work.

How did that work in the middle of the pandemic?

That was a heroic thing that they did. We were all in a massive ballroom and there were twelve singers – all of the masked in little separate booths with microphones. The pianist and the conductor were in the middle of the room and none of us could approach each other. But we got through the entire opera and we learned a ton from it.

Given that Mrs. Dalloway is so revered, as is the language of Virginia Woolf and that The Hours is revered both as a book and a movie for the language that Cunningham and screenwriter David Hare used, what challenges do you face in continuing with a successful telling of this story?

I think it always is the case when you’re working with a property that’s really known. It’s inevitable. They’re going to be reactions like “well, it’s not like this. And I love the book and it’s too bad that it’s not this way and that way.” It was certainly true of The Manchurian Candidate, my second opera. It was the same kind of challenge.

But I felt like when I began composing that I was doing things on my own terms. It just feels different – just the nature of the piece. I feel like it’s its own thing and it’s not going to feel like the book. It’s not going to feel like the film. The music has its own personality, I hope. But yeah, that’s definitely a challenge. I hope that people will listen to it on its own terms.

The nice thing is the book and the film will still exist independent of the opera.

As soon as Renée mentioned the book I started thinking about the possibilities that can happen on an opera stage that cannot happen in a film. You can’t split the screen in three ways. These stories can begin to intermingle and overlap and they can sing duets that transcend time. That was what was really exciting about it for me because with the language of music and harmony it’s possible to do that. So that’s why I wanted to do it.

I think about that all the time. What’s the point? But I think with this I really thought there was a point.

Michael Cunningham said in an interview when the novel was released that he felt that he entered into some kind of maturity with The Hours and that it was something only he could have written. I’m wondering if you could compare your own thoughts about your perspective of having written this opera at this point in your life and whether you’ve reached a certain kind of maturity and if only you could have written this.

I don’t feel that I’m the only composer who could have written this. But I do think that the way I like to approach opera is well suited to this story. The emotional situations; I live for these these things as a composer. I live for the moments when I can let these situations wash over me and let music come out. This is why I do it.

I think as far as maturity, I feel like now I understand how to not only how to write for voice and how to set the English language and the way I want to that really extracts all the musicality that’s possible out of it. i really love to set English as a language. But also I feel like I’ve kind of tempered my, what is often described in Silent Night, as a kind of a poly-stylistic approach. I’ve tempered that in a way that feels like it’s more cohesive and more kind of all me, even though there are references to different stylistic things that occur in the piece. So yeah, I feel like it was a good time for me to write this opera.

To see the full conversation with Kevin Puts, please go here.

Main Photo: Composer Kevin Puts (Photo by David White)

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Tonight the Metropolitan Opera will perform Puccini’s Tosca for the 1,000 time. Currently starring in the production – and those who will be on stage for this landmark performance – will be Aleksandra Kurzak as “Tosca,” George Gagnidze as “Scarpia” and Michael Fabiano as the doomed “Cavaradossi.”

Tonight mark’s Fabiano’s last performance in this production. Two weeks later on November 19th he appears in the same part for the first four performances of Tosca at Los Angeles Opera (opposite Angel Blue and Ryan McKinny.)

He and Blue will be performing at The Richard Tucker Foundation Gala in New York City on November 13th.

When this highly sought-after tenor isn’t appearing on stage he’s often flying airplanes. Fabiano is actively involved in ArtSmart, the non-profit organization he co-founded with the mission of providing music lessons from professional musicians to students in under-served communities. ArtSmart is holding an auction from November 29th through December 15th which is accessible online.

With two Toscas, a divorce and his passion for arts education, this was good time to talk to the fiercely-intelligent Fabiano about music, his goals for ArtSmart and most of all, healing. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity.

In 2016 you told Opera News, “I sing because it’s catharsis and I sing because I know that culture is necessary to keep society round.” So rather than focus on exclusively on opera, I’d like to talk about music as a tool for healing. Given everything the world has gone through in the last two-and-a-half plus years, on what level do you think music was part of how society has made it through so far and what role do you think it will play moving forward post-pandemic?

I think that there was at least somewhat of a new awareness of the inherent value in music as a whole and about classical music because people were still inside, they were quarantined. Imagine if music ceased to exist for one day in our lives and in a complete way. No jingles, no news shows, no Spotify, no Apple Music, no nothing. How would individuals feel and what would their response be? My view is that people wouldn’t know what to do with themselves and that’s exactly when they realized the value of music. Suddenly people only had music and drama because that’s all they were locked to.

Music is the most carnal form of communication. When we educate people in a very simple way that music is essential, that it is fundamental to life, that it is aspirational, and that it’s inspirational, we have a really much greater chance at moving the paradigm quickly for culture at large. The reason why I do ArtSmart is because I know that when people are touched by music their propensity to change themselves and change others grows. 

When a production of Carmen in which you were appearing in Belgium got canceled, you wrote a public letter. In it you said, “The risk of people not having access to music in their lives is enough to impair mental health and personal discipline.” What challenges did you face when everything was shut down and you were unable to perform?

When a person is not inspired the ability to do other things diminishes. If I’m an opera singer and I live for inspiration through music and suddenly that spigot is turned off, that side of the brain that normally would go into running ArtSmart, co-running a technology company called Resonance, even flying airplanes, my inspiration to do those affairs diminishes.

The reason so many people in the pandemic had difficulty re-upping and getting right back into the swing of work was because they lacked inspiration for so many months. It was difficult for people to just do it on their own in the confines of their own homes.

The double difficulty with that is there are lots of arts institutions around the world that were not doing enough to help artists. So there was this dejected sense from artists that the institutions that employed them were not holding their own obligation. The lack of will to do everything else in daily life, that’s the result when we lose inspiration. It’s not only emotional, it’s scientific. 

It’s been 12 years since you first performed at the Met. What does being part of their 1,000th performance of Tosca mean to you personally? 

I know, first of all, the responsibility that comes before me as a tenor and the great talents that have sung at the Metropolitan Opera. I know how important this title is and how many different tenors have sung Cavaradossi at the Metropolitan Opera and what personal responsibility not only do I have to the public, but I actually have to the other people that have done justice to this opera. I think I have a idealized ideological responsibility to the other artists, show them that I respect them, their work and their contribution to the field that we so deeply love. As a person I’ve actually sung a lot for Metropolitan Opera. I feel an immense amount of gratitude to be able to step on the stage. And I know that it’s my burden to deliver that.

Is it a burden or is it a responsibility?

I don’t think burden has a negative connotation. Just like what the word consequence doesn’t have to be negative. An added burden is an obligation, a moral responsibility. A burden also means heavy. So it’s a big burden. It’s it’s a meaty burden. I have a moral responsibility to do a good job. 

Tosca seems like such catnip for opera lovers. Do you think there’s something about this story that transcends just the music that becomes something that people can attach their own lives to?

The great thing about Tosca is that it’s in real time. Meaning that when the opera begins everything happens to three people in the span of a very limited amount of time. There are no other operas that have that kind of time. It’s extremely applicable today because think about it, our world moves incredibly fast. We get news in the matter of seconds. We find out about that OPEC’s cut output of oil today and there were 10,000 articles written about it in a matter of seconds. That didn’t happen 100 years ago.

Tosca, in comparison to Puccini’s other works, is literally in real time. Angelo escapes. I go to try to hide him. I get arrested in a matter of minutes because, of course, the spies are out there. I’m taken. I’m questioned. I’m tortured and in another two hours or so, I die.

Let’s apply it to real life. This happens today in the Middle East, where people are hunted down for not wearing headscarves the right way in Iran and thrown off buildings. Fascism in oppressive governments throughout the Middle East do this now and run after people and torture them. That’s the scene in this story. 

The weird thing about about technology is we learn probably more than we need to know about certain things in the world and not enough about the things we do need to learn about. I say that as a way of mentioning the documentary short film about you, Crescendo, which I think is really beautiful. It concludes with your marriage which did not work out. What role did music play in your healing through that process? 

Music has always been integral in my life in all ways. I very rarely have time during the day when music is not either in my head or in my ears in some way. In the period of my divorce and as I was moving into becoming separated and alone again, I oddly started finding Bruckner and Wagner which came to me because I found both composers to have a lot of light and hope inside of music that we don’t always regard as hopeful. I have a new outlook on a lot of that music that I never paid as much attention to. 

The result of divorce was learning and paying attention to something else; looking for light in a different way, in a new pathway.

Providing light is something you’re able to do with ArtSmart. What is the biggest accomplishment ArtSmart has made so far? 

We’ve dispersed over $2 million in money to working artists. One of the missions of ArtSmart, in addition to serving under-resourced youth, is that we want to compensate working artists as much as possible for their hard work. We partner with working artists to give them an extra bandwidth of income and opportunity. ArtSmart is not a full time job for any teaching artist. I would call a really great side hustle.

I’m proud of that because I remember when I was young, I had debt. I can empathize with artists that are looking for work and need an opportunity. That’s what we do. The joy of the organization is that we’ve been able to disburse so much money to working artists and at the same time changed the course of a lot of kid’s lives.

During the Reagan administration it became verboten to put money into arts programs. Ever since then this country, more than any that I can think of, has de-emphasized arts education in public schools. What do you think has been the biggest cost of that decision?

I’m going to say things that are controversial. You prepared? I don’t think I’m going to say things that are out of line. They’re just not going to be necessarily orthodox.

First of all, I don’t necessarily think government is the greatest arbiter of money for the arts. It’s not to say that they shouldn’t do a better job of how they disburse what resources they have now. But the reality is America is always going to have two parties – hopefully three or four someday. Money is always going to come and go, depending on the financial state of our country. The first thing that is always going to go when cuts happen, is money for culture. That’s just a harsh reality. We have to be a realist about it and not ideological.

So if we know that legislators, regardless of who the hell they are, are going to first cut the tap off for arts funding, we better damn well be self-sufficient as a country and be able to support ourselves. Which is why an organization like ArtSmart should be replicated in many cases.

I would rather create organizations that really can move the dial in schools. Do what El Sistema has done or ArtSmart and other organizations like Sing for Hope. But there is something else. I think there’s a very big difference between arts funding and arts education funding.

At ArtSmart we have spent three years surveying children, teachers and adults to understand the connection between their academic success and studies of musical arts. Does a child do better as a result of their music lesson? We have a lot of causal evidence that demonstrates that when a child or a young adult has a consistent music lesson with a private teacher that their ability to strategize and prioritize and goal-orient themselves improves dramatically for all of their other studies. That’s a case that we could make the Congress.

But it’s not STEM education that’s going to cure lives. It’s STEAM. Education includes arts and it might just be a choir class or an orchestra class. It might be once a week mentoring between an artistic individual and a student for 20 minutes. That’s it. 20 minutes might be enough. Once a week. If we can find that in an artistic vehicle we might be able to create a really large change in the lives of kids.

Leonard Bernstein said, “Music can name the unnamable and communicate the unknowable”. What do you most want to communicate with your music and what does music most passionately communicate to you? 

I want to be able to communicate that each person is sovereign. Each person not only is entitled to their own ideas and their opinions, but they’re unique. One thing that we’ve been told in the last 40 years in particular is how we all have to basically be the same. That we have to think the same things, do the same things, be the same thing.

If we use music as a model, composers like Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky, Scriabin, Verdi, we know that these people were sovereign. They had vanguard ideas. They were different. They went in their own direction.

I am not, as an artist, trying to be anyone else. I am Michael Fabiano. I am imperfect. I make mistakes. But I also am proud of the music that I make because it comes from a place of true hard study and deep care for the muse and also deep care for the desire of the public at the same time.

So music, if there’s one thing I want to convey, it should be sovereign and it should be independent and individual.

If we don’t put an emphasis on the individual when it comes to art making, we just end up with generic art. We wouldn’t have Picasso. We wouldn’t have Monet. We wouldn’t have Verdi. We wouldn’t have Shostakovich. If an artist wants a purple room to paint or a singer needs a green room for their dressing room right before they go on stage, you give them the green room because if that enhances their ability to deliver the music that’s delivered to the public, you do it. It’s obliged. Because if we don’t, we run the risk of not getting great experiences for history, for the public and for the public good.

Main Photo: Michael Fabiano (Photo by Jiyang Chen/Courtesy GM Art & Music)

The post Michael Fabiano Tackles Tosca & Arts Education appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

Blanchard has scored the upcoming film The Woman King, which marks his first epic film score. Next March the Los Angeles Philharmonic will dedicate an entire evening to his film scores for director Spike Lee.

But wait, there’s more! He begins a tour on August 4th with The E-Collective and the Turtle Island Quartet that will find him performing music from Absence and many of his other albums. They’ll also perform music from Fire Shut Up in My Bones (see more about that below) in San Francisco.

Which means this was a great time to catch up, once again, with Blanchard. We spoke via Zoom last month while he was on the road with Hancock. Blanchard was in Sant Feliu de Guíxols, Spain. What follows are excerpts from that conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview, please go to our YouTube channel.

Q: This is our third conversation over the course of several years. Each conversation we’ve had, we’ve always talked about whether the world is getting to be a better place for jazz music. In 2015 you thought we were in the dirty part of the recovery. In 2019 you said, “I think we recovered a great deal.” Three years later where are we?

I think extremely healthy. You look at all the young people who are making records and doing a lot of great things. I didn’t see that necessarily happening this way when I first got in the business in the eighties, but to see it now, it’s like extremely exciting. Ambrose Akinmusire, the list is endless: Walter Smith, Theo Crocker, there are so many young people who are doing a lot of great things that I’m looking at them to see what’s going to happen next.

I listened to new albums by Tyshawn Sorey or Gerald Clayton or Joel Ross. I’m struck by how there’s so much calm and a quieter approach to their music right now. Even your album, Absence, has a lot of calm music in it. Do you think that’s a coincidence or is that a reaction to the upheaval that we’ve experienced in the last few years? 

I think it’s kind of a reflection of what’s happening with where we are as a society. With everything that’s been going on within the last five to ten years we started to have demonstrations again. Prior to that there was a lot of things going on and we weren’t in the streets like we were in the sixties, you know. But I think once we hit well past the 2000s people started coming out again.

And I think you’ll start to see that in the music. Actually you are seeing it in the music. It’s just that these guys have a different way of approaching it and dealing with it. It’s not about screaming and yelling, it’s about dealing with facts. It’s about dealing with issues and dealing with them head on. So I think that’s something that’s reflected in what’s going on with the music.

You’re working right now with Herbie Hancock, an artist who has had a major impact in the world. Your recent album, Absence, was a tribute to Wayne Shorter. When you have been working with and around these guys who have had incredible careers, do you consider what your own legacy might be when you’re at that age and is that important to you?

I’m not thinking about it now. I’m thinking about how does he do what he does every night? You know what I mean? It’s crazy, man. I can’t pin him down to anything. He plays differently every night. He’s always stretching and he’s always finding new ideas. And it’s pretty miraculous when you think about it, because he’s 82 and he’s had enough hits where he could just sit out and go and play his hits and just be cool. But that’s not what he’s about. He’s a true artist in terms of trying to find new things all the time.

Speaking of trying new things, I wish I lived in San Francisco because I know you’re doing four nights with the Turtle Island Quartet of music from Fire Shut Up in My Bones with vocalists. How are you reimagining some of that music for that configuration of musicians?

I love David Balakrishnan’s writing and arranging, so I hired him to do the arrangements and we sat down and talked about what it is that we want to do. And I told them I’m not trying to mimic what the orchestrations are in the opera. This is a chance for us to show the world what The E Collective and Turtle Island is along with this music so people can re-imagine this music in a different way. And I’m really excited about what he’s coming out with, man, because it’s going to be very unique. It’s going to be very different. 

Is that something that you can foresee recording at some point? 

Definitely. I mean, it’s something we’re talking about for sure. 

I’m sure that would appeal to people who see the word opera and get scared.

I’m trying to demystify that. Look, it’s the same thing used to happen with some of our friends when you said the word jazz. “I don’t know anything about jazz.” I didn’t ask you if you did. I just want you to come and check out the music.

You should just go experience music, whether you think you like it or not, because you never know what you’re going to respond to.

Of course. But in this world that we live in, and especially in the pop culture side of our existence, there’s always these kind of images that people have of whether it’s jazz or whether it’s opera, anything, [they] take a small snippet of an idea and try to portray it as being the entire thing. So people always get the wrong impression about what these things are. A lot of my friends would come to see the opera in New York. [They] got really excited about opera because they’d never been before. And I was trying to tell them, “Listen, man, you have to experience this. It is the highest form of musical theater you could ever experience in the world.“

Fire Shut Up in My Bones was a huge success for the Met. I’m wondering what that says to you about new works and what impact they can have versus the classic repertoire and maybe in particular about works by Black composers? 

Well, I think really what it boils down to is just trying to be as honest as you can in your writing. You know, one of the things Art Blakey used to tell us, “Man, you never want to be too hip when you when you’re composing music”. And he said “Two hips make an ass.” That was always his thing you know. And it’s one of the things that I try to live my life by.

I’m not trying to write music that goes over people’s heads. I’m trying to write music that’s right with them in their souls. I think when you do that the music can have an effect on people and it’s what people are looking for. It’s what we need in this world. We need music that’s not going to intimidate you.

The other thing Art Blakey used to always say was “The easiest thing to do is to write something that nobody can understand – that’s easy to do.” He said the hardest thing to do is to write something that touches people in their soul and still have your own identity within it, you know? That’s what’s been on my mind. The thing that’s been driving me throughout my career is to be right with the public who’s listening to the music and hopefully create something that everybody can enjoy.

When we spoke in 2019, which was which was before Fire was at the Met, you said that you were under no illusion that you were standing on the shoulders of a lot of people who didn’t have the same opportunities that you did. With your first opera, Champion, coming up next season as well, your shoulders are the ones that are now supporting other musicians who perhaps thought the glass ceiling at the Met could never be broken. 

That really hasn’t hit me as of yet. I’m still thinking of William Grant Still. I’m still thinking of people who should have been at the Met, who deserved to be there. I read that ledger that had all of these names of rejected projects. Then to see his name in it three times and listen to some of and read some of the excuses as to why his music was turned away, it’s infuriating. Because you start to think to yourself there’s somebody who doesn’t know anything about opera claiming that he doesn’t know anything about opera when actually he’s revolutionizing opera with what he’s written.

So those things make me really determined to make sure that what we’re doing is going to live up to the legacy of those guys and hopefully open the door for other composers to come through later on. Which we already know is already happening. Peter Gelb has made it his mission to open up the doors to all different races, every gender, to express themselves on the stage. I think this has been a profound thing and it should be an eye-opening thing for everybody across the globe in the opera world to see that people are clamoring to see themselves on a stage.

The Santa Fe Opera has a world premiere of a new opera inspired by the play M. Butterfly. I think it’s incumbent upon institutions to give opportunities, but also not just be one and done and say, well, we’ve done it.

The other thing, too, is not only one and done, but not only be one and done with composers. Writing an opera is a very arduous thing, obviously. As soon as I had written my first one and it premiered, there was a certain amount of clarity that came over me the night of the premiere that went into the development of the second one, you know what I mean? And I look at it and think to myself, had I been one and done, I wouldn’t have gotten a chance to make Fire better.

Now with Champion going to the Met, I get a chance to go back and revisit that and even kind of beef that up based on what I did the first time. So I think it’s incumbent upon these companies to really understand that it’s really about trying to develop the talent, not just giving them a chance, but to also help them to develop their craft. 

One of the things I love about about Absence, going back to this album, is that it isn’t a traditional tribute album. You’ve said before in interviews that Wayne Shorter instilled in you the idea that he didn’t want to hear you do what he did. He wanted to hear you do what you do – to paraphrase. Now that you’re going on the road with The E Collective and Turtle Island Quartet, how are you giving new life to the compositions so that you aren’t doing just what you did on the record, but you’re doing what you need to do live?

I mean, it’s one of those things where those guys play it differently every night. And I can’t explain it to you. You have to experience it. There are people who have come to hear us play at a club date when we play a few nights and they come to hear us on different nights and can’t believe that we’re the same band. And that’s what I take from Wayne. That’s what I take from Herbie. You know, I’ve been around those guys where you can’t have any expectations because it’s really about being in the moment.

I know teaching is important to you. How much are you learning from guys like David Ginyard, Charles Altura and David Balakrishnan? [Members of The E-Collective]

You can’t even put it in the words because I feel blessed to be around those guys because they bring in ideas that I never would have thought of. They are so creative in their approach, not only to composition, but improvisation that it becomes a really a big challenge man just to be on a stage with them. If you make a musical statement, they respond to it in a way where now you have to be flexible. You have to be able to just shift on a dime with these guys. And it’s been a learning experience of which I’m grateful for and I feel truly blessed to be experiencing right now.

Is it nice to know at this point in your career that there’s still new stuff to learn and that there always will be or to be reminded of that? 

Of course. I would quit if it weren’t that way. I couldn’t just do the same thing night after night just to make a dollar. No, no, no, no, no. Because this isn’t all about money, but about uplifting my spirit and my soul. What’s going to help other people to hear, you know? So that’s really what it’s about.

I do want to ask you about something that Wayne Shorter said in a 2005 interview with Abstract Logix. He said, “It’s okay to be vulnerable, to open one’s self and take chances and not to be afraid of the unknown. And that goes for the audience wise, too. Because we’re going to have to deal with the unexpected from now on.” How much does the unexpected inform who you are today and the work you do? 

It’s one of those things where you’d like to think that it’s a huge part of it, because you want to be open to what’s going on in the universe. But the reality of it is that we do have a style and a sound. Just by merely having a style means that you’ve already eliminated other things that are possible for you to play because you’re playing within a context and that’s what dictates your style.

It goes back to find a balance between all of those things, you know, allowing yourself to be in the moment and allowing yourself to be free to respond to things that you may not have thought of, but are really a part of what’s going on in music at that time. Because that’s one of the things that we have to do as a community as well.

I always think jazz is probably the best representation of how we should live as a community. We all have ideas about what it is that we want to do, but at a certain point it’s really about the music. So I have to throw away some of my ideas if they’re not relevant to what’s going on at that particular time. That in itself is a thing that excites me because it keeps you on your toes and it keeps you guessing and it makes you quick. You know, it keeps you moving. 

To watch our full interview with Terence Blanchard, please go here.

For tickets and more information about Blanchard’s four shows (August 4th-7th) at SFJAZZ, please go here. For tickets and more information about Blanchard’s August 8th performance at Kuumbwa Jazz in Santa Cruz, please go here. For tickets and more information about the August 9th performance at The Ford in Los Angeles, please go here. For tickets and more information about Blanchard’s August 12th appearance at the Telluride Jazz Festival, please go here. For additional tour dates, please go here.

Photo: Terence Blanchard (Photo by Cedric Angeles/Courtesy Blue Note Records)

The post This Is The Golden Age of Terence Blanchard appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

Moore is playing the title character in this Francesca Zambello production that is the first Aida to be performed at LA Opera in over 15 years. She’s very familiar with the part having first performed it in 2009. Moore made her Metropolitan Opera debut in the role in 2012 as a last-minute substitute for Violeta Urmana who was sick.

Since then, in addition to Aida, she’s regularly performed the role of Cio-Cio San in Madama Butterfly and was seen in the Met Opera productions of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess and Terence Blanchard‘s Fire Shut Up In My Bones. Italian operas are her passion, but as you’ll see from this interview, her jazz background earlier in her life has been the gift that keeps on giving.

What follows are excerpts from our conversation earlier this week that have been edited for length and clarity.

You’re 13 years into singing this part and 10 years after your Met debut as Aida. What’s your relationship to Verdi’s opera today?

When I first started doing the role, I didn’t know if that was really for me vocally. I thought my voice was a bit light for it. So as the years went on, I started getting more [performances] added. I was doing it all over the world. The more I did, the deeper I fell into the character. By about 2016 my voice caught up with where I should be vocally with the character.

Every time I do it I find something new. I tend to put my own stamp on it and try to break away from the traditional way of doing it and singing it and provide the audience with something they’re not used to hearing. I feel like such a staple like this is done mostly one way for so many years. Every time I go out on the stage, even within a production – even within one performance – I like to spice it up and do something that’s more Latonia.

What have you learned or discovered about the character in that time?

Aida, you really hear about who she really is and her struggle and things like that. But one thing that I’ve learned about a character like hers is she’s a lot more like her father than I ever thought. She’s very much an outsider. The more I delve into the text and the way I’m singing and the way I’m saying words, it’s becoming a lot more visceral than it ever was before. She’s the daughter of a warrior, she’s been trained to fight, she knows how to do it. She’s an animalistic person by nature, but has been forced to seem like something submissive. She actually is not and I think that I’ve embraced more of the power of a person like that. 

In previous interviews you’ve discussed your concern that you were only being cast in Aida because you are Black. Do you still feel that way?

I still believe that, especially initially, it was definitely the color of my skin, because vocally I was not right for Aida when I first started doing it. The people who hired me knew that, but they didn’t care because they wanted someone Black. I started to wrap my head around the fact that maybe I was being cast for Aida because I was appropriate for the role was four years after my Met debut. I was just like, you know what? I’m a pretty good Aida. This actually fits now, but it didn’t before. Maybe it took having a couple kids for my voice to settle into it a a little more and then make it a bit deeper of a sound for Aida.

Do I still think that people cast me because I’m Black? Yes. I think that’s why I’m here in L.A. I don’t think that it was only because I’m a good Aida. I think they wanted to cast a good Black Aida. And hopefully that’s what they got. But yes, that’s the factor here because I’m Black and I think that continues to be. I think that for many companies, especially in this climate, they’re just like we have to cast the Black Aida because, you know, we don’t want any pushback for it. You know, casting a white Aida right now in the climate here in America, it’s dicey.

Does that become limiting for you and the roles you can play?

This is where I’ve become a bit up in arms with the casting, because I see where they’re coming from. You know, it’s like they have to have a Black Aida. But does that mean that I can’t be Madame Butterfly anymore? That it has to be an Asian one? Because my whole reason for getting into the business was so I could be someone Japanese. I could be a Venetian. I played Leila in The Pearl Fishers, a Sri Lankan. That’s what I love about an art form like this that is so exotic and I can transform into anything. So when people are saying, yes, we should cast a Black Aida, you know, that doesn’t sit right with me because it feels like where I’m then limited.

The moment everyone is waiting for in Aida is o patria mia. What’s your approach before and during the singing of this aria?

Any soprano that sits there and says they’re not thinking about it; I think one of two things about that. Either one, they have done therapeutic things to change their mindset or two, they’re lying to try to convince themselves that it’s not torture. Every single soprano, and this is for everybody that’s about all these sopranos, we all know y’all are thinking about it, too. Surely Maria Callas, when she got there, started thinking and you can hear it. You can hear the people start thinking about it. You can’t completely throw caution to the wind because there’s a lot riding on it. What’s giving everybody so much anxiety about it is exactly what you said – the expectation. It’s that everybody’s waiting on you to stick the landing. To this day it will always terrify me. Always. I’m not going to sit here and pretend Oh, no, I’ve mastered it. No, no, no. I’m going to go to my grave having never mastered that part of it.

I do feel like one difference between the way I used to think about o patria mia and now. Now I’m not so focused on whether or not I stick the landing. Either it’s going to happen or it’s not, but I have to use this character to my advantage no matter what. A lot of times people are expecting it to sound like something off a recording that they heard. Can she do it like Leontyne Price? Can she do it like Zinka Milanov? I’m never going to be able to do it like them. However, you know what I am able to do that maybe not a lot of people are able to do is convince you that I am that person doing it. Even if I crash and burn and bust all over the high C it’ll still be Aida doing it, not Latonia. So that’s one thing that I had to retrain my brain about it. No matter what I end up doing, if she’s going to bust a note, she’s busting it because Aida wanted to.

How would you compare the joy that you get in singing a classic role like Aida or singing Madama Butterfly to the opportunity to sing new work like Fire Shut Up in My Bones?

I’ve always thought of myself as an Italian soprano, one that just focuses mostly on Italian opera. However, I have a big jazz background and I switched to opera while I was in college. But jazz is really my focus. I don’t particularly like singing in English, but what was so appealing about these works, like Fire Shut Up in My Bones and the upcoming Champion, is that they are jazz operas. And this goes for Porgy and Bess, too. It goes back to me saying that Leontyne was beamed down for the planet to sing Aida. That’s what she was here for. I feel like the reason I started in jazz and came into the opera the way I did was for the work that I’m doing right now on Fire Shut Up in My Bones and stuff like Porgy and Bess, Champion and whatever comes in that vein.

I love Italian opera. I’ll never give it up if I can help it. But some people fit right in the pocket of something. I’m the one that fits in the pocket of being the soprano in these Black jazz operas. I guess I find myself on the planet at the right place, right time. I feel like it’s what I was meant to do.

On your Instagram account earlier this year, you quoted Charles M. Blow’s memoir that served as the inspiration for Fire Shut Up in My Bones. You quoted, “I would have to learn to accept myself joyfully, fully as the amalgamation of both the gifts and the tragedies of fate as the person destiny had chosen me to be.” So today, Latonia, in 2022, who is the person destiny has chosen you to be? 

I’m a beautiful example of somebody that may be viewed as an underdog, but an example of somebody that no matter what you look like, no matter what you’ve gone through or what you said, you still persevere. I feel like I’m here to be an example to other people.

I hope that every other kid like me sees what I’m doing and knows that they can do it, too. I feel like my place in a business like this is to show you that what you look like as a person will never matter more than what it is you can create as an artist. I’m simply put here to create and make art for people, to encourage them, to hear them, to show them that they can do it. Yes, you can have children. Yes, you can go up there and you can look like anything and transform into something else. Yes, you can go up and help the youth and you can help them lift up into a great career.

I feel like I’m a very good example in this business of what perseverance can really get you. I’m the sort of person that is like if you streamline your energy toward what you want and you believe it with unwavering faith, you’re going to make your mark. Period. But it has to be unwavering faith. Be patient and don’t care how long it’s going to take. It’ll happen.

There are six performances of Aida at LA Opera from May 21st through June 12th

All photos of Latonia Moore in LA Opera’s production of Aida by Cory Weaver. (Courtesy LA Opera)

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