Also appearing on the program are Michael Bublé, Cynthia Erivo, Dave Koz and members of the Youth Orchestra Los Angeles (YOLA). They will all be accompanied by Thomas Wilkins leading the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra.

Six years ago I spoke with Monica Mancini about her father, what he’d think of her career and more. With this Sunday’s concert fast-approaching, I’ve expanded the previous post to include new material not previously published before.

I recently spoke with Mancini, or Monica as she insisted, a couple days in advance of the concert. We talked about her father, his work and what she learns from his music.

You broke out from the world of back-up singing into a soloist after your father passed away. Does that seems like an odd way to launch a solo career?

It’s true. It’s what happened. In a heartbeat I’d give it all up if he was sill around. I would. It’s just kind of the way life rolled in this case. It is a gift. Our music, this generation of music, the Mancini generation, they aren’t making them like that so much. I enjoy continuing a legacy and reminding people how great this music is.

We live in a culture where if it didn’t happen ten minutes ago you hear the refrain, “that was before my time.” What are the challenges in reaching out to younger audiences who may have no idea who Henry Mancini was?

It isn’t even that young anymore. It blows my mind when someone is 40 and I say “Do you know who Henry Mancini is?” and they shrug. If I say “Do you know the theme to The Pink Panther?” they respond with “I love that song.” His name isn’t a household word anymore. I don’t know what to say or do anymore. I think singers like Lady Gaga and her artistry would appreciate being able to sing a really good song.

Michael Bublé gave the Mancini’s a boost when he did Call Me Irresponsible. We try to always get Dad’s songs when an album was coming up. Gregg Field, my producer and husband, played on Barbra Streisand’s The Movie Album. He brought dad up to James Brolin and she added Moon River.

Though you sing a wide range of songs, you’ve spent a good amount of time celebrating your father’s work. How much work does it take you as a singer to find your own personal way into his songs?

This is still a work in progress. I’ve been singing his music since he passed away [in 1994]. The following year I was given an opportunity to do some tribute concerts. I was a studio singer. Id din’t have designs on being a solo singer. But given the opportunity, it’s been really nice.

I’ve been honing that all these years. I’m still wanting it to be the perfect interpretation. It’s not like I’m flailing, waiting for this inspiration. I’m very happy with my performances of his music. He wrote such beautiful melodies to sing and worked with these awesome lyricists. It’s fun to sing and it’s worth exploring the lyrics a little bit more because some of them are so deep and wonderful.

Does Henry Mancini the film composer take a back seat to Henry Mancini the songwriter?

No because truly when he went to score a film, he went to score a film. Let’s use Moon River. He didn’t set out to write a hit song. He didn’t set out to write Moon River. That was part of the score and part of the job – finding a theme and finding something for Audrey Hepburn to sing. It was a bonus he could write hit songs. I think the process and his whole joy of scoring films kind of was equal to the charge of having a hit song.

I think the process and whole joy obscuring films was equal to the charge of having a hit song. He never talked about it, but I can only surmise. But I don’t think one took a back seat to the other.

One of the films he did was Victor, Victoria. That film took risks when it was released in 1982 in depicting gender and sexuality issues. Why do you think that film still resonates and is still funny and moving?

It’s a perfect movie. It’s brilliant and it’s Blake Edwards at his finest. I was a huge James Garner fan. I could watch him sit and breathe. And Robert Preston. These people are little gifts and you don’t see the likes of Garner or Preston anymore. Their era is gone. Obviously the music is cool. During the film dad was very healthy. But when he was writing the show for Broadway, that’s when he got sick. I was doing demos for Julie Andrews so she could hear the songs. I was close to that experience back then. I don’t know why, but it is just the little perfect movie.

You once told the New York Times that when you asked your father if you could join his shows as a singer he told you, “I work alone, kid.” What do you think he’d say about the career you’ve created for yourself?

He’d say “Never mind.” He would just be a blubbering puddle in the audience. He was always very proud of me. I’ve come a long way from my demo days and It think he would be extremely proud. He was never one of those guys who insisted that any of us go into the business. It wasn’t anything he thought, “I hope my children live up to…”

If he was around he’d be doing it himself. The fact that I’m so at home with his music and I sing it so often – he’s never that far away. I’m not a big believer in heaven and “daddy’s looking down on you.” I’m not there. I hold him. I know where he is in me.

This story was originally published in October of 2018 and has been updated with additional material.

The post Monica Mancini Celebrates the Music of Her Father, Henry appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

On October 25th of last year it was announced that Matt Cook would be the new Artistic and Executive Director of the Sierra Madre Playhouse. This as the company’s home, once a furniture store and movie theater, is celebrating its 100th anniversary this weekend. What better way to bring much-needed exposure to the venue.

The scheduled events large revolve around great films by Harold Lloyd. His granddaughter, Suzanne Lloyd, is joining the celebrations. There is also a sold-out gala, The Bees Knees, which includes a 20s-themed party and access to all the films being shown. And if you haven’t seen Safety Last! you owe it to yourself to see one of the most exciting films ever made.

Cook joins the Sierra Madre Playhouse having been the Executive Director of Blue 13 Dance company and previously holding positions with Pacific Opera Project and Wild Up. Amongst the companies with which he has collaborated are Heidi Duckler Dance, Martha Graham Dance Company and Akron Khan company. He’s also a Grammy Award-winning performer.

Perhaps his biggest challenge is to find a way of making sure the Sierra Madre Playhouse makes it another 100 years and that people who live in Southern California who’ve never been to the playhouse, myself included, find out what they’re all about. Which is precisely where I started my conversation earlier this week with Cook.

What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview, please go to our YouTube channel.

Q: When you came to the Sierra Madre Playhouse beginning September 1st of last year, had the 100th celebration already been in the works, or is this something that you came up with as a way of reintroducing the Sierra Madre Playhouse to people maybe like me, who had never been? 

The board is full of stakeholders that have been in the community for a very long time, some of them 30 years. So they had it on their radar to celebrate it in some way, but it hadn’t been formalized. So this is step one, this weekend, but then we’ll hope to have a big birthday party in the summer; try to celebrate all year. So I’m just a piece of the puzzle. 

This weekend is centered primarily on Harold Lloyd’s films. What made Harold Lloyd the right person to anchor this first leg of this centennial celebration? 

He was one of the biggest stars of 1924. This whole weekend are comedies from 1924 that were either made then or released then. He was an easy choice. Our curator of the weekend is Laura Gabrielle, who is a film historian. She got in touch with Harold Lloyd’s granddaughter, Suzanne Lloyd, so she’s going to be a big part of it as well. We’re honoring that era. He was one of the biggest stars. 

I read an interview that Suzanne Lloyd gave to Variety last year. She said the following about her grandfather. “He, in a lot of ways, was very much like the character he portrayed on screen. He had a lot of interest in life and people and what made them tick and what he could do to make things better. He liked to promote people from writers to directors, saying, ‘Go out and do your own thing. Go and do your own movie.'” It sounds like she’s discussing the job of an artistic director at a performing arts venue. Does that sound a little bit like your job as well as his perspective of what he did with his career?

Yeah, in ways it does. With the exception that I’m also trying to look outward to the community and not just have it be what I want to do, but what do we want to do. What can be the bridge to the community and the arts. So it’s a little bit of both.

When you’re in a big metropolis or part of a metropolis that includes Los Angeles, which is a cultural center in this country, how do you balance out what is the best thing to service the immediate community around you, versus what is the thing that maybe will get more people to pay attention to you? 

That is a balancing act. We’re in a unique position that we’ve been an institution for 100 years, but this year we’re trying something brand new. That idea came up before I got here, which is why they hired me to transition into a performing arts model. What I’m trying to do is provide world class artists at a very accessible price point. This whole year is a proof of concept. What does the community want? What do they need? So we’re listening. We’re asking a lot of artists, asking a lot of community members, and we’re trying to represent not just Sierra Madre, but now Los Angeles County. We’re really trying to be the regional performing arts center in East LA. There are venues like us, in downtown, the Music Center or the Broad on the West Side and [The Soraya] in Northridge, but there’s no true performing arts space in East LA.

Those venues have 500 seats or more. They can pay an artist, if they wanted to, $75,000 for the evening. That’s not going to be us, but we can still have a world class version. We could even have the same artists, but instead of their opera, we can produce their string quartet or something. We want to have the same quality, but in an intimate setting right now.

The Sierra Madre Playhouse had been a furniture store for 16 years before it became a theater. That sounds to me like the people owned that property were seeing the writing on the wall; there were changes happening that they wanted to take advantage of. That doesn’t seem totally apart and separate from what we’re facing now. What are the challenges for you in competing, not just with some of the arts institutions that you’ve you’ve mentioned, but for things like a smart phone which seems to be the way a lot of people choose to indulge in whatever their particular passions are?

How do you face that moving forward into the next hundred years? 

I think places for people gathering will always be needed and I think the human experience will always be needed. There is a vulnerability, I think, to live theater or live singing of music you can’t replicate on a device. So I think creating an experience is the next step. So it’s like having that as a baseline but then an experience. Maybe not just a recital, but something where the artists talk to the audience to include them in the process – something they can’t get on YouTube. That’s the next step. Then making it accessible. That’s not just price point, that’s genre. That’s also day of the week, time of day. Also marketing efforts to make sure that anyone that wants to be a part of it can be. So there are many factors, but I’m not so worried about that. I don’t think theater will die. I think that we just have to be reasonable. 

We’re in an environment where Center Theatre Group has all but abandoned any sense of a season at the Mark Taper Forum. They’ve got occasional events in there, but nothing formalized like we are all become accustomed to them having. That’s the smallest space at the Music Center. Does that bode well for you?

That’s true and it’s one of the best theaters in the world. But we’re unique in that our overhead is much lower. It costs them so much money to open. I’m not sure of their exact business model and how they filter the revenue and philanthropy. But I would imagine that they need to reduce the amount of work that they put forward. Perhaps they’re too busy or [there’s] too much overhead. But I feel like we’re actually in a really good spot and that over the next five years we’ll grow a lot and then probably plateau to a really comfortable midsize range.

I was talking to Thor Steingraber at The Soraya a couple weeks ago and he was talking frankly about seismic shifts that are going on in the performing arts. For instance, there’s very little, if any, culture covered in the L.A. Times. There used to be regular sections for that. That an institution like The Soraya is competing for advertising dollars not in print, but online. But they’re competing not with other performing arts organizations, they’re competing with Nike. They’re competing with these big monolithic corporations that individual performing arts venues just don’t have the budget to do. What do you see as the main task ahead of you in finding a way of carving out that space so that people know about the Sierra Madre Playhouse? 

I think finding something that is so special that relates to them; being the individual patron for that genre, that it will cut through the noise for them. I think finding something that resonates on a human level and then trying our best to find out what marketing strategies connect with them. You know, this is brand new for me getting to present and market 60 shows at one time. 

I think part of the point for me similar to Thor is that we’re not just an opera company, it’s a performing arts center. So we have many tools to reach the communities. There’s not just one audience that we’re marketing to.

As a performer/musician yourself you’ve experienced the highs and the lows that come with this line of work. What inspires you most at this point today about the best events to produce and the best way to present them?

Problem solving in general is fun for me. My whole life of practicing was all problem solving every day. You go and you try to get better. I think being flexible and remembering that the audience taste does come first, and that’s not at the sacrifice for what I think is good. I would never present something that I don’t like, but I think really listening and thinking about audience impact is important.

Throughout my career I’ve been in many different projects, all of which I’ve loved. Early in my career, some of them were very critically successful and got awards and things like that, but they had a hard time pulling an audience in our own city. So I had to reflect on that. I think learning from the experience of my peers.

There will always be a place for what we do if we keep the intentions in the right place. We’re not a bank. The goal is not to make money. If we just wanted to make money, you know, we could do Chicago 12 months a year and do a really high Broadway quality style thing. But I’m not even sure that that would sell that long.

One of the reasons some are thriving is because they are not doing things the way you’re supposedly supposed to do them. Pacific Opera Project did a production of Madame Butterfly, seeing that in Japanese and English made me realize that I now want to hear Carmen in Spanish instead of French. How much do you think that kind of thinking is what’s necessary today?

I think it’s essential. That’s not to say that there’s not a place for doing things how they’ve always done, but it should be a piece of a much larger puzzle. I think organizations like Pacific Opera Project are really creating the path for the future. They care about the audience and the art form. And there are a lot of problems of the art form. At a certain point you say, how do I fix them? They don’t have to be a library. All these performing arts organizations don’t have to just be a library. You don’t have to be Broadway. There is space in the middle.

Partnerships are at the root of what makes performing arts organizations really thrive. Through your career, we’ve already mentioned Pacific Opera Project, but you’ve been involved with Wild Up, with Martha Graham Dance, with Heidi Suckler and countless other organizations. Do you see opportunities to partner with these organizations as an opportunity for them to try out new work in a smaller, less eyes on them way or for them to do things that they can’t do as part of their regular seasons?

Absolutely. That is how a lot of this season already got booked. What I want to do is a lot more dance, which just takes longer to develop. One of the dance companies that I’m involved with is planning to do workshops. I can’t announce it yet. I can’t pay what The Soraya can pay for one night, but what we can do is offer space. We can offer community experiences in the space that they can bring students into workshop things. Certainly that’s on the table. I think that’s a very unique market position now as well. I control the building, I control the space. So until the money’s there, we can find different ways to partner and highlight voices that couldn’t otherwise get out there. 

You’re just at the beginning of celebrating the 100th anniversary. If you could foresee the Sierra Madre Playhouse of 2124 celebrating its 200th anniversary, what would you hope that anniversary would look like? What would you like your legacy to be as part of that anniversary?

I think an expanded audience, a more inclusive and diverse audience. That is also the genres they present. The Sierra Madre Playhouse is a welcoming space to be, regardless of who you are. I think that that would be a huge accomplishment, and I think it’ll happen. There are already so many community members that have been patrons and fans for 50 years that now their kids and their grandkids are patrons. I think it’s going to happen. It’s a unique spot in a unique community. I think it’s going to last. The building might change. I don’t know if the building will hold up another hundred years, but it’ll be there, I think.

To see the full interview with Matt Cook, please go here.

Main Photo: Matt Cook, Artistic and Executive Director of the Sierra Madre Playhouse (Courtesy Sierra Madre Playhouse)

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Given that Steingraber has had a long association with Jacques Heim, Founder and Creative Director of Diavolo, it should come as no surprise that he turned to Heim to create a performance piece that celebrates the perseverance required to rebuild the CSUN campus and the surrounding communities in the aftermath of the earthquake.

Joining Diavlo for this world premiere are vocalist Thana Alexander and drummer Antonio Sánchez who have composed the score for Existencia and will be performing it live.

There are two performances: one on January 17th and a second one on January 19th

Recently I spoke with Steingraber about the two very different earthquakes that are front and center in his world right now: the Northridge Earthquake that is the inspiration for Existencia and the seismic shifts in the performing arts that has Steingraber asking how many arts institutions will survive even this year.

What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview, please go to our YouTube channel.

Q: You told me many years ago that the word earthquake was verboten and not to be used on the Cal State University Northridge campus. What has changed that has allowed you the opportunity to explore the arts as a mechanism for acknowledging the 30th anniversary of the Northridge earthquake?

Places are defined by pivotal moments. Sometimes those pivotal moments are extremely positive and memorable. Sometimes those pivotal moments are disasters or catastrophes. I don’t think one will ever think of Tiananmen Square without thinking of 1989. Northridge, for better or worse – some would say for worse – has been defined by an earthquake for three decades. There was a real interest at a certain point after the long and challenging process of rebuilding, which took the better part of a decade, where one wants to be known for other things. However, it doesn’t change the history, right?

Then President Brenda Wilson, against all odds, actually reopened the campus two weeks later for classes. Then it took another decade to rebuild it. So what we’re celebrating, if you will, is that perseverance, that resilience that built back better in the months and years following the earthquake.

At what point did it strike you as the right time to reach out to someone like Jacques Heim to create something and how long ago did that happen?

It was about two years of planning. That’s what it takes to plan a major premiere of a new piece. 30 years is funny. You think of 25 or 50 or something like that, but it’s almost two generations. Many people who survived the earthquake are no longer with us. Any adult, even up to the age of, let’s say, 34, 35 years old, won’t have a memory of it. But there’s still a significant portion of the population of LA in the Valley who do have very vivid memories of it, but they’re now distant enough that maybe an evening of art isn’t painful or triggering for them.

Maybe this is the right amount of time to sort of put it in context with all the other things they know about disasters and about human behavior and human recovery.

Why Jacques? Why Diavolo?

Jacques Heim lived through the Northridge earthquake. He had just established his company here in Northridge, funny enough, on Proscenium Avenue in a warehouse. He lived in Hollywood, and he has very, very clear memories of the Northridge earthquake. He said, in fact, that the Northridge earthquake influenced what Diavolo the company became. Which was about danger, about confronting danger.

They do things that are very physically challenging. Those are the qualities in the work. But it’s so much more than that because he’s also someone who uses structures, he uses architecture, he uses the built environment to both destruct and reconstruct. He created a company influenced by that moment in his life.

I spoke to Jacques in 2020 during the pandemic. He said, “I know we are in the middle of a complete disaster. But behind disaster, eventually we will see the light, but we have a long way ahead of us.” In your role as Executive and Artistic Director at The Soraya, what role does art play in your own life, apart from the venue, in allowing you to get to the other side of a disaster, to find that light that he talked about? 

Whether it’s a performance or, for some people it’s temple or church, people have to be together. And we live in a world where people are not together, at least not in a meaningful, substantive, positive way very often. Any difficult or raw human experience or emotion that a community or disparate peoples experience, I feel like in order to really process it you can’t be alone. I view that as one of the primary functions of a performance venue.

As we announced this performance, people became very emotional about participating in it, coming to it, being in the audience for it. What we’re not doing is recreating an earthquake. This is an artistic response to it. One of the things that’s been really interesting in the last two years working with Jacques on this, is that he has decided that the most interesting thing about challenges or catastrophes or disasters is that they do bring people together in a way that our ordinary lives don’t. That by coming together we have the opportunity to build something better. So that is very much his artistic rendering. It’s filled with, as you would expect from Diavolo, things falling and coming apart and wildly athletic and physical performances by dancers who are top of their form and accomplishing things that become these bigger than life representations of what a human undergoes when the Earth beneath them is no longer reliable, when gravity is no longer reliable.

Maybe there is something that that’s a bigger picture about what we can still learn about how we can be better or how we can respond post-pandemic. It seems like Existencia is not just about 30 years ago. It’s about 30 days ago. 

The pandemic is particularly insidious in this way because it was, first of all, global. No corner of the globe was exempted. We often think of disasters as being very specific to a location. It was kind of insidious because it didn’t destroy the world in an instant. It destroyed the fabric of the human experience in the world, which is a much more subtle thing to both recognize and to repair. So there is definitely that relativity to the current moment. The pandemic is no small part of that for sure. 

One thing the the pandemic did do was create enormous challenges for people who are in your position because the arts have had an incredibly challenging time getting people back into the theater. To paraphrase the last line of Putting It Together from Sunday in the Park with George by Stephen Sondheim, what is, from your perspective, the state of the arts right now?

Perilous. No one in my position ever wants to be honest because there’s no benefit to being honest. You don’t attract ticket buyers by saying the theater’s half empty. You don’t attract donors by saying it’s all on the edge of the cliff. But when we are honest, and I just roll that way, it’s going to take a miracle for the performing arts in Los Angeles to persevere through. I would say during 2020 that we will be able to maintain the illusion through 2023, and in 2024 it will all come unraveled.

What I mean by that is that’s when all the relief dollars would run out. That’s when the reality of whatever the future is for ticket buying, for philanthropy, for all of the things. Even on the artist side, so many artists, artistic organizations, have not reconvened or regrouped. An entire generation of young artists lost a really important formative time of their training and their practice.

This is what I know because I speak to all of my colleagues. There are very few in private who will say that everything is just fine. There are very few. There are some. But for the most part, it doesn’t matter whether it’s Los Angeles or New York or anywhere else. It’s a challenging moment because costs are as much as 30% higher and revenue is as much as 20% lower. It doesn’t take a genius to know that 50% gap has to be filled by something. And for most organizations, for the last to two-and-a-half, maybe three years, it’s been filled by relief dollars which are now gone.

If this is something that you were forecasting a while ago, how do you mitigate that? How do you move beyond it?

I don’t think you do. I think we’re going to see lots of arts organizations simply shut down. Look, there’s no arts section left in the L.A. Times. There are obviously important journalists doing work like you’re doing, but not reaching the same number of doorsteps. We were given arts news every day. And now most Angelenos get none, ever. Zero. Marketing is 2 to 3 times the cost that it used to be, because you’re not just competing with another arts organization on the arts page of the L.A. Times, you’re competing with Nike for digital space.

I do think that certain arts organizations emerge. Certain trends start to favor certain alternatives and hopefully live performance alternatives. Certain things rise to the top. When we say cultural or artistic Darwinism, what we mean is that only some survive and the rest don’t. I think we’re going to be in that moment and we’re going to head into the 2028 Olympics in a city with a field that is a shadow of its former self. It’s too bad because the 1984 Olympics were one of the most important moments, pivotal moments, in the arts in Los Angeles.

We will have 44 years between Olympics and in that 44-year time, we will have seen the arts rise in Los Angeles, and we will see the arts reach some sort of pinnacle and then decline to some degree or another. That’s just the reality right there. Not enough dollars in Los Angeles to fix it.

I hope that that things improve, because I, for one, can’t imagine living life without the arts, whether it’s here or anywhere else.

The things I love most: the performing arts, all the arts, public radio, mom and pop restaurants – these are all things that are imperiled right now. When you put them all into a bucket together, what do they represent? They basically represent all of the things that are not mass market, large conglomerate, call it whatever you may. They’re the very human side of creation that are not driven solely by a profit margin. There are people who say without a profit margin, maybe you deserve to be imperiled. Obviously I can immediately provide a retort, which is any human being may look at the things that they love most and see that they’re not actually attached to a profit.

Hopefully as Northridge did, as CSUN did, you can rise out of a tragedy or circumstances that seem to imperil your very existence and still find a way to to come out of it better and stronger. 

No choice. You have to try.

To see the full interview with Thor Steingraber, please go here.

Main Photo: Diavolo rehearses Existencia: 30 Years after the Northridge Earthquake in their LA Studio (Photo by George Simian/Courtesy The Soraya)

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On Thursday, April 6th, he will present a recital at The Soraya in Northridge where he will show a through-line from Rachmaninoff to Art Tatum, Billy Strayhorn and Stephen Sondheim. How might he do that? That was just what I wanted to know when I spoke last week with Conrad for the first time since our 2019 interview.

Conrad Tao recorded some of Rachmaninoff’s Preludes for his 2013 album Voyages. He’s also a composer whose work appears on that album as well as on 2015’s Pictures and on 2012’s The Juilliard Sessions.

In our conversation we don’t just cover Rachmaninoff and Sondheim, I ask him an all-important question about one of his favorite shows: RuPaul‘s Drag Race and who he thought would win. Of note, this conversation took place before last Friday’s episode was aired. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview, please go to our YouTube channel.

Conrad, you’re someone who embraces a wide range of classical music, whether it is Mozart or contemporary classical music by composers like John Adams and David Lang. Since you’re also not just a musician, but you’re also a composer, what do you appreciate most as a listener and also as a composer and musician when you’re hearing or playing Rachmaninoff’s work? 

In some ways, all the same things that everyone else seems to get out of it. Which is, I think, that incredible melodic sensibility first and foremost. For me the two are pretty wrapped up in one another, especially when talking about someone like Rachmaninoff.

Actually the thing that I get excited by is the knowledge that Rachmaninoff himself played the instrument. I haven’t read up on whether or not Rachmaninoff liked to compose at the piano. But I can say, having played a lot of his music, that the music feels remarkably good to play at the instrument; which makes a lot of sense given his virtuosity at the instrument and his prolific reputation as a pianist. But it’s that intimacy, that feeling of connection to Rachmaninoff, potentially, the player has through his composition. Everything I love about the music is filtered through that. 

How difficult is Rachmaninoff’s music to play? 

It’s hard. I just did the Third Piano Concerto last November for the first time in a little while. There’s no getting around the fact that the piece is quite difficult. 

What I’m aspiring to play when I’m playing Rachmaninoff’s music is not really the surface notes at all. The surface notes are just the incidental result of all of the stuff that Rachmaninoff has constructed or is asking me to do, again from underneath. So the music is incredibly challenging because it is so dense, but all of that density actually emerges from a route. As the years have gone by, the challenges have changed. 

So what would be the challenge, say, if you were going to do all four of Rachmaninoff’s piano concertos and Variations on a Theme of Paganini all in one concert?

Well, you’ll notice that I was not the pianist doing this concert. My arms might fall off. It sounds kind of fun in the sense that I would love to hear that progression from 1 to 5, five being the Paganini Rhapsody. Unlike, say Beethoven, where all five piano concertos span a decent period, but they don’t span his entire life. The five Rachmaninoff piano and orchestra pieces do actually span his life and his entire career. You’d hear this interesting progression, especially four and five, which are after Rachmaninoff moves to the U.S. I suppose that’s the premise of my program.

The Soraya website says that you’re “speculating about Rachmaninoff in the United States.” How do you define what that statement means in relation to this concert?

Rachmaninoff moved to New York in 1918. Many of his most well-known works were written before then: the Third Piano Concerto; the Second Piano Concerto. Some of his most iconic themes had already been composed before he came to the U.S. We know that he was going to jazz clubs in New York; that he was participating in the musical culture in New York of the 1920s. So we can reasonably assume that he would have been hearing the American Songbook from that time.

We know that he was a fan of Art Tatum, who was early in his career in the twenties. Plus knowing some of the music that he wrote after he moved to the US, which to my ears very clearly evinces the influence of jazz. Although the Rachmaninoff is hardly alone being a composer influenced by jazz. But that was my starting point.

I wanted to explore through Rachmaninoff’s music, as well as music of those that he may have heard when he was in New York and future composers who we know were influenced by Rachmaninoff or may have been influenced by Rachmaninoff, what his influence may have been from and on American jazz and popular music and and songwriting.

What inspired this idea in the first place?

The ask for this program first came into my inbox last spring and I had just happened to see David Lean’s Brief Encounter for the first time with that beautiful Noël Coward script. I was totally unprepared for how beautiful and and formally inventive and emotional it was. The way that it uses Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto is so fantastic. It’s not quite diegetic, but not quite not diegetic. It’s in this beautiful middle zone where it represents this person’s subconscious in a way, or internal dialogue. It just lit my brain on fire.

Stephen Sondheim’s music is part of your program. You did a transcription of Move On for Anthony de Mare‘s continuing Liaisons project. Last year posted a solo piano version of Sunday [from Sunday in the Park with George] on your Instagram account. How does Sondheim’s work inspire you?

There are so many great things about Sondheim. That’s the wonderful gift that he left us with such a varied output that always has a rich consideration of every note and every word. The way that he’s able to use music to underscore or undercut the words that a character is singing is really like an age-old tradition. Mozart in opera does this as well. It’s just one of the great joys of writing theater music.

The song that’s on this program is In Buddy’s Eyes from Follies. By this point in the [musical], we have enough context to realize that Sally’s trying to console herself or she’s staring into the abyss as she says these words, while also knowing that there’s truth in what she’s singing, too. That complexity you can feel in the harmony, in the pungent chords that occasionally disrupt what is otherwise a placid surface. That’s just one of the great joys of that music.

I first did Sunday as a solo piano encore the night that he passed away. I happened to be working that night and it was really incredible to me how you can perceive all of this drama just in the music. Sondheim is almost a psychedelic experience because there is this endlessly unfolding layers of meaning. It’s addictive.

Since I know you’re a fan and we are down to the final four, who should win RuPaul’s Drag Race and who will win RuPaul’s Drag Race? 

I am rooting for Sasha Colby this year in general and I feel like she could comfortably slot into both the should win and will win spots. I have been following Sasha for a little while. I don’t know if you or anyone has seen her winning Miss Continental Talent performance from 2012 but it is fantastic. She’s got really good taste in music and it’s a great pick me up if you’re ever feeling unmotivated or down on yourself. So I love what Sasha is doing. I think she brings such a wonderful perspective to the show.

I also am obsessed with Anetra who is such a great performer. Part of that show is always the painful, honest stories about what it’s like to grow up queer or a queen or anything. Her story is one of the most horrifyingly raw and upsetting ones I’ve ever heard. It stuck with me ever since she told it. So those are my two.

Rachmaninoff said, “The new kind of music seems to create not from the heart, but from the head. Its composer thinks rather than feels. They have not the capacity to make their works exalt – they meditate, protest, analyze, reason, calculate and brood, but they do not exalt.” If you could talk to him composer-to-composer, what would you tell Rachmaninoff about the “new kind of music” being done today?

You know, I have a feeling that we might not totally agree, but that we’d share the same values. I actually really agree that it’s so easy and common for composers to get lost in cleverness. This is actually something the late composer Frederick Rzewski once said. “I think that sometimes people don’t always write music that’s just like the melodies that are going through their heads. And I’m still trying to write the melodies that are going through my head.”

I relate to that. Whatever exalt means to someone, that goal, that desire to communicate something of ones feeling, one’s perspective on the world and one’s being, I suppose. At the risk of being a little fanciful, that is why I do it. So I think that we might have different tastes and I might try to persuade him some experimental work is gesturing towards exaltation as well. That’s what attracts me to various forms of music. What I’m looking for is that feeling of resonance; that feeling of being transported; that feeling of being transfixed. So perhaps exaltation as well.

To see the full interview with Conrad Tao, please go here.

All photos of Conrad Tao by Kevin Condon/Courtesy Unison Media

The post Conrad Tao Celebrates Rachmaninoff’s 150th appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

Do you know the Afrobeat music of Nigerian artist Fela Kuti? He was a very spiritual and very political singer/songwriter who ran afoul of the government. He created amazing music. He had 27 wives (whom he married all at once). He died of AIDS in 1997. The combination of all these details makes for a great story and it made for a great musical, appropriately named Fela! Duain Richmond is one of several men who have played Kuti in the musical.

Richmond, nearly ten years after last playing Kuti in the musical, is once again portraying him in Fela! The Concert which will be performed on Saturday night at The Soraya in Northridge.

He was born in Sierra Leone in Western Africa and moved to Atlanta which is where he began his pursuit of acting with the strong encouragement of his acting coach, Freddie Hendricks.

Richmond’s journey with Fela! began when he was cast as the Fela-alternate for the touring production of the musical. Even on Broadway they had a Fela alternate because of the demands of the role. When the show returned to Broadway for a brief run in 2012, Richmond was a member of the ensemble and, once again, the alternate (for his cousin Sahr Ngaujah who received a Tony nomination for his performance in the original run).

Earlier this week I spoke with Richmond about his passion for Fela Kuti, the power of Kuti’s music in the face of extreme pressure from the Nigerian government and what his music has to say to us today. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview, please go to our YouTube channel.

In May of 2022 you posted on your Instagram account, “My love for theater is unmatched. This form of expressive art will forever be my 1st love.” Why do you feel that passionately about theater and how is that love fulfilled by playing Fela Kuti?

When it comes to Fela Kuti, Fela was a very spiritual human being. Fela always practiced spirituality with the Yoruba religion. He also believed that art, particularly music, was a weapon, was a spiritual thing. He had an interview once when he said, “Music is a spiritual weapon. You should never play with music. And those who play with music will die young.” So he believed that music was such a powerful weapon that whenever a human being was gifted with the power of arts or gifted with the power of music, it should never be taken lightly. So as him being that spiritual person that he was, his music carried that spirituality. His middle name is Anikulapo, he who carries death in his pouch, so Fela believed that he could never die. Though the physical aspect of him is long gone, we do understand now that the life is still very well alive because here we are in 2023. We’re still sending the message out and we’re still connecting people with the power of his music. 

This first love that you have requires, not just that you bring a character life, but you bring yourself to that character. Fela Kuti obviously had a unique way of performing his music. He had his own style. He had massive energy. What are the challenges of portraying him over the course of a show and still allowing who you are to come through as well?

That’s the beauty of the Fela concert and that’s why I love the Fela concert version. On Broadway we go through Fela’s experience and all what he’s been through and his desire to leave the shrine. In the Fela concert we’re just singing his music, but we’re also connecting with the audience while we tell the story a little.

Sahr Ngaujah, who originated the role, also did the Fela concert. So we all have our own different essence that we bring to it. I, in particular, love to to engage my audience.

The message that I always give my audience throughout the whole performance is the message of unity and the message of love.

Because it’s so much that’s going on in the world today. We are faced with wars, all these different viruses. There is just so much chaos that the world is in. If for two hours I can engage people from all over every different walks of life, black, white, it doesn’t matter what your skin is. It doesn’t matter what your religious preference is, your sexual orientation or preferences. It doesn’t matter. Once you are in that space for two hours, we are all connected in that one love – the love for music. 

As the last song says, Water No Get Enemy, if we can be more like water, then this world will be a whole better place. I connect with energy and I’m all about purity. We’re all on this earth for a certain period of time. In the grand scheme of things, it’s a very short time. So why do we spend the time hating one another and having so much malice between friends and all this? If we let love be that core language that we focus on, then we can all be a better human being for each other. So that’s what I bring to it. That’s a part of me that I bring to the to the show.

How was your relationship to this character and to this music evolved over the time you’ve been involved with Fela!?

I became a huge fan of this man. I was just inspired how one man could be so fearless. After going through all the hardships that he went through, he still had this fearless mentality and just kept pursuing what he believed in. I was so inspired about that. I couldn’t even fathom the idea of being in Nigeria at that time when Fela was experiencing soldiers coming to his house, beating him, jailing him over 200 times, throwing his mother out of a window. I just couldn’t imagine if I was in that position. Would I still have that spirit in me to continue? Because of that he became a superhero to me.

I saw Fela! in New York during its original run. I think that any actor who plays the part would have this challenge from the very start. What do you know about the audience based on how quickly they respond to “Say, Yeah, yeah?”

I love that introduction when the Fela character first walks. You have no idea what to expect, especially if it’s your first time seeing the show. There’s so much going on on the stage. The queens are dancing. The ten-piece band is just live. The colors of the set. The colors of the costumes and the lights. Then you see this character just smoothly stroll down to the center stage. And his first words are “Everybody say yeah, yeah.“

It’s always fun for me to watch the audience because some of them have no idea what they’re about to experience. You can always see that anticipation in their faces, the ones in the front row that you can actually see – if the light’s not blinding you. We go, “Everybody say yeah yeah.” They’re lost for a quick second and then the Fela character comes back and tells them it’s okay. This is an interactive show. I’m going to talk to you. You’re going to talk back to me. So the second “Everybody say, yeah yeah”, oh, man, you can almost hear the joy in their voice because they’re so excited now.

You definitely have to get them going on that because they’re never going to respond to puff puff pass if you don’t.

We actually had quite a few on Broadway. Every time that scene will come up, you will hear so many people in the back [Richmond raises his voice to yell] “Pass it!” 

I read it one of the last interviews that Fela Kuti gave. It was to Spin magazine in 1986. He was asked about his treatment by the jailers and whether they were humane to him or not. He said they were mostly friendly. He said “They are ordinary Africans. They suffer the same things we suffer. They don’t necessarily have to be hostile toward me because they understand what I’m doing.” Here is this man who, because of his music, because of his spirituality, is able to get people to treat him with the respect he deserves. I think that’s a pretty remarkable aspect of his character.

I think it speaks volumes to the message he wanted to get across. He was almost like the Messiah. Fela came with a stronger message. Regardless of what he had to endure in his personal life, as much as his life was always in danger, he knew that the message was bigger than him. 

As you know, the song Zombie that he made was really talking about some of the soldiers at times who didn’t understand that they were just following orders by the powers that be. I think that in the beginning it wasn’t always like that for him. But something magical happens when you really take the time to listen to someone who is so selfless and is so in love with his country. To a point where his message was strictly about the uplifting of his people, his culture, his nation. You start to see yourself and the surroundings that you’re in and you understand that this man is speaking truth. So I’m not surprised.

Like any other fascinating character, he is not without his flaws. He was an AIDS denialist. I believe that the musical, if I remember correctly, only states that Fela died. It doesn’t say that Fela died of AIDS even though he did.

Right. 

His last song is believed to be CSAS (Condoms, Scallywag and Scatter), which basically said the use of condoms was “Un-African.” For this man who was so passionate about his people and his music, how damaging do you think that kind of message was to people in Nigeria and in Africa at large? Do you think that mitigated any progress they could have made in slowing the spread of AIDS?

I don’t have all the answers, but there are a lot of speculations about how Fela contracted this this disease. But as far as the message, I think that around that time there’s a lot of mixed message that Africa had been receiving. Not a lot of information was being given to the African people. It wasn’t a lot of help and aid that was being given to the African people.

It wasn’t like Fela’s music was as popular back then as it is now. Now the world has kind of like got a hold to him and everyone knows what that message is. But do I think that his music in that song could have potentially been very harmful to to the pandemic in Africa when it comes to AIDS? I absolutely don’t think so. Obviously the message was not the right message at the time. But I don’t think the last message was spread around that time. He was one man who was making music and trying to get it to the world. At the same time, the powers that be were trying to shut that down.

At the end of the day, Fela was still a human being. We’re not perfect. I’m sure that there are certain things, if Fela was still alive today, that he would probably say now knowing the lessons and understanding and going through life. That would probably change some of the behaviors and stuff that he might have experienced at the time. He was this furious human being that wanted to get the message out, that wanted to shut down this regime that was just so oppressing his people.

In that Spin interview, Kuti was asked if being more subtle and a little more calculated and a little less outspoken might have made his life easier. His response was, “Yes, there is sense. But, there is also a sense in just acting the way you feel without compromising rather than acting, not the concept of being afraid or being punished for one thing or another.” Absent the concept of punishment, is the idea of not compromising important for you as an actor? How does his philosophy land with you and how do you think it will carry you through going forward?

I would do this show any time over any film in Hollywood if it ever comes side by side with each other. Because I think that message in not wanting to compromise…I think we all fall into that pot out here, especially as actors, we feel like our integrity can sometimes be questioned when it comes to certain things that we feel like we must all do to make it in this industry.

I think what Fela was saying in that interview is, yes, fear controls us. I know I deal with this. It is something that I’m also struggling with, too, to find a thin line or the difference between what is fear and what is intuition.

I think that when you are able to remove fear from any equation, then it allows you to deal from a place of integrity where you don’t compromise your belief and who you are as a person. At the end of the day, the career choices that I chose in this industry, it’s not the end-all, be-all for me. Acting is something that I love to do. I love the expression of the art, but it is not my life.

We have a saying in West Africa, “Wata way na for you e nor go run pass you” which means “What is meant for you will never pass you by.” At the end of the day, I have to be mentally in a place where I know that my integrity is never compromised in this industry because that’s much bigger than any successful project that I will ever book or any role that I will ever land. 

To watch the full interview with Duain Richmond, please go here.

Main Photo: Duain Richmond and Dancers in Fela! The Concert (Photo by Aric Thompson/Courtesy The Soraya)

The post Duain Richmond Brings Fela Kuti to Life appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

Henry received nominations for his performances in The Scottsboro Boys, Violet and the 2018 revival of Carousel. He’s an original cast member of In the Heights and has toured in Hamilton. Some of his other Broadway credits include The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess and Shuffle Along, Or the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed. Most recently he became the first Black actor to play the role of Dr. Pomatter in Waitress.

I took this occasion to talk to Henry, who was just announced along with Adrienne Warren as the Broadway stars to announce this year’s Tony nominations, about his first-ever stage role, to look back on his career so far and to also look forward to where and what Broadway might and should become. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity.

There’s so much more to hear from Henry, so I strongly encourage you to watch the full interview on our YouTube channel for stories about Carousel, tick…tick…Boom!, Stephen Sondheim and more.

I want to start by asking you about something that Harold Hill says in The Music Man, the first role you ever played which was at Florida Bible Christian School. He says “A man can’t turn tail and run just because a little personal risk is involved.” It strikes me as though that is the journey every actor takes to try to get on Broadway. What are the kind of risks that you feel you’ve taken that have been most successful for you in getting this career that you have now? 

I love that quote. I would say one of the biggest risks that I took was when I was doing In the Heights and it was my first Broadway show and Lin-Manuel [Miranda’s] first Broadway show. We had just won the Tony Award for Best Musical. I was in the ensemble and I had the opportunity to go to a principal role on Broadway in Godspell and play Judas. [In the Heights] was going to run for a long time. But I was like, Oh, I definitely see myself as a principal.

So I decided to put in my four weeks notice, leave and go do Godspell. And this was in 2008. Long story short, the show lost its investment and it didn’t happen. So I find myself in between these two amazing things, just right in the middle of a valley. That’s one of the biggest risks I took. I’m so glad that I took it early on because it showed me the highs and lows of the business and how I need to find something to sustain myself beyond the highs and lows. 

When you think of Broadway as it was back when you were doing In the Heights and Broadway as it is today, pandemic aside if that’s possible, what do you miss most from the way it was and what do you like most about what it is now? 

That’s a good question. I’ll start with what I love about what it is now. I think we’re just much more aware of bringing lots of voices to the table creatively and management wise and producing wise. For instance, Black folks are much more in control of their narrative and the way that they run their shows. I think that’s really important.

What do I miss about what was pre-pandemic or even 2008? For me, it was just this incredible community. It’s still an incredible community, but what struck me when I just got here was how it was just fun. It was just absolute fun. I came from Miami, Florida and coming up to New York in 2006 it was just this world of wonder. And I think now it’s not just fun for me anymore. It’s trying to do the right thing. It’s also fun, but now I’m much more aware and I’m much more strategic in how I’m trying to amplify different voices.

Last year I saw the revival of Caroline, Or Change, a show I loved when it was first on Broadway. But it felt like time and audiences had caught up with it in a way they didn’t the first time around. If The Scottsboro Boys was given a revival today do you think this awareness you mentioned might breathe new life into the show?

100 percent correct! Caroline, Or Change is a great example, it depends on the moment. The audiences in 2010 didn’t want to hear about this true story. I bet you now if Scottsboro Boys is on Broadway right now, oh my goodness! Art sometimes lines up with what’s going on. I’m so sad that I missed Caroline, Or Change because I heard it was incredible. Scottsboro Boys went to the West End and won some Oliviers there. It’s had a great regional life since I did it again at the Ahmanson Theater. It all depends on the moment and I do believe that if Scottsboro Boys came back right now that it would do really well.

You’re on Billy Porter‘s album The Soul of Richard Rodgers, which is completely a pop approach. I’m wondering how important you think it is for projects like that to exist so that people don’t think that Rodgers and Hammerstein or moving forward, even someone like Stephen Sondheim, is part of a previous generation or generations past, and that there’s still something viable about what these songs have to say and that young audiences should be paying attention to them.

The great thing about Stephen Sondheim music, Richard Rodgers music, is it’s just phenomenal storytelling, phenomenal lyric, incredible melodic lines. As someone who grew up in the 90s listening the R&B, pop, rock, jazz, I’m going to see great material through my lens and I’m going to want to interpret it like that, just like Billy Porter or Michael McElroy would want to in their lenses. And I think incredible material that speaks to us will stand the test of time and genre interpretation.

I’m glad to be part of a school of thought that wants to bring those incredible composers as current as possible just to people that don’t know and just think that that’s way back. And I hope that a lot of institutions now understand that and we can rethink some of these classics. They’re fine on their own. But what we’re talking about is bringing them to a newer audience and that’s going to take a little more fine tuning.

Do you remember your first audition for a Broadway show and the song you sang? What was it and what do you think your perspective would be on both how you think you performed it then and how you might perform it now?

Oh gosh, my first Broadway show was off-Broadway at the time, but it was In the Heights. I sang the song “Hear Me Out.” That was a song that Benny sang to Nina’s dad to be like, “Hey, listen. I can handle some more responsibility and I can handle your daughter. Just trust me.” It didn’t make it to Broadway, but that song it’s very hip hop and R&B.

It’s funny that the the title “Hear Me Out” means so much more to me now. I have a hat I was just wearing and it says, “Be Heard.” So like, hear me out, you know? Now I think about it in terms of Broadway. I want to be heard in a different way now. I want more voices to be heard.

If I’m going to sing that song now, though, oh gosh. You know what, Craig? I think I’m going to cover that. I’m going to cover that song. I’m going to put it on Tik Tok because I haven’t thought about it in a little while and I’m going to text Lin. I’m going to be like, “Yo, check this out.” I’m so glad that you brought that up. 

To watch our full interview with Joshua Henry, please go here.

Photo: Joshua Henry (Courtesy his Facebook Page)

The post Joshua Henry Talks All About Broadway appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

“It was important for me to not see Martha Graham,” declared Janet Eilber, Artistic Director of the Martha Graham Dance Company. “I didn’t want things that were Graham-esque. We have Graham. We have the most fabulous 20th century choreography that exists, in my opinion. So to bring someone in and ask them to do something like Martha is just too much of a mountain to climb. I really look for people who have developed their own distinct voices and ask them to take inspiration from one of Martha Graham’s ideas, but to create a completely different dance, something that is their own.”

The project about which Eilber is speaking is The New Canticle for Innocent Comedians which is having its world premiere this Saturday at The Soraya in Northridge. The original version by Graham debuted in 1952. But there is no permanent record of that work. All that exists were the memories of one former dancer and a film of one of the eight parts that make up the work, even though the original Canticle was revived in both 1969 and 1987.

“It was kind of a Xerox copy of a Xerox copy if anyone remembers what Xerox was in 1969,” she said of those revivals. “The initial performances were never filmed. So 18 years later many of the original cast came back and tried to remember what they had danced and they put together a revival. That revival was not filmed. In 1987, another 18, 19, 20 years later with an entirely new company, a few of the original cast came back and said, ‘we sort of did this. Maybe we did this. Let’s use our collective knowledge of Martha Graham and put something together.’ So when I was researching bringing it back to the stage again with no filmed record of any of those earlier efforts, I thought I’m not going to pretend that we know what Martha Graham choreographed back in 1952. But we had her structure, we had her blueprints. And I thought that would be great inspiration for some of these young emerging choreographic voices that I wanted to work with. Martha’s blueprint for Canticle for innocent Comedians, with its eight distinct vignettes about nature, gave me an excuse to have eight different choreographers involved.”

Joining one vignette choreographed by Graham and a second recreated by Sir Robert Cohan, a dancer in the original production, are works by Sonya Tayeh, Kristina and Sadé Alleyene, Jenn Freeman, Juliano Nuñez, Micaela Taylor and Yin Yue.

Tayeh may be the best-known of the choreographers for her work on So You Think You Can Dance and her Tony Award-winning choreography for the stage musical Moulin Rouge!

“Sonya’s choreography is very emotionally descriptive. And she has her own physical vocabulary that is quite different from Martha’s. But it’s still this idea of using using motion and movement to describe emotion.”

Emotion and heart are the keys to The New Canticle for Innocent Comedians maintaining a connection to the original work by Graham.

“You’ll see, even in this brand new version, that the emotion is just the emotion that comes through the dancing that we do,” Eilber offered. “Certainly the Martha Graham classics are all about the physicality that she invented to reveal emotion. To reveal, as she said, the inner landscape, the heart and that comes through. That was the core principle in all of her choreography. And I think it’s certainly true of our New Canticle – even though it’s got a great variety of creative artists who have put it together.”

Another artist joining in this project is musician/composer Jason Moran who has created a new score. For the world premiere he will be performing his music live. Two days later he’ll be recording the score for use in other upcoming Martha Graham Dance Company performances of The New Canticle for Innocent Comedians.

“Jason has gone in his own direction. It’s a long piece – long in a good way. It’s about 40 minutes for solo piano. It’s a tour de force for him to play for 40 minutes. Jason had carte blanche and he did not really have direct contact with any of the individual choreographers. He’s been working with Sonya and me. He came into the studio several times and you could just feel the sparks flying once he saw our dancers in person. He sat down at the piano in our studio and just began to create sounds and phrases that went with the choreography Sonya had already created.”

The New York Times, in a review of the 1987 revival, called the original work by Graham one of her “most atypical pieces.” It’s an assessment with which Eilber agrees.

“One reason that made it atypical in 1952 was that Martha Graham was not in it. The works that she was creating in the ’30s and ’40s and ’50s, for the most part, revolved around her. She was choosing narratives – borrowing stories from the Bible, from Greek myths, from wherever – to have a vehicle for herself as a leading actress and dancer. It wasn’t just a narcissistic trip. She often transformed these stories in genius, revolutionary ways.”

With Canticle, Eilber says, “She’s not creating a vehicle for herself. She’s creating virtuosic solos and duets for her company. So it’s an ensemble work. It does not have a narrative. There’s no bad guy or anything like that. So it’s a much more sort of poetic and abstract idea without a leading lady at the center of it.”

As for the leading lady, Martha Graham, Eilber thinks she’d be very interested and supportive of this new version of her work.

“As long as we’d ask her to bow and bring her up on stage she’d be happy,” Eilber said followed by a joyous laugh. “The other answer is, people think of Martha as the sort of old-fashioned, staid diva who wanted things a certain way, but it was quite the opposite. She was a revolutionary. She embraced change until the last day of her life and was always looking for new. She had an appetite for the new and and she was always looking for ways to astonish her audience; to figure out what was new and what she could do. So I just have to believe that she would be behind us all the way; that she would be interested in the experimentation that we’re doing.”

To watch my full conversation with Janet Eilber, please go here to our YouTube channel.

For tickets and more information on The New Canticle for Innocent Comedians please go here.

Main Photo: Martha Graham takes a bow (Photo by Martha Swope/Courtesy NYPL Archives)

The post What Would Martha Graham Think? appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

“Gone are the days of releasing a record with a particular band and go right on the road with the same band for months at a time, plugging that music, plugging that album, playing that music, right? I look at every tour, every gig, every musical situation I have on my calendar and I just think what would make this as enjoyable an experience as possible for the band, for me and for for the audience. What can I do to make this what it needs to be?” So says pianist/composer Gerald Clayton when discussing how to approach the upcoming release of his new album, Bells on Sand.

Before Clayton’s album is released by Blue Notes Records on April 1st, he has a few concerts lined up. On February 17th he’ll be performing at The Soraya in Northridge. On February 25th Clayton will be at the Starlight Patio and Lounge with Domo Branch in Portland. After Bells on Sand comes out he’ll be at the Johnson Theatre in Durham, New Hampshire. Clayton is also part of three all-star concerts celebrating Nat “King” Cole with the Nashville Symphony.

Clayton is an immensely talented artist who gives considerable thought to who he is artistically and the traditions from which his career was possible. We spoke last week via Zoom to talk about Bells on Sand, those artists who inspire him and whether or not he is an old soul. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity.

You said that Oscar Peterson’s Night Train was the first jazz album that really got its hooks into you. Peterson once said, “I don’t believe that a lot of the things that I hear on the air today are going to be played for as long a time as Coleman Hawkins records or Brahms concertos.” What are the challenges you face as a composer and a musician cutting through all the music that is available now and at the same time creating something that may last as long as a Coleman Hawkins record or a Brahms concerto?

That’s a really beautiful sentiment and fascinating to think about. One of the parts of the premise of that question is that I consider all of the music around me to cut through in the first place. Maybe the way to go about arts and making music is to to drown out all the other noise and really set your sights on that bull’s eye, on that North Star. Just serve the art, serve the music as best as you can, as honestly as you can, as diligently and thoughtfully and thoroughly as possible, and let the rest take care of itself. I think that’s generally the equation that been the modus operandi for me since I was a kid.

I think it’s natural that we all sort of aspire to leave something behind, to be so lucky as to to make music that is great and magical and wonderful enough that it even deserves to live on after we’re long gone. I think part of the allure of that is this very human desire to have your ego remain you’re gone. But to experience music and experience art that is that pure and worthy of that is really what excites me and is something that I’m inspired to try to get to. Just to even record something on the level of those artists you mentioned would be incredible.

At the same time I was first listening to Bells on Sand I was listening to Joel Ross’ new album, The Parable of the Poet and Ethan Iverson‘s new album Every Note Is True. One thing that struck me about all three albums was that there was a sense of calm that I heard in the music that I don’t think I’d been hearing in the last few years. They’re all coming out around the same time and reflect more of a coming to peace with one’s self or one’s world. Is that something that you wanted to express in this album, particularly after all that we’ve gone through as a society recently?

I think you’re probably onto something. I think there’s an affect from this wildly new time that we’re living in that is maybe hard to fully comprehend at this moment. Maybe it takes another couple of years to look back and see that all of the music coming out at this time all had this in common. Maybe it’s that sort of calm sensibility or what have you. It could also be just individual paths and journeys of all three of us. For me this record is also a reflection of where I am in comparison to the previous records I put out and feeling that it was time to include something that’s a little bit more intimate in my body of work.

This is an intimate record. What the title and narrative of the project is trying to get after is to play music without anything else. Just have a song and that sort of catharsis, that therapeutic relationship with you and the sound and how that’s just a thing that happens in a moment. And then you go on to the next moment. And if you come back to the same song it’s a new moment and the sands have shifted. To point that all back to the sensibility of calmness and and meditation feels very relevant.

If we were to take Boogablues, which opens your first album, Two-Shade, and then take Water’s Edge, which opens Bells on Sand and use them as goalposts at opposite ends of the field, what does that say to you about the journey that you’ve taken and who you are today versus who you were then?

There are different ways to to take people on a musical journey and I think that’s something I’ve had the privilege of exploring over these past 15-20 years of doing this. To see what it feels like to open the concert with a dance like Boogablues, then what comes after that? How does it feel to actually start not with the jovial sort of bouncy attitude feeling of Boogblues, but start with a little bit more of a pensive or intellectual or cerebral [composition]? Going there first and then taking them to the blues as sort of a release from that tension to end a set big or to end a set on a ballad. I like the variety of things and I definitely don’t have one way of doing things. That’s what always turns me on about art and music. I suppose it says that maybe it would be strange to start your first record, your first statement to the world on a ballad, you know? But now that I’ve got plenty of baggage that I take along with me to this next record, I think I feel the freedom to go there and to start on this energy.

Looking back on Ben Ratliff‘s New York Times review of the first night of your first stand at the Village Vanguard in 2010 he said, “Perhaps because he inherited* so much aesthetic knowledge, Mr. Clayton seems from a different era.” Do you feel like your are from a different era or are an old soul?

I think there’s something about being a 1984 baby that maybe our generational purpose is one of connecting past to future. That we are the last of that soulful generation that remembers being social before the internet. So yeah, there are values and lessons from the before times that are really near and dear to my heart that I think are actually really important. 

I think there are plenty of other people my age and younger who feel that as well and want to be about carrying that torch forward. But there are plenty who don’t have that connection and are still amazing, creative, beautiful artists that I love to work with. So maybe compared to some of those cats I am maybe a different kind of old soul. But really I think it’s just the same as anybody else, just trying to play what what feels right and be honest about the things you think are beautiful.

Legendary drummer Billy Higgins once said. “Because the stuff that they feed kids now, they’ll have a bunch of idiots in the next millennium as far as art and culture is concerned.” I think he’s been more than proven wrong twenty-one plus years into this century. But what would you say to him if you had a chance to respond to that comment?

I won’t really say anything. I listen and I take note and I say, I hear you Maestro. I’m really lucky to to work with Charles Lloyd who had that very deep connection with Billy Higgins. He talks about Billy a lot. Hearing him talk about life and music, the things that are and the things that aren’t, I love that. Just soaking that up and really ruminating on it and and making sense of it for yourself. I think that’s one of the gifts of this music is that community and the voice of the elders. I think part of the responsibility of my generation, and really probably anybody’s generation, is to take those lessons that those elders have to say and make sense of them for yourself and bring them forward and try to do do them justice and consider them as you move forward.

Without getting too cynical there’s a lot about this time we live in that feels a bit like smoke and mirrors. That the focus has maybe shifted. It’s not necessarily about the quality, maybe it’s more about the quantity. Without being too judgmental or critical a lot of this stuff is not that great. So I guess what happens as a result of that might be speaking to what Maestro Higgins was talking about. You create a whole audience of viewers and listeners that don’t have that same bar of expectation of what something could be or should be or needs to be for it to be considered good. I hear him on that. I also agree with you that there is something about this about music and about art that is much bigger than the dialects of the language. It is human creativity and this actual need for people to express their joys and their sorrows in a creative way. That never dies.

*Gerald Clayton is the son of jazz musician/composer John Clayton and nephew of the late jazz musician Jeff Clayton.

Photo: Gerald Clayton (Photo by Ogata/Courtesy Blue Note Records)

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Porter, a two-time Grammy Award-winner and a nominee this year for All Rise, is finally able to be back on the road performing songs from that album. He’s performing at the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts on February 9th, The Soraya in Northridge on February 10th and will be in Brooklyn for his Annual Valentine’s Day Concert on February 12th. Then it’s back on the road for more stops across America before heading to Europe.

As Porter told UK Vibe he hears “Donny Hathaway, Nat King Cole, Bill Withers” and “the familiarity to Gospel music in the songs of someone like Ray Charles” in his own voice and music.

Late last month I spoke by phone with Porter lessons learned during the pandemic, giving jazz its due credit and how his football injury in 1990 shaped his destiny. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity.

I want to start by asking you about something you Tweeted on December 30th. You said “It’s important to reflect on all the positives that have happened this year and learn from the hardships and gain strength and knowledge to be better.” What have you learned since All Rise was released in the middle of the pandemic?

Ultimately, what is most important thinking about the legacy, but not the big word legacy. I mean legacy in the small word. I think what is it you’re leaving with the people that are next to you. Even legacy on a day-to-day basis. How did you make people feel? What did you do when you were you? Were you a solid person? Were you a cool person or were you generous or helpful for this kind of thing? This is a thing that I’m obsessed with.

Upon making the record I didn’t know that it would be the last time being around my brother. I didn’t know that was our last steak dinner or the last glass of wine or last conversations, last laughs. You know I think about the week of that record and I think where’s the good when you leave the room? In a way that is optimistic. In looking at my career I think of all of the music that way. So good. This is a document of who I am. And I think it speaks to a reasonably decent person.

How does that thinking influence how you present yourself?

I think the change is maybe, in me, a mental thing. I still want to give the audience and say to the audience these things that I’ve written. But in a way I want to see more importance. Music became so important to me during the pandemic. It really lifted my spirits. As Americans we’re like nothing can touch us, but we haven’t been tested. Once you’re tested and your spirit is low what is it that brings you up? For me music really was uplifting. Even some of my own songs I wrote for other people’s heartache I used it for myself. I think understanding the power of music and what it is and what it can be. I want to really give them something that really lifts their spirit or moves them emotionally. Maybe this thing that I do has become more important to me.

In order to accomplish that how important is it for you to either mix up the set list or finding ways of keeping things fresh for you if you have a more fixed set list?

I don’t have the set list. I am calling off the top of my head. There are messages that I want to say to every group that are probably a career-wide message for me. The optimism that I have about who I am as a person. So I’ve written some songs that speak to that and I want to say those things. No Love Dying, Liquid Spirit, Take Me To The Alley, these are messages that I want to say to every audience that I stand in front of. So there are some staples, but there are some other things that I mix and match. You kind of feel the feeling of the room. Once you get a feel for the audience after two or three songs, you kind of take them on this music journey and you’re a deejay of your own music.

I’m not always thinking about playing for them the latest thing that’s being played on the radio. Because that thing may not be the very message that I want to give to them. I do feel like I am a messenger of the optimism of love. At the same time this is a craft. I am a jazz singer that employs all of the other cousins of jazz. But but that’s less important to me than the message here.

As a jazz singer what is the best way for an artist who writes new material and also embraces older songs to widen his or her audience and to make audiences understand the value of this material?

I tell you, there’s a little there’s a bit of dishonesty going on because a lot of modern writers are hip-hop artists. They’re borrowing elements from 70s soul music, from jazz, but they don’t say that. I think if you give the respect where the respect is due it’ll even bring the listener back to the original source of some of these samples, right? I’m not a person who wants to diminish anybody’s talent. I definitely can’t diminish hip-hop. it’s something that I appreciate as well.

But I think if people gave a little bit more energy sometimes to the influence or even the real source of some of these things. I think of a song like Kanye West’s Jesus Walks. He’s pulling from a whole bunch of influences: the jazz community and the origins of the big choir that’s just playing in the background. I think it would cause the listener to dig deeper. Why don’t they announce this? Or why don’t they make a big deal out of this? Because it connects the generations. Right? It connects genres. I think if it would be a beautiful thing to connect Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter, Bob James, Hubert Laws. It would be awesome to connect all those foundational artists in jazz to this genre.

Let me ask you to go back in time thirty-two years. If you could go back to 1990 after your rotator cuff injury and when you and when you first started to sing in clubs in New York, what advice would you give the younger version of yourself?

To be patient with myself. I didn’t believe that the journey was valuable in my career. I thought that if I don’t get this thing right now it’s never going to happen. I didn’t know that some of the difficulties would bring me a lot of seasoning for my career. I the things that I want to say I’ve figured out by trial and error. I had some doubts about music in the world. This moment has passed me by. I just needed to have patience. I would tell myself to just hang in there and I did. I can’t say that I didn’t have self-doubt and insecurity about my journey. I was like do I stick with this music? it’s my biggest love. Do I just put this out and become a bean counter or whatever it is I needed to be?

I’m assuming you are glad you didn’t do that?

I’m glad I didn’t do it. I did a whole bunch of strange things and strange jobs to stay afloat. But I am glad that I kept my eye on music. There are people that can become jaded and angry because they see other people advancing and themselves not. So, yeah, I’m glad that I stayed in love with music.

For details on Gregory Porter’s Tour Schedule, please go here.

All photos of Gregory Porter by Erik Umphery/Courtesy Blue Note RecordS

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O’Farrill and I were talking about his new album, …dreaming of lions, his first for Blue Note Records. He is joined by The Afro Latin Jazz Ensemble for two works written for Malpaso Dance Company of Cuba. The album features two works O’Farrill composed: Despedida, inspired by a poem by Jorge Luis Borges and the title work which was inspired by Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea.

Tomorrow, October 13th, O’Farrill and the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra begin a series of performances in California.

The first concert on Wednesday is at Stanford. The rest of his itinerary includes shows at UC Davis on the 14th, UC Santa Barbara on the 15th, The Soraya at UC Northridge on the 16th and The Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts on October 17th.

We had a lively discussion about music, politics and legacies (he’s the son of legendary bandleader Chico O’Farrill and his sons, Zachary and Adam, are both making their own names as musicians.) What follows is nearly our entire conversation that has only been edited for length and clarity.

In a video for Malpaso Dance Company’s Dreaming of Lions, Fernando Saez Carvajal says “Music and dance are connected very much in Cuba to what we could consider cultural resistance.” What is your role, vis-a-vis this composition, in that cultural resistance? 

I think that anytime you do any kind of activity with Cuba, you’re certainly casting a vote for an examination of the relationship between the two countries. I’m not particularly communist and I’m not particularly this or that of the other team, but I am definitely up for engagement. I’m pro engagement. We have to deal with several realities.

We have to deal with the reality that Cuba exists, that they pose absolutely no threat whatsoever to anything by either ideology or safety. Yet we punish these people in a cruel and criminal nightmare because they happen to be communists. Well, of course, we are happy to do business with China. We’re happy to do business with Saudi Arabia, which has a horrifying track record of killing journalists. We’re happy to do business with or be comfortable with Russia, but we’re somehow penalizing Cuba in a way that is vicious and cruel. So again, I’m not making a political statement. I’m not making an ideological statement. I’m simply saying that we need to examine what’s really happening here. So doing art with Cuba is very much a statement. So it’s not an endorsement of a political ideology, but it is. It’s also the source of my blood. I’m Cuban. I’m Cuban Mexican. And so working with this dance company is very much something that feels sacred to me. It’s a sacred obligation. 

Do you think that the creation of music or any art is a political act? 

I think that breathing is a political act, I do. I think that if you’re dating, something is political. If you are ignoring something that’s political. If you don’t openly speak against things that you think are wrong, if you don’t openly endorse things that you think are right, if you just stay silent – you’re being political. So I feel like making art that’s purposeful and that supports a viewpoint is important.

I get criticized all the time because people think artists should stay away from politics and they should stay away from making political statements. I actually had an incident at Birdland in New York. I talked about the confusion in Washington and some audience members yelled out “Shut up” before I could say anything. And somebody at the bar got angry. Of course, they have a right to speak and before I knew it there was kind of a yelling match going on while the band was playing. Well, I got offstage and was thanking the the club manager for quieting this dispute. And he said to me, “Mr O’Farrill, you should go in the dressing room because these people are outside doing the Nazi salute and saying, ‘Heil Hitler.'” Things have gotten to a point where by not actively speaking out against this kind of rhetoric you are actively supporting polarization. We need to speak clearly and cleanly to the idea that there is a lot of wrong in our society. And I think the job of the artist is, whether you write openly political music or not, the job of the artist is to accurately reflect the state of things in our world. 

For a moment let’s leave politics behind and talk about the record. The two pieces that are on your album were composed for dance. What considerations did you have in writing this music knowing that it was going to be danced to and not just listened to? 

Oh, it’s such a thrill to work with dancers and choreographers. The idea of setting music to a narrative has always been thrilling to me. The idea of setting it to a visual narrative, to a specific sequence of events and a visual, has radicalized the way I approach music. Meaning, I no longer make composition just abstract state. Even if I don’t have a narrative I think visually. I think architecturally when I write music. I really try to see movement even if it’s not for dance. That’s really changed my approach to making music. If I sit down to compose I see things. I see movement. I see shapes. And that kind of opens up a lot of possibilities for me as a composer. 

What do you think the difference has been in the end result of what you’ve written? 

I always appeal to the idea that you should write the things that interest you with the curiosity that you have. And so I think that hopefully, because I’m interested and curious about the process and the sounds that are coming out of my brain, people will also find interesting the structures and the drawings, if you will, that come out of my music. If you’re an honest artist you’ll compose or write what’s compelling to you. And if you do that, then you’re being honest to your craft. Hopefully people will go on that journey. You can make music to placate, you can make music to monetize, or you can make music because you’re curious about how this sounds or that works. When you do that there are people who are adventurous who will go with you on that adventure. Maybe not the vast majority of the listening public, but I still feel like your job is to take people on a journey and that’s sacred work. 

These compositions debuted approximately five or six years ago. When it came time to recording this album did you make any adjustments, either in composition or arrangement, and if you did, why? 

I opened it up to more improvisational settings because that’s the nature of jazz, and that’s the nature of who I am. I’m really an improviser and my musicians are improvisers. So we did open up some of the pieces, but they’re basically the same. In fact, I think they were greatly enhanced by the improvisational aspect. The structures of the pieces are, except for the addition of improvisational sections, exactly as we performed them with the dance company. 

La Llorona is one of the most haunting pieces I’ve heard in a while.

Thank you. To have that piece was very powerful to me. I’m very socially and politically active and I deal a lot with victims of police killing. I’ve interacted a lot with with mothers who have their children, their sons’ lives, taken from them. That was the guiding principle in that piece. I was thinking directly about women who lost their children to violence.

I know that Despedida has farewells at its theme. Given what the world has gone through in the last 18 months, do you think this work has added resonance now? 

Yes, I do. And it’s funny because sometimes I’ll write a work that’s premature. For instance, I wrote Four Questions with Cornel West and could not have told you that it would come out during Black Lives Matter. I could not have predicted that. And I could not have predicted that Despedida would come out during this horrifying year of fear. And it’s been a horrifying year.

I was just lamenting to my wife that we’ve lost so many heroes; the people, musicians that I adored and loved and looked up to and just assumed would be there forever. Our community was diminished greatly by the pandemic and just by the natural aging process. A lot of our musicians are aging and dying.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens in two, three, five years from now and how everybody’s journey through this time influences how they choose to express themselves, particularly artists. 

I agree. I love the idea of art being journalism. I think we’re going to be thinking about this a lot for years to come and the art that was made during this time period is going to be a lot about who we are and what we think. 

You tackle two legends in this work with Borges and Hemingway. When you’re working with well-known works by these established writers as the inspiration for what you’re doing, how long are the shadows cast by these two men and their works on you? 

Well, I mean, particularly with the Hemingway, I read that when I was a kid and for some reason it really resonated with me. I think it was because I was fairly young in this country. I had just come maybe three or five years earlier and I didn’t really quite feel like I fit in. One of the themes in the Hemingway work is really about alienation. He’s getting old, he’s passing. You know, he’s no longer useful. He gets the biggest fish of his life , but he can’t show it off because the shark ate it and he just stays wistful for another time.

All those things were really prevalent to me when I was a kid. I didn’t quite understand why I didn’t fit it. I didn’t quite understand why I was other. And so that book really hit hard. And so writing this work the themes that Hemingway deals with, I think are really germane to my life, my feelings when I was young – even now. And so the the impact that that literature had on me, you know, is measurable. And I pray that it’s a measure of justice to that. 

You described yourself as an other. There’s been a lot of movement in the last year-and-a-half or two years about being more and having more inclusion in the arts. It seems to me that every group is being included except the Latino community – inclusion hasn’t made its way there yet. What are your thoughts are about where we are and what it might take for that inclusion to finally reach the Latino community. 

There’s an ancient tale of woe between the Americas and the Latin America that is seen in such a subservient way by the North American and Anglo Americans. And I don’t understand it myself because, quite frankly, I think our cuisine is better. I think our music is better. But you know, that’s just me as I’m partial to that.

A lot of the problems that caused the Great Migration were also birthed by American interests. Let’s face it, we had our hands in a lot of mess that has resulted in people leaving their homes. Let’s not talk about El Salvador, let’s not talk about Nicaragua, let’s not talk about Panama. Let’s not talk about puppet dictatorships that we helped to politically aid. There are a lot of things that we’ve caused that have brought great migration to the North.

Latinos are not wholly vested. We’re not invited to the cultural table in the way that I think we merit, you know? But that’s okay. I’m not a dominant culture in this nation and I understand that. I may not want to be. Maybe I like being outside looking in, you know, there’s less responsibility in that. But I think it’s wrong.

I think that Latino culture is front and center in so many ways. We are purveyors of great food and dance and music and culture in this nation. Whether or not we’re accorded the credentials that mainstream society accords itself is secondary. We’re still going to prevail. We’re still going to do the work that we do at the highest level that we do. And you know, being on Blue Note, it’s such a huge honor to me because there’s been so few Latinos on Blue Note. Blue Note is the iconic label of jazz, it’s not just one, it’s the iconic label of jazz and I’m really proud to represent my people. 

There was a story in the New York Times about 10 years ago, and you said at that time that you were able to let go of many ghosts of the past 10 years. What role, if any, do those ghosts play in your music and do you feel their presence in the work you’re doing now or even on this album?

If I’m not mistaken, I was referring to my father’s work and the different Latino artists that have come before me. The older I get the more I realize I don’t really want to lose touch with Machito and Tito Puente and Tito Rodriguez. I am more in love with that music than ever. And I think that the stigma that I felt then was that we were expected to wave maracas and wear ruffled shirts and that somehow would lessen us. You know what? I’m proud of those maracas, I’m proud of those ruffled shirts. I’m proud of the work that these legendary heroes are part of.

The fact the Machito came to Harlem, saw Cab Calloway and Count Basie and said, I think I can do that. I’m proud of the fact that we’re innovators and we’re crazy enough to think that we can create music that’s a hybrid of so many things. So I think I may have changed my stance on that. I think I may actually feel now that I don’t want to exercise those ghosts, I’m proud of them.

The other day we did a concert on the same bill with Eddie Palmieri – that’s just about as heavy as it gets. And I got the privilege of sitting with him for half an hour in his dressing room and just shooting the breeze. But I realize that man had such a huge intellect and thinks so deeply about his music, who he is and where he’s from. It’s amazing to me that I come from such a beautiful musical legacy.

As do your sons, of course, who are who are musicians in their own right. What kind of guidance can you give them in navigating that relationship between the past and still keeping an eye on the future? 

I’ve told them to always be proud of their father and their grandfather and their roots. I’ve taken them to Cuba. One of the first things I did was as soon as they were salient, I took them to Cuba to understand where they came from. I think it’s really important. I’ve told them whatever music they end up playing to be aware that their aesthetic was shaped by the music that they heard me play and they know their grandfather. Whether they’re playing modern jazz or Hip-Hop or whatever direction they go, they should really know and be proud of where they come from.

I’m also giving them some career advice. A freelance artist is a really harsh reality. So I told them don’t confuse your art with your identity, your human being. Your art stems from your humanity. But sometimes it’s so hard to make a living. You’re so aware of criticism and so aware of of the weight of making art that you can really let it eat you up.

I think the trick to all of this is to love life, to love friendships, to love the humanity of being here now, and that your art should spring from that. Both of my sons are noble, decent human beings with big, huge hearts. That makes me proud. 

And it doesn’t hurt that they’re talented on top of it.

Well, I hope they’ll come visit us where we get older. 

One more one more question for you, Arturo. Hemingway writes in The Old Man in the Sea, “Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky, but I would rather be exact then when luck comes you’re ready.” What’s your view of that idea and how do you approach every new day? 

Every new day, this is true – it is not just rhetoric, I really spend a lot of time being introspective trying to figure out where I am fraudulent, where I am self-congratulatory, where I am not humble, where I’m hurting other people. I really do. I spend an awful lot of time thinking exactly about how I can be a better person. I actually do that.

It’s a little bit like the Five Agreements. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Five Agreements. Being true to your word, being as integral as you can be, integrity is really important, being honest.

That stuff is exact. And I really firmly believe that if if you do that kind of work, if you try hard to be exact and live with integrity, then you will be much richer. 

Main Photo by Laura Mariet (Courtesy Unlimited Myles)

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