One of South African writer/director Lara Foot’s earliest memories of being creative is of staying up late after seeing a movie and rewriting the story in her mind to have a happier, or at least a better, ending. That instinct for storytelling at such a young age has no doubt served Foot well as she has had a remarkably successful career in the theater.

This week her adaptation of the Booker Prize-winning novel Life & Times of Michael K, written by JM Coetzee, opens at The Wallis in Beverly Hills on November 21st. She uses only the first half of Coetzee’s story of a young man’s journey through his war-torn country to return his mother to her home before she dies. Michael K must come to grips with his mother’s imminent passing and find a place for himself in this dystopian world.

Rather than a traditional play, Foot collaborated with Cape Town-based Handspring Puppet Company to create a different way of telling this story through puppets.

Foot is the head of Cape Town’s Baxter Theater. She has written multiple plays and directed even more. But Life & Times of Michael K is special to her. I learned this when speaking with her recently about the play, her instinct for storytelling and whether or not we can rewrite our own story to have a happier ending in our troubled times.

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: I love the idea that as a young girl that you would stay up trying to rewrite a better or happier ending for the movies you saw and wouldn’t be satisfied until you figured out how to do so. That had to allow you develop a great storytelling skill. How does that way of thinking still live within you? Not just with the work that you do, but how you live your life? 

I’m fascinated by biography and what you bring with you. What you bring as an actor to the stage, how you relate to other people, how you relate to family, are essentially biographies. Who you are. And when biographies meet, then drama happens. I would rewrite movies in my head from when I was probably 4 or 5. Frame by frame. Not only for happy endings, but also because sometimes I didn’t find them credible. So that is who I am. How we change, how we are affected by our context, our politics, all that might change your path – which fascinates me. 

Which would make Life & Times of Michael K a perfect story for you, because the protagonist is trying to figure out his place in the world and how to change his story, isn’t he?

Yes. I mean, he goes on a journey through this dystopian war-torn country. He works his way through this country as a refugee, which, of course, resonates worldwide. And really trying to find his freedom or a semblance of freedom. So not having to live under somebody else’s rules on either side of the fence and find a little piece of land where you can live and grow vegetables. So this is searching for his purpose; the place we can live, finding his own freedom in this war-torn country. 

When you read through the book, you must have been a little bit surprised when you came across a passage that says “Your past does not define your future. You have the power to rewrite your story.” It’s as if he tapped right into what you’ve been thinking since your youth?

I didn’t think of it in that way, but you’re absolutely right. When I started adapting it, it’s a thin book. It’s not even probably 200 pages, if that. I thought I’d do it quite quickly. I knew what I wanted to do with it. It took me so long because these layers of philosophy and so much can happen within sort of five or six lines. What to keep and what to let go of was really difficult because of the denseness of his thinking.

Coetzee wrote about his lead character in the book, “He did not seem to have a belief or did not seem to have a belief regarding help. Perhaps I am the stony ground, he thought.” How does a description like that inform how you go about adapting and creating this work and bringing this life to the stage? 

That’s the magic of a puppet – especially a puppet carved by Adrian Kohler [of Handspring Puppet Company]. You can imbue a puppet with philosophy in a different way to say how an actor would have to deliver those lines on stage. It might be not that credible or self-conscious from an actor, but when it’s spoken through a puppet, the audience leans forward and starts to imagine and engage in these thoughts in a very different way. It’s almost like the landscape of Coetzee is etched into the puppet and he into the landscape.

What is the art of getting that total expression of a character through the combination of the puppets and the actors who bring that character to life?

The most important thing is breath. So those three puppeteers on Michael K have to breathe pretty much at exactly the same time so that they work in unison. You know, I’m a theater director. I’m not a puppet director. Well, maybe I am now, but I wasn’t. I have puppeteers that are also very good actors and there’s a sense of imbuing the puppet with real feeling and character. So it takes some time.

That was a big challenge for me when I was directing it because a scene that could take me half an hour to create on stage with actors might take a full day to create with the puppet. So it’s very painstaking in terms of how detailed the movement is. Then the puppeteers understanding the body of the puppet like where do they hold weight and where do you hold feeling in your body. There’s a lot of synergy and working together, but always breath because a puppet is only alive when it’s breathing. Of course, it’s the puppeteers that breathe life into the puppet. As you let go of the puppet, it’s dead. It doesn’t live. 

I read an interview that Coetzee gave in 1983 about Life & Times of Michael K. He said about his novel, “It didn’t turn out to be a book about becoming, which might have required that K have the ability to adapt more of what we usually call intelligence. But about being, which merely entailed that K go on being himself, despite everything.” It feels like there’s a good lesson to be learned in that basic approach.

It’s really about essence, you know, and how little one needs to survive. Really cutting through the greed and politics that’s out there. The darkness kind of leaning into the darkness as well, which Coetzee always does. But I think in our play it’s the way we hold the darkness that gives us a little glimmers of hope around humanity – although it’s hard to find these things.

In an interview that gave Sarafina Magazine in 2016 you said you “believe very much in storytelling as a means to healing, as a means to integration, and I suppose some sense of a healthy society in the future.” One could argue that the society that you grew up in and came out of certainly required healing. You could also argue that the society we live in now – and we’re having this conversation the day after the presidential election in the United States – that we’re maybe globally reaching some really unhealthy moments. What do you see as your main priority in a world on fire, to develop and present stories that can do precisely the healing you talked about?

We go back to biography. I’m telling you stories. We had the Truth [and Reconcilliation] Commission [in South Africa] after democracy. It was an extraordinary thing. There’s some criticism of it. But the ability to come and tell your story and also to look into the eyes of your perpetrator, that’s empathy. That’s empathy from the storyteller. It’s one thing to say I will forgive, but, you know, you can’t really forgive. It’s not in your power to forgive and everything will go away. But you can have empathy. 

I’ve talked with some academics about maybe finding a different voice for the future where we combine academic research with storytelling in a way. That we try and articulate things differently because we have so many academics doing research papers that might be on violence or crime, war or rape. Then we as artists to do plays about that. They’re frustrated that the world is not changing and we’re frustrated that the world is not changing. Maybe there’s another way to articulate what we feel.

Michael K cuts ties with the world. He doesn’t want to deal with what the world has become, particularly after the death of his mother. There are a lot of people who don’t want to deal with the world now. They don’t vote as in yesterday because the voting [numbers were] down considerably in this country or they don’t want to worry about it because it doesn’t affect them personally. Do you think there is an additional layer of topicality that this story is going to have now, particularly in the United States, that it might not have had the election gone a different way?

I would think so. When we started [the play] the war in Ukraine just started. That resonated when we came on the stage, especially internationally. And something else will resonate now, that’s for sure. Just in terms of our group, who’s telling the story, that’s going to be interesting, I think. This search for freedom…There’s slogans from the Democratic campaign that you hear in the play, not because we wrote them in. It’s just this search for freedom, although he doesn’t necessarily use the word freedom. It’s more a concept around freedom. Free from all the gatekeepers. Free from being a servant or being told what to do by somebody, anybody. [Michael K] was judged so badly when he was a child for having this hairlip that he has to find a freedom from that cruelty.

Given everything we are facing down as we near the start of 2025, how do you think we can collectively rewrite the plot of our lives right now and come up with a happier ending than it appears we’re facing as a possibility right now? Can an artist, can the arts, help us get there?

One has to pray to whoever you pray to for empathy. Only when you put yourself in someone else’s shoes can you feel the cruelty all round. Until people can see themselves in others. It’s a miracle what happened in South Africa, you know, absolute miracle. It wasn’t just Mandela. Somehow there was a bigger sensibility or a vision. Such an extraordinary vision of what hope looked like, of what the possibilities looked like. It wasn’t just verbalized. It wasn’t just a slogan, but put into practice. Thought through.

We’ve still got major issues with poverty. But there was a philosophy that everyone worked towards and it was about goodness. It wasn’t about the other. It wasn’t about division. It was about coming together.

When I first saw plays at the Market Theater when I was 17, I didn’t know what was going on in our country. I saw these plays and I was like, okay, I’m a part of it. I’m part of making something better. So I think that it does do that.

To watch the full interview with Lara Foot, please go here.

Life & Times of Michael K runs November 21st – November 24th at The Wallis. For tickets and more information, please go here.

Main Photo: Craig Leo and Carlo Daniels in Life & Times of Michael K (Courtesy The Wallis)

The post Lara Foot Brings “Life & Times of Michael K” to Life on Stage appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

It’s a busy time for composer/pianist Marc-André Hamelin. On February 2nd his album New Piano Works was released. It was Hamelin’s first recording of his own compositions since 2010’s Études. Hyperion Records, his label, was acquired and the floodgates of his dozens of releases on Hyperion were suddenly available for streaming. It is, as Hamelin says, a veritable “treasure trove of recordings.”

This weekend he joins the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra for performances on March 2nd at The Wallis in Beverly Hills and a March 3rd performance at Zipper Hall at the Colburn School in downtown Los Angeles. Hamelin will be performing Nadia Boulanger’s Three Pieces for Cello and Piano and César Franck’s Piano Quintet in F Minor.

I last spoke with Hamelin in 2019. His new album (one of my selections for New In Music This Week: February 2nd) was part of our conversation as were his concerts. It also served as an opportunity to see how his point-of-view may, or may not, have changed in that time.

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

Q: You’re going to be playing two pieces in these concerts with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. One of them is Franck’s Piano Quintet in F minor. That’s a work you recorded in 2016. How much does the personality and the musicianship of any given other four musicians make a difference in the end result of this, or any other piece of music that you’re performing? 

It does. But the fun, I think, of getting with a new group that you haven’t played with before, is to just to discover each other’s musicianship and finding common ground. Also, suggesting differences and new ways of doing things that they might not have thought of. It’s an area that’s very, very rich in surprises and possibilities. That goes for any piece in the repertoire, really.

With all five musicians in a quintet, or four in a quartet, is there any place to hide? 

Maybe small ones. But especially with a work that’s so well known as the Franck Quintet. It’s really one of the big five along with the Brahms, Schumann, Dvorak and Shostakovich. We hear it so often that people know how it goes, or at least most of them do. So, in that sense, there is little room to hide and for mistakes. In a lesser known work, belonging to the byways of the repertoire, then maybe, since the piece is not heard very often, perhaps it’s more acceptable to be faulty. It will matter a lot less, I guess. Of course, we always strive for as much perfection as possible. Or at least, fidelity to the composer’s thought.

Apropos of that statement, do you feel like works are museum pieces and should be slave to what the composer’s thoughts were? Or is there room for this music to live and breathe and have its own life in 2024 versus the life it had when it was composed?

There’s several ways of thinking about this. On one hand, being a composer myself, I don’t pretend to have all the answers. Nobody does. But being a composer allows you to feel a little closer to the works you perform and especially how they were created. Sometimes you can see the process. I have a pretty good idea of how I want my pieces to go, but there is so much you can do in the way of notation to convey that. You have to leave something to the performer’s individual views or ways of understanding musical notation.

On the other hand, there are several different types of composers. There are composers who will allow great variations of interpretation. For example, I can think of Grieg, who once said to someone this is not really the way I saw it, but don’t change anything, I love individuality. There are other composers who are thankful for any performance, even though it may fall short of their expectations. There’s lots of nuances within the individual composer’s appreciations and that’s what makes the whole world richer.

When we spoke five years ago, you mentioned that you, “Have the luxury, at this point in my career, to be playing, without exception, pieces that I really love.” How do you think your perspective on what those pieces are has shifted since then?

It’s pretty much the same, actually. I keep introducing favorites. Sometimes I come back to old ones because it’s always very healthy and also very fascinating to revisit things that you haven’t played for quite a few years. It’s always really startling. I see sometimes how much they have changed without you doing a single thing. In the meantime, you have changed yourself. Therefore, your approach has changed. When I play these pieces for myself, after not having played them for many, many years, they will be completely different. That’s only because of my personal evolution and, hopefully, my increased understanding of what the composer wants.

Do you find that there are pieces that intimidate you? 

I’m a little less inclined – quite a bit less inclined – these days to play the big virtuosic things. I’m much more interested in meaningful communication at this point rather than showing myself off on stage. That, to me, is really not very satisfying. A recital is really a one-to-one act of communication. An offering, an act of sharing with the audience. I’m always thinking every single second of the audience, rather than myself. Because what else am I doing this for? I just really adore sharing discoveries and perhaps new ways of doing things that people already don’t. 

Is there something that you think is pivotal to communicate to an audience now that perhaps reflects either who you are as a person right now or the times that we’re living in?

I really concentrate on the music. Generally a concert really should be, in the best of times, abstracted from whatever else is happening in the world. However, I will say this though. Maybe two or three days after the 2016 election I was giving an all-Mozart concert at the 92nd Street Y in New York. So many people at the end told me, thank you. We needed that. And I won’t say any more.

New Piano Works is your first album of material you’ve composed to be released since Études in 2010. Why this work and why now?

It’s really more for practical reasons than anything. I’ve been very fortunate in having been published by Edition Peters who are one of the major publishers. They originally solicited me, and the first thing they published with it was this volume of 12 études which I recorded along the same time. Since then I published a number of piano pieces which hadn’t been recorded. So it’s basically a collection of almost everything that I’ve written for piano since then.

It’s sort of a dull reason, but, I’ve really come to realize very quickly that even if you publish a score and make the music available, the music is going to be a lot more appreciated and more pianists are going to go to it if they can hear it first. That’s why I recorded these things. 

The album opens with Variations on a Theme of Paganini, a piece most concertgoers or classical music fans have heard for years. How do you approach something that is as familiar as that for a transcription versus something that an audience may not know as well?

It was really a fun thing to do and I instinctively chose the theme simply because it’s one of those things which is easy to elaborate on. I mean, the structure is very simple. It’s very easy to remember and you can riff on it in just a gazillion different ways. A piece like that, for me, is an expression of freedom in a sense. I couldn’t resist having fun and quoting different composers. I’m sure you heard, variation seven I think it is, there’s a passage and one of the variations in the Beethoven Sonata, opus 109, it’s in E major. I transposed it to A minor and for 16 bars, it’s already a Paganini variation. I didn’t have to change anything. That was a lot of fun. When I came across this little bit I thought, I can’t not use this. This is too good. And it happens to be quite funny.

Do you, as a composer, have any conversations with you as a pianist in terms of what is truly possible to play versus what you want to express in the notes themselves?

At the beginning when I started to write, I just wrote whatever I wanted. Whatever I heard, without really too much concession to pianistic comfort. I was wondering why nobody was playing my things. Even I had trouble and I wrote them. So over the years, as I gained experience, I was able to make things sound the way I wanted without them being so difficult. But I’ll always carry that reputation of my things being almost unplayable. But I can assure you that there’s a lot that I wrote which is perfectly approachable. 

Are there other ways in which you feel you have evolved as a composer? 

I think that my harmonic system, such as it is, because I’ve never tried to explain it, really hasn’t changed that much. I think if anything has changed, I think I’ve gotten to think more about expressing pure music than thinking in pianistic terms. 

Your Hyperion Recordings now available for streaming. Do you feel this new way of distributing music, however challenging it might be economically for a performing artists like yourself, balances out with this newfound exposure that people can suddenly have to countless recordings of yours?

I think exposure is really the priority here. We should be thankful for that. A lot of people, over the last few years, have complained to me, we can’t find you on Spotify. We can find your early recordings on other labels. Hyperion resisted for the longest time and purely for financial reasons. But now that they’ve been bought by a large corporation, the justification is there. I think people are just so pleased as punch that Hyperion is finally being heard. The catalog is a golden treasure trove of discoveries and wonderful performances.

What do you think the role is of a transcription in allowing listeners new ways of hearing works that they’re familiar with, or new ways of hearing music that they’re not familiar with, for that matter?

In many cases, it’s about expanding the repertoire. A lot of solo instrumentalists are envious of something like the Franck Violin Sonata and they want to play it. So there are arrangements for cello, for flute and other solo instruments as well. I’ve always been fascinated by composer’s views of other composers; appreciations of other composers. I think really a transcription is just another way of expressing that. It’s paying tribute, let’s say. You think of what Busoni did with the Bach Chaconne from the D minor Partita. He really built a wonderful cathedral of sound. There are some people who don’t like the transcription, but I personally view it as a tremendous act of reverence for a composer.

Amongst my favorite transcriptions are Liszt’s transcriptions of Wagner. I think those are really interesting because we’re so used to his big, huge orchestral arrangements. To have it pared down to one instrument, I find it endlessly fascinating and a different way of hearing Wagner. 

The only ones that I’ve played are the Liebestod (from Tristan und Isolde) and also the Tannhauser Overture. But that particular one, I don’t like pianistically. It’s in E major and it feels, under the fingers, like completely the wrong key. 

It’s interesting you say that because I spent a little bit of time over the years with Stephen Sondheim. He and I were talking once about The Ballad of Sweeney Todd. He said it’s published in F minor, but it sounds so much better in F-sharp minor. I went to my piano at home and played it. He was right. It’s shocking how even a half-step difference can have such profound effects on a piece of music.

Keys are a very important. They have personalities. They really do. Gerald Moore, the famous pianist, expresses that very, very eloquently. He guards against sometimes indulging transposition – a singer’s transposing. Because you can stray too far from the original mood of the song.

Liszt is quoted as having said, “My piano is to me what a ship is to the sailor. It is the intimate, personal depository of everything that’s stirred wildly in my brain during the most impassioned days of my youth. It was there that all my wishes, all my dreams, all my joys and all my sorrows lay.” What is your piano to you?

An extension of my thought. An instrument of communication and sharing and joy.

To watch the full interview with Marc-André Hamelin, please go here.

All photos of Marc-André Hamelin (Photo by Sim Cannety Clarke/Courtesy Colbert Artists Management)

The post Marc-André Hamelin: A Franck Conversation About His Music appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

But it didn’t to Mizrahi. Fashion was the surprise, music was the first love.

On Saturday Mizrahi will be making his Los Angeles-area singing debut at The Wallis. So what better time to talk to the perfectly frank Mizrahi to discuss his passion for music, the songs and singers that inspire him and the place where fashion and music overlap.

What follows are excerpts from our conversation. To see the full interview, please go to our YouTube channel. And I recommend you do. Everything he says is even better when you hear his voice!

But before we get started…a little of the musical stylings of Isaac Mizrahi.

I saw an interview that you did before you started performing at the Carlyle and you said that the eighth grade version of you would have been very surprised that you went into fashion and would have assumed that you would have gone into music. What would that eighth grader think of you performing at venues like the Cafe Carlyle, somewhere in Beverly Hills or around the world?

I think that the eighth grader would have been way less surprised, but also extremely, extremely proud and happy. What I love is that I’ve lived this incredible life which kind of informs my stage presence, you know? I mean, even when I’m acting. I just got through on Broadway as Amos Hart in Chicago. When I’m actually playing a character that is really informed by the past like 35 years of my life pursuing something so fervently and doing a lot.

I do a lot, you know, And at the same time that I was making these clothes, I was I was still performing with my band and working with Ben Waltzer and doing these small gigs. Now it’s kind of taking center stage in my life.

There was a time when I thought I had kind of chosen the wrong path. I really mean it. Why did I do that fashion thing when it makes me so happy to be on stage and to be performing? I mean, fashion makes me happy, but in a completely different way. It’s the damage control side of me. I like being this this person who runs after people and re-ties their bows better, you know. So that’s sort of what that’s about. And I still do it. Let’s face it, I do have a really big fashion business and I’m very pleased about that. 

As you’re talking the idea of you playing Amos Hart is rather ironic to me. A man who isn’t visible, who isn’t being seen. That seems like it is exactly the polar opposite of you.

There is a part of that I can so relate to. You know, I don’t care who you are. I don’t care how flamboyant you are, how sort of like beautiful you are. There is a side of you that always feels not seen. That is what I tapped into.

You’re quoted as saying “I don’t like people to feel completely described by the clothes they wear of mine. I want them to feel that they’re describing themselves.” What can we learn about you from the songs you choose to perform and the way you choose to perform them?

The funny thing is this is going to sound like a trite answer to such a smart question. I feel like the songs choose me, you know, the way clothes choose you or the way a pastry chooses you when you walk into a bakery. The thing just calls out and you look at it, you go, I must eat that, you know? It’s the same way.

There are certain things that I feel really comfortable wearing because I feel like they fit well and there are certain songs that are just begging to be done by me. It’s really a very mysterious and emotional process by which you pick songs. At the end of the day, you know, when you’ve rehearsed it and put it together and it’s in the show, it makes a lot of sense.

There’s one thing I love about the press release that came out for the show at the Wallis, because it says you’ll be you’ll be performing soon-to-be classic songs. How do you define what a soon-to-be classic song is?

To me Billie Eilish is a genius, right? So if she writes something, it is soon-to-be classic, you know? You know what else is soon-to-be classic? Well, you’ll see. I don’t want to spoil stuff. 

I just wanted to get a definition of what soon-to-be classic is.

Some songs that may in the past have been considered silly fluff which I absolutely think are not silly fluff and I absolutely adore. Like my opening number, which at the Annenberg will probably be I’ll Plant My Own Tree from Valley of the Dolls. It’s this amazing arrangement that we killed ourselves over. I feel like maybe that’s not considered a classic, but soon-to-be considered classic after you hear my cover of it. And darling, you might hate it, so maybe it won’t be classic. That’s why I say perhaps soon-to-be classic.

Your Instagram account has a couple of photographs of encounters you had with Stephen Sondheim. His music is is apparently going to be part of your show. What do you remember most about your encounters with Steve? 

His is a kind of resonance in our backgrounds. He’s a native New Yorker and so am I, so there’s this kind of similarity in the way we see the world. There’s a similarity in our senses of humor. His wicked, wicked sense of humor. And I look up to him. Of course, everybody looks up to him.

I went to the revival of Merrily We Roll Along and I just cried for the entire two-and-a-half hours. I was just sobbing through the whole thing because there’s a way that he has of looking at the world that I always aspire to. There has never been a greater teacher to me in terms of, not necessarily how I look at musical theater, but just the way I look at life.

I groomed myself to be like a sort of a living, breathing Stephen Sondheim character. I can’t drink as much as all that because I’m allergic to it or something. But that’s the only thing about me that is not like typically Sondheim in, you know, not just in terms of the music that I do or my love of musical theater or something, but as an adult person. 

You don’t just have the perspective as a singer with Stephen Sondheim’s music. You have the perspective of having directed A Little Night Music in 2010 [at The Opera Theatre of St. Louis]. How does the director who had that experience influence the singer who now performs the songs?

Knowing Steve and really knowing this person for a very long time, he didn’t really regard singer’s voices to be the greatest things. He loved a good singer. Let’s face it. He loved Barbara Cook. He loved people who could really sing and produce a sound. But I think he valued more people who could tell stories like Beth Howland [the original “Amy” in Company]. He adored Beth Howland. He adored Barbara Barrie [the original “Sarah” in Company]. These are not necessarily people you would cast for their singing voices. He loved the way [Elaine] Stritch could sing.

I was supposed to have [Stritch] on my show. And they said, if you want to do a pre-interview with her the only time she could do it is 3:00 in the morning because she’s like this big insomniac. So I called her at 3:00 morning because I am, too. 

She said, Oh, I’m such a great raconteur, you know, blah, blah. And I thought, No, darling. I said you are a great musician. Kristin Chenoweth is amazing and she can produce almost an operatic sound. It’s an incredible instrument. And I know Sondheim adored the way she sang. But to me they are equals as musicians. Kristin Chenoweth and Elaine Stritch were the same to me.

What do you see as as what fashion and music have in common?

Clothing is a lot about styling, you know, put juxtaposing things next to each other that are extremely interesting that have not been done before. So I’m really good at arranging the song in the way that I want it to be presented and then perceived. But more than that, darling, don’t bother me if you’re going to do the song in exactly the same way or worse than the way the person who did it. I give it my way of making it something a little to me better, or at least better from my perspective. 

You have your riffs and and your patter that you bring into your concerts. I love the whole idea that you said in one of the clips on your Instagram page that when you get older you do not get better looking. 

It’s just the truth. 

What is your relationship to getting older? 

This is part of what I’m going to be talking about in this particular show. I’ve turned some kind of crazy corner on my whole life. I look at pictures and I’m reading Instagram and there’s like 17 complimentary comments. There’s one hateful thing that somebody says and I’ve started to like them. I started to like the haters almost more than I like the likers. It’s like liking the haters. I love these pictures of myself where I look like a fat old Jew. I love it. I recommend these pictures of me as a fat old queen.

It’s also nice to take the hate away from the haters, too, isn’t it?

By going “Darlings, I never meant for you to like me.” I adore the controversy. Yes.

You’ve directed a production of Peter and the Wolf, you’re singing around the world, you’ve directed opera, you’ve designed clothes for opera. Are you spending the next chapter of your life trying to prove F. Scott Fitzgerald wrong that there are truly second and third acts in American life? 

Yes. The answer is very simple. One of the things that Steve used to say to me all the time, he’s like, “Oh, darling, you’re a polymath.” And I thought he was like Oh, you’re such a polymath, right? That means you suck at everything, whereas he is this great master.

By the way, Stephen Sondheim and Mark Morris, my friends. Go figure that out. They do one unbelievably exquisite thing. That’s all they do, right? Steve just wrote those words and that incredible music and made those shows. Mark just makes those masterful poetic dances. That’s all he does. Here I am doing cooking videos and I can’t not be that person. Now I’m kind of thinking of those words of Steve going, “Oh, you’re such a polymath.” And I think he really meant it as a compliment.

It must be nice to have that gift from Steve now that he’s no longer here.

It is. It really, really is. At least in my fantasy, by the way.

To see the full interview with Isaac Mizrahi, please go here.

Main Photo: Isaac Mizrahi (©David Andrako/Courtesy The Wallis)

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The Tony Award experience is a lofty one…particulalry when you win one. Jessie Mueller won her Tony Award for her portrayal of Carole King in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical. That was Mueller’s fourth Broadway show and her second Tony nomination.

She had previously been nominated for Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical for her turn as Melinda Wells in the 2011 revival of On a Clear Day You Can See Forever.

She’s received two additional Tony Award nominations for her performances as Jenna in the musical Waitress and as Julie Jordan in the 2018 revival of Carousel. Most recently she appeared on Broadway in the play The Minutes by Tracy Letts. Not bad for someone who got their start singing The Wiggly Worm in a school production.

When Mueller takes to the stage of The Wallis in Beverly Hills on June 16th and The Smith Center in Las Vegas on June 17th with Seth Rudetsky, she’ll have plenty to talk about and to sing. I spoke with Mueller last week about various aspects of her career, new musicals on the horizon and finding a way to accept all that she’s accomplished. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview (which does include some singing), please go to our YouTube channel.

17 years ago when you were playing Lady Mortimer in Henry IV, a character that doesn’t have any printed lines. A character that only sings in Welsh that nobody can understand. What were your thoughts then about what your career might be from that moment and how much does your career look like what you expected or hoped it might be? 

That was 17 years ago. I’m still stuck on that. So I was only four. [She laughs.] I mean, it’s incredible. That is wild. 17 years. That is so fun that you brought that up. My experience of that show, I remember, because I got to do it at Chicago Shakespeare Theater in Chicago. And then we got to do it at the RSC [Royal Shakespeare Company] in Stratford-upon-Avon. They were doing a festival of the whole [Shakespeare] canon and our show was chosen to represent the Henry IVs. 

It was just a magical experience for me personally. I remember feeling like I was starting to be treated like a real adult actor, because there were some folks in the cast that I knew because my parents are actors in Chicago. I’d seen them doing shows growing up, but I felt like everyone was treating me like a peer. I wasn’t the little kid of the actors, friends or whatever. 

I remember that really being a moment for me about thinking maybe I’m really doing this. But as far as what was in my mind of where my career might go, nowhere near what has occurred. I don’t think I could have imagined it. I don’t think I had that kind of scope. My model had sort of been a career in Chicago, which is what I was after. I wanted to be a working actor. Sometimes life takes you in different directions. It certainly did for me.

I know that Into the Woods has been published as your favorite Sondheim show. You’ve played Cinderella in that show. You played Mary Flynn in Merrily We Roll Along and Anne Egerman in A Little Night Music. You’ve done three Sondheim shows, but you have yet to do one on Broadway. Given that Into The Woods was just on Broadway, it’s unlikely that opportunity will present itself any time in the near future. So is there another Sondheim show that you would like to do on Broadway?

I feel like the music from Passion was going through my head the other day, but honestly, that’s not a show I know super well. Maybe I’ll have to wait until Into the Woods rolls around again. Maybe I could “witch” this time around. And then I could play Jack’s mother. That’s the thing about that show, you could just sort of cycle through all the roles. I don’t know. It’s very ironic that Sweeney is happening now. That’s one I’d like to do at some point.

Your career, for the most part in terms of musicals, has been revivals, re-imaginings of shows. Obviously Beautiful is a jukebox musical. But in terms of new musicals, with the exception of Waitress, most of your work in new musicals has been with recordings. You have the recording of My Heart Says Go that’s out right now. Upcoming is the recording for Diary of a Wimpy Kid. What do these recordings tell us about what your passion is for doing new work in addition to doing the work you’ve done already?

I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for new stuff just because I guess I find it so exciting. I mean, it also can be infuriating when you’re working on it in the room. Yes, Beautiful was a jukebox. So you had the music already written. We knew that was golden. Working on something like Waitress was so exciting because it was a story that had been conceived, of course, from the film by Adrienne Shelly. But the music was original, so it had never been staged before. It was an adaption.

There’s just something exciting about being in that incubator, being in the process of trying to figure out what’s working, what might not be working. But that’s also the part that can be infuriating is you don’t know. Do we trust what we’ve got? Have we just not cracked it yet? Or is it that we’ve tried everything? I find that stuff exciting depending on who you’re working with. I’ve gotten to work with very generous people that are very open to what you bring to it. There’s that openness about bringing yourself and your perspective and I think it’s a real privilege to originate a role and put your stamp on it.

It’s not often that that an actor gets to revisit a role. Eleven years ago you first stepped into the shoes of Miss Adelaide in a production of Guys and Dolls. You got to do it again at the Kennedy Center last fall. How did your professional and life experiences inform who Miss Adelaide is more recently than who she was when you performed that role 11 years ago?

It’s funny because the process is so quick for the Broadway series at the Kennedy Center. So I think in all honesty I was relying a lot on what do I remember. What is in my muscle memory of who this gal is? But sure, I’m older now, I have more life experience. I’ve been in the business for a while. I’ve been an entertainer for a while. Miss Adelaide has been an entertainer and she takes pride in that.

Half the fun, too, is getting in the room with all the new people. This is how this changes this. This is who this Adelaide is because of James [Monroe Iglehart] being my Nathan and all this stuff. So that’s half the fun of it. But it was a joy to revisit it. I wasn’t sure I would ever get the chance to revisit it again.

Honestly, I felt like I was a little young the first time. But I was like, I’m game. Let’s do it. It was my buddy Matt Raftery who was directing that production in Chicago. I went in for Sarah initially. Then he was like, “Would you like to take a stab at Adelaide? Would you go look at the sides and come back?” I was like, sure. I just always wanted to be the character actress with the fun costumes and the big funny songs. I loved doing it again.

It’s been 14 years since Guys and Dolls has been on Broadway. So you know what the math says. It could be time for a revival. 

There was a lot of chatter after we did it in in D.C. We were so glad that it was so well received. And Philipa [Soo], Steven [Pasquale], James and I, we were totally game. We would explore this, but rights were tied up in the [Nic] Hytner production in London which I’ve heard incredible things about. It has just been so well received, so I don’t know what would happen. I don’t know if they’d bring that over here. I know that it might be a challenge just because of the space and with their immersive production which seems so cool. But if the opportunity came around again, I would totally float that idea, especially if I could do it with those three. We just had a ball. 

Most people associate with musicals, but you also got to do Tracy Letts’s play The Minutes. Is it a challenge for you to be seen as somebody who can act as well as somebody who can sing?

That the perception from the outside that hey, I can act too? That sort of thing?

When you come out singing the songs a lot of audience members, I would guess, don’t necessarily think that was also a great acting performance.

Because you’re supposed to make it look easy. It’s not. There’s a difference between someone who can sing and has a great instrument, which is amazing, but someone who’s also a communicator. Then you have those people who have both who have the glorious instrument and the communication tool. I feel like Hugh Jackman says it a lot. It’s the idea of in some ways it’s almost harder to act in a musical sometimes because you have to make it seem believable that you’re breaking into song. You have these very heightened experiences, which is why the characters are breaking into song. I think actors, especially musical theater actors who appear in musicals, don’t get the credence sometimes they deserve for the acting that they’re doing.

I actually do go to the acting first, which is funny when I’m working on something; when I’m learning something. Or as you spoke of earlier, working on something new. I have to remind myself you can’t act it yet. You don’t know it. You have to learn it. You have to do the technical stuff first of learning it and then you can do the acting work because then it’s in your body. Then you can really get inside of it to deliver. Then go back and fix the technical things and all of that again and kind of go back and forth between those processes.

One of the things I love most about your collaboration with Seth Rudetsky is the social impact component of it. You did What the World Needs Now after the pulse shooting in Orlando. You were involved with him with the Concerts for America. What do you feel is your role as an artist in helping to bring about social impact and social change?

If I’m going to be honest, I’m still figuring that out; coming to terms with the idea that I might have a platform that people might be listening to. So if that is the case, I might as well use it for good. I think I’m starting to crystallize this idea more. I really appreciate people like Seth and his husband, James Wesley, because they are doers. I feel like I’m a helper. I like to help. I like to be of service, but I’m not necessarily the first person who’s going to say I will lead the charge. I try to come in and do my thing and do what I can to help.

You did an interview with Patrick Healy of the New York Times just after winning the Tony Award for Beautiful. You said, “I thought I’d get wrapped up in all the wrong things” of your move to New York from Chicago. You continued to say, “Now look what’s happened. It feels like a wonderful accident.” I love that expression: wonderful accident. Nine years later, does your career still feel like a wonderful accident? Is there perhaps something more complex going on?

I think so. I don’t think it matters how quote unquote, successful you are, whatever the heck that means. It’s hard on your heart. It’s personal. Even when it’s not personal it is personal because the work is personal. You bring yourself. That’s the job. You’re supposed to feel and think and move and act and talk in front of strangers sometimes as someone else, sometimes as yourself, and hopefully create an exchange of meaning and maybe memory and maybe a spiritual flow and all these things. That is hard.

But I think it’s not an accident. I’m working on owning my achievements and I’m proud of them. But the moment you hook into that and give that too much meaning you are often very quickly reminded that it doesn’t hold in a storm. It’s this constant evaluation of what I put importance on and not diminishing an accomplishment or achievement or how hard I have worked. But acknowledging that it’s not the most important thing. God has been so good about where I’ve been led and who I’ve been led to and the opportunities that have been put in front of me. But also I’ve worked my ass off with the gifts I’ve been given.

I think also at that time in my life I was really trying to figure out where I fit in the whole scheme of things. I mean, I still am. What is humble? What is self-deprecating? Where are those lines? How do you stay true to yourself, who you are and what you believe in, but also have the grace and humility to just keep it real.

To watch the full interview with Jessie Mueller, please go here.

Main Photo: Jessie Mueller (Photo by Jacqueline Harris for The Interval/Courtesy The Wallis)

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To celebrate the 40th anniversary of his eponymous LINES Ballet, Alonzo King dug deep within himself to come up with a ballet that echoes back throughout centuries and resonates today. That ballet, Deep River, is being performed this Saturday at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa. They will also perform the ballet on June 9th and 10th at The Wallis in Beverly Hills.

For music, King turned to his regular collaborator for 14 years: Jason Moran. He uses vocals and is joined by singer Lisa Fischer*.

King also uses music by James Weldon Johnson, Maurice Ravel and Pharaoh Sanders to tell his story.

Last week I spoke with King about the ballet, its themes and how being silent, even in dance, is a path forward. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity.

When we think of a concept of a deep river or the Jordan River, we’re thinking of an idea of it being symbolic for spiritual rebirth. Did the creation of this work involve or signal a rebirth or a salvation for you or the company? Or did you have bigger ideas about who or what perhaps needed to think about rebirth?

I’m always going for the bigger ideas. I think that river is the bubbling brook or stillness.  In all mythologies the river, whether you are crossing the Styx or whether you’re going from life to death; whether there’s been a transition or there’s a change; or even the idea of a baptism – which actually originated in India to bathe in the Ganges for cleansing – rivers are symbolic and connected to the blood tributaries that are in all of us. It’s about ascension or a transformation into transcendence, hopefully.

We live in troubled times. I think we require transcendence to get out of the quagmires that we find ourselves in. Do you want to inspire people to re-think how we’re doing things right now?

In this difficult and brutal world there has to be a way out or there has to be another focus. Darkness and light. Light and shadow. They work in tandem in this world of duality. But the conundrum from human beings from the beginning of time is how do you merge out of duality back into oneness? That is the goal. That’s the gauntlet. How do you go from misery and identification with this small little form called the body back into the hugeness of oneness? How do you go from the teeny microcosm back into the macrocosm? That is our job, whether we know it or not. That is what most of us are blind to. We are hypnotized by the physical world. But there are other levels of thought and there are other directions. That’s our same task.

Is it the task of an artist to answer the questions that you just asked?

I think that the artist has to point to the light. And say this is what we’re forgetting. You have within you latent powers that would otherwise not be awakened if there wasn’t [sic] these catastrophes. There is a way in every enigma and in every puzzle, whatever the puzzle is, there’s a way to figure it out.

The same thing is within us and how we’re trained is to go external, to look outwards. We have gold mines inside of us. We have physiological centers that yogis took down thousands of years ago.

As we have come down the spinal column into what we call creation, there is a way to go back up that spinal column and get back to bliss. This is the constant message of everybody who had any interest or care about people. The escape is in consciousness. Where are you putting your mind? When you were reminding people that if there is negativity, there’s positivity. Which one do you want to focus on? Because they both work. They both are very effective. Which one do you want to dive into?

How important was it for you to use silence as part of getting this idea across in Deep River? 

The shocking realities of being in movement all my life is that it is stillness where transformation really begins. We have to be still. Isn’t it interesting that I’m involved in movement? Introspection takes you into silence. Meditation takes you into silence. Not begging the world to give me satisfaction. The doorway to the infinite is silence and stillness. Stillness denotes world peace. And without peace, we are wretched. It’s just how it is.

There is a video online of Lisa Fisher and Jason Moran performing Deep River. What made them the right partners for this project?

Their hearts and their minds. It’s who they are as people. They’re both brilliant. There’s that camaraderie of spirit and that nonverbal understanding of recognizing that we have gone to a place that’s familiar. It may be difficult to put into clumsy words, but we recognize that we’ve had that journey together. There’s a kindred spirit because you recognize that this person has an understanding that I’ve also tasted or has an understanding that I want to experience more.

I read an interview you did with the New York Times four years ago and you describe the collaborations that you that you most enjoyed as being the ones that seemed, “trickier or potentially perilous.” You’ve been working with Jason for 14 years. At the outset of that first collaboration was there something that seemed tricky or potentially perilous about working with him? 

I think that’s always there before you really work together. But when Jason [and I] had discussions, and when he sent me music, I just collapsed. When you find someone who fits and you get each other, it’s what you’ve been looking for your whole life. I could take up all of his time, but he won’t let me. 

These masters, they’re giving wisdom. They’re bringing light. When you find people who are saying, I want to put light on the subject, how do you not want to dance with and participate with that? Lay in that. Listen to that. Listening is when you’re not thinking a damn thing except becoming the sound that you’re hearing. That’s a lot of work. You want to listen to great music because music is consciousness.

It’s interesting that you brought up the idea that you don’t want to think while you’re listening to music, because don’t you tell your students “I don’t want to see you thinking, I want to see you dancing?” 

Often in education there’s a battle between being and doing. And in doing this sense of “I” stays prominent. I’m making this decision. I’m observing this. I’m experiencing that. In being you’re more in the present and you’re listening. You step away a little bit so that you’re in the passenger seat when you want to be and then you can switch and get back into the driver’s seat. It’s more of a dialogue instead of a soliloquy. There is give and take.

With music you don’t want to just follow the bouncing ball. You want to have something to say. You want to participate. Sometimes there’s this concomitant tension because you’re using your will and then to let go of your will and surrender. To see both of those things happening at the same time is a beautiful experience because you’re seeing Adam and Eve dancing together. You’re seeing a feeling in logic dancing together. You’re seeing science and nature dancing together.

We are edging ever so much closer to the tipping point as it relates to climate change. Given how connected your work is to nature, are you an optimist that the natural world can take care of itself?

We see nature not as a wonder, but something to be exploited. I think, to be really frank with you, it is the misunderstanding and the degradation of the term mother. We have no real respect for it, even though this was recently Mother’s Day. Mother Earth. Mother Nature. The idea of the progeny to the supplier. In our evolutionary progression, our first obsession is ourselves.

We’re involved in taking instead of giving or sustaining. Or looking at other cultures then say they didn’t know anything. Because if they knew anything, they would have exploited the land. It’s a mindset that is actually new compared to the life of the planet and how most people have lived. We have to become unselfish and un-greedy. Yet some people think they were smart because they got the money. We’ll look at the result. Look at the planet. There’s no respect for it as an entity. And what are we doing now? We’re moving into outer space, trying to collect land.

Paramahansa Yogananda wrote in Autobiography of a Yogi, “I look forward optimistically to a healthy, happy world as soon as its children are taught the principles of simple and rational living. We must return to nature and nature’s God.” I know you already agree with that, but it strikes me that we are moving further and further away from that concept. How would you like your work to remind us of that simplicity and rationality and that they are important tenets of our existence?

There are not words for that kind of sublime mastery. But in the same way that the Rosetta Stone opened up all this knowledge for us to understand that, Yogananda really is the Rosetta Stone for everybody in how to live life. And it’s one of the things that we’re missing. Art is being taken away from children unless you’re in wealthy environments. What is everywhere? Sports. People have no query about it. They understand the game. They played it from childhood. They learned all the rules, whether it’s soccer, football, basketball, you name it.

This is not the case with the arts and there’s a mistrust about it. It’s horrible. People look at dance and they don’t even know that it’s a language. They don’t understand that ideas are being communicated. They don’t understand that all the things that you and I have been discussing right now are actually on the stage. They look at it only in terms of esthetics. I’m not putting them down, but I’m saying that we are poorly educated in the United States of America. It’s not a rounded full education that’s addressing heart and mind. We are filled with intelligences and, better said, we’re filled with knowing. But the knowing, in a lot of people, has a lot of doubt. 

*Lisa Fischer will be performing live at the two performances at The Wallis.

Main Photo: Alonzo King LINES Ballet (Photo by RJ Muna/Courtesy The Wallis)

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Composer Pauline García Viardot is not well-known to modern audiences. She was a composer in the 19th century. She was befriended and celebrated by the likes of Brahms, Chopin, Charles Dickens, Franz Liszt, Clara Schumann and Wagner. She was an opera singer who so enraptured Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev after performing The Barber of Seville that he followed her to Paris and was with her for over 40 years until her death. But we don’t seem to know much of her work. Soprano Camille Zamora wants to change that.

Zamora, a soprano who has performed on opera stages around the world, was first introduced to Viardot’s work when she heard Cecilia Bartoli sing Havanaise on her 1996 album Chant d’Amour.

After getting the opportunity from Harvard in 2017 to review the manuscript of Viardot’s 1867 opera Le Dernier Sorcier (The Last Sorcerer which has a libretto by Turgenev), she set about to bring new life to this opera that had been lost for 150 years. In 2019 Bridge Records released the first-ever recording of Le Dernier Sorcier with Jamie Barton, Eric Owens, Adriana Zabala, Zamora and more.

This Friday Le Dernier Sorcier will be performed at The Wallis in Beverly Hills. Zamora, in addition to singing the role of Reine, will co-direct with Sharyn Pirtle. The cast includes Babatunde Akinboboye, Monique Coleman, Anastasia Malliaras, Karim Sulayman and Zabala.

Along with Monica Yunus, Zamora is the co-founder of Sing for Hope, an organization dedicated to creating a better world through the arts. Friday’s performance is a Sing for Hope production.

Last week I spoke via Zoom with Zamora about Viardot, the opera itself and her work as a citizen artist. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To watch the full interview, please go to our YouTube channel.

I watched your commencement speech at Juilliard from 2019. You used an expression that I had never heard, in bocca al lupo, which means “into the wolf’s mouth.” What prompted you to go into the wolf’s mouth on this project? And how did you first become aware of Pauline García Viardot? 

I feel so much of my life has been determined by happy accidents. I was in the middle of a gig with a dear friend, Adriana Zabala, a beautiful mezzo soprano. We were nerding out about music, the sort of highways and byways of composers that we love. And we both said Pauline García Viardot; we have to find more of her stuff. Let’s see what else is out there.

We literally went into the Google machine and started poking around. Lo and behold it actually turned out that that very year Harvard University had collected from a private collection of this previously lost manuscript. That was Pauline’s original score of The Last Sorcerer, this amazing piece. It’s sort of an eco-feminist fairy tale in operatic form.

I don’t know that that’s the language that Pauline herself would use to describe it circa 1867. But I do believe that was her intent. It’s a piece about the often ignored voices, in particular in this case, the young, the very folk who have not really been given their due. It’s about elevating those voices that are too often left outside of conversations. And it’s about taking care of the earth and restoring the natural order. 

Was there an A-ha! moment where you go, this is not just a discovery of a lost work, it’s a discovery of a lost good work?

This piece initially attracted us because we were on a kind of feminist mission to find a piece that had not gotten its due by a woman who really was reportedly one of the most incredible intellects of the latter part of the 19th century. But as soon as we started delving into these melodies they just took over.

Her music has that sense of being arresting and shakes us up. But it also just sounds so right and so organic. We fell in love with the score which we were introduced to in manuscript form. So we commissioned a transcript of it to sort of beat the official piano vocal score that we would work from.

I looked at your website for Le Dernier Sorcier and it says this opera was a hailed as a treasure by the likes of Franz List and Johannes Brahms and Clara Schumann. Was it just that it was written by a woman was the reason it was relegated to the dustbin of a private collection?

Why did it present itself in its debut in her living room with her students and herself at the piano as opposed to at the Palace gala? You know these are social questions. I think we know the answer. But I also think it’s waiting for our scholarship. It’s waiting for our study in that question. Perhaps a more recent question might be why did we wait until 2016 for the Metropolitan Opera to do its second opera [by a woman], the first having been in 1908? 

Do you think she wrote with a better understanding of female voices than male composers might have? 

Part of the joy of her vocalism and of all of her sort of pedagogy is that she was part of this hot moment in European vocal history. She was the daughter of one of the great voice teachers and singers, actually two of them. But her father, in particular, was a very famous voice teacher. Her brother was a famous voice teacher. Her sister was Maria Malibran who was the great diva of the age. She died in a tragic accident at the age of 28. She grew up surrounded by vocalism. This is written by someone who really understands how the voice works. 

You found the work in 2017. The album came out in 2019. So there’s been six years that other performing arts institutions have now had as a result of the work that you’ve done. Have you recognized any greater appreciation of her and her work as a result of this endeavor? 

I do think our ears are trained to hear opera with orchestra, which is, of course, the ideal. In Pauline’s life she worked with the resources that she had at her disposal. That was her piano with her fingers on the keyboard and her students. Her piece really wasn’t afforded that full production treatment.

Two years later, apparently, it did get a theatrical release in Weimar, I believe, and it was with full orchestra. Apparently they were under-rehearsed and it wasn’t a great orchestration. So all of that to say, I do dream of a scenario where eventually we can truly present it with full orchestra. And that will give us a bit more of the grand soundscape that you expect.

The world has undergone a lot of change since you first discovered this work and since you recorded it. Are there things that resonate more with you now about Le Dernier Sorcier than did when you first started looking at it? 

I think a lot about this industry because it’s so beloved to me. I really do think that there’s something about the un-amplified voice and about this great, wonderful animal that is opera that brings together music and design and dance and composition and entertaining and the greatest melodies in the world. There’s something magical about it. 

The fact of the matter is the delivery systems can be problematic. That’s the hard thing about systems. They’re hard to dismantle because they are no one’s intention. A lot of people aren’t invited in or they don’t feel themselves to be invited in. I’m particularly compelled by models that allow for the highest level of international operatic talent and all of that stuff that we call excellence, but also the most radical sense of welcome. A mutual welcome of mutual respect and of honoring the creativity that is hyper-local, even as we bring in these glorious artists from around the world.

I think all of the great companies are certainly trying to do that and I think there’s a lot of amazing innovation happening right now in our opera world. The more that we could go in that direction, the better. The opportunities in this moment are tremendous and we ignore them at our peril.

As a citizen artist and somebody who believes that education in the arts is of paramount importance, what is the prognosis for expanding arts education in a country where we’re now being told that you can’t discuss certain characteristics about people, you can’t have books on library shelves or in teacher’s rooms unless they’re vetted by a panel and who knows what their their criteria is?

It’s inconceivable to me. It really is. I think that’s actually part of the problem. I will frankly share with you that I do not know a human being who doesn’t believe that kids should have free access to libraries. So I think part of the problem is we’ve all hardened ourselves off from people who are not like-minded. That is a problem. I need to know these people. We all need to know these people across the aisle. Discourse is something that we have lost. We have two sides that are dug in. 

Part of the thing about music is that it does allow us to see each others as humans before we ask what side of the debate are you on. I do think that’s tremendously important – the opportunity to come together before we get into it.

I think that most people who will come to this opera, chances are we have similar feelings about censorship. Chances are we vote in similar ways. That in itself is a problem. We need to not just preach to the converted. We need to have people who who think radically different from us. It’s really concerning that we have lost those opportunities.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia used to go to the opera together. They would vote against each other during the week and then go see an opera at the Kennedy Center on the weekends. There is something to be said for that concept of worthy rivals being able to engage in dialogue with someone who’s not like-minded. 

To watch the full interview with Camille Zamora, please go here.

Main Photo: Camille Zamora (Photo by Liron Amsellem/Courtesy Camille Zamora)

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Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights has endured for over 175 years. It has inspired filmmakers (1939’s film by William Wyler being, perhaps, the best known), composers (Cliff Richard wrote a musical and Bernard Herrmann wrote an opera) and pop stars (Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights). Another composer who has taken on this dark love story is Ian Ross.

Ross has worked regularly with Emma Rice, the writer/director of Wise Children behind such projects as The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk. Previously she and Ross were both at Kneeheigh Theatre where she adapted and directed The Red Shoes, Brief Encounter and Tristan and Yseult.

Brontë’s book serves as the inspiration for their latest show. Wuthering Heights was scheduled to open at The Wallis in Beverly Hills this week. Unfortunately due to weather-related damages at the theater, the entire run has been cancelled.

Wuthering Heights will next play Chicago Shakespeare Theatre from January 27th – February 19th. The US tour concludes at the McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton, NJ from February 23rd – March 12th.

Music has a pronounced role in this show with characters singing original songs written by Ross; many of them with poetry written by Rice.

Last week I spoke with Ross about his collaborations with Rice, about Wuthering Heights, and the many inspirations he had for the music he wrote. 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.

You have a front row seat to seeing how Emma works and you’ve collaborated with her for quite some time. What makes her approach to theater not just something unique for audiences, but something unique for you as a composer?

I’ve been working with Emma for years, previously with the company Kneehigh Theatre in Cornwall. I think a lot of our process was sort of formed by that. I haven’t worked much outside of Kneehigh or with Emma to have much of a comparison, but from what I gather from other people’s experiences is that there is a freedom in the room; there’s a generosity. Emma creates a space of anything’s possible where mistakes are welcomed or, in fact, encouraged.

Generosity is at the heart of the whole process. As a creative in that there’s so much space. Sometimes you feel a little overwhelmed with the amount of choices that you can have, but you can find yourself within that space. It’s brilliant. It’s very sort of free. Not to say that it’s undisciplined because it’s quite the opposite. But it certainly allows a lot of space to find your own story within the story.

I was listening to Sound Clash that the two of you recorded and it became very clear in listening to it that there is this generosity of spirit that the two of you share. You seem to have a pretty open collaboration where you can bring whatever you want to the equation and she brings what she wants. Somehow it seems like you two end up on the same page rather effortlessly. Is that an accurate description? 

I think so. We do share similar tastes and similar sort of emotional approaches to things. But that’s not to say that we don’t have times where our ideas are clashing, too. That’s partly because she says a bad idea looks after itself. I always think of when they tie off a sheep’s tail. Eventually it just dies and drops off. It’s a bit like that. You have to give space to bad ideas as well in order for them to find their own way. If they’re not right, then the process edits them in the long run, I think.

I haven’t seen every Kneehigh show and every Wise Children show, but I’ve seen a lot of them. This strikes me, sight unseen, as the first to use original songs in a significant way in any of the shows that Emma has done and using them so significantly as part of the narrative. How and why did the two of you feel that this was the show for that approach to be explored?

First of all, the writing that Emma did when she first decided to do Wuthering Heights, she went and stayed up on the moors in Yorkshire in the area where Wuthering Heights was written. She wrote a lot of poetry. She read the book, but she also just wrote lots of of broad poetic ideas for things.

When we first did the research and development they were supposed to just be said. I tried to put everything to music and I’m always trying to turn something into a song just because it’s a joy. It’s the best feeling to have a page of lyrics and and a blank canvas like that.

The poetry for her was relatively new. She was bringing her own writing into things a bit more rather than just adapting things. Becoming more confident as a lyricist, but not quite knowing it. I really pushed for turning some of that poetry into song. That just led to the feeling that maybe our combination as lyricist and composer was a healthy one.

The show runs 2 hours and 50 minutes. The cast album that was released runs 23 minutes. How important was it for the two of you to figure out not just when music can be used, but when you absolutely do not? 

Quite important really. But I think also in mine and Emma’s approach there’s never a wrong time for music. There’s never a wrong time for a song, I think, because I feel like it’s such a direct way of telling a story. You can condense, especially with something like Wuthering Heights, which has so much information, quite a lot of narrative through plonking a little song there. I don’t think we really came upon a moment where we thought this was definitely not working. We always just tried and most of the time it felt like it was serving a purpose. 

I find it very interesting that that Emma chose to write poetry when Emily Brontë was known for her poetry. It’s a pretty bold move, isn’t it?

Yeah, for sure. We used one of Emily Brontë’s poems and set to music, The Bluebell. [Emma] was keen to get that in there as a nod. I think what was cool about Emma’s approach was she was bringing in this idea of the bigger forces, the godly forces of the moors and of the love affair and of the afterlife. I think it just brought an entirely different flavor. It was sort of incomparable, really, to the work of Emily. 

Did Emily Brontë’s novel inspire you on any level, or were you working strictly off of what Emma had decided to do?

I only read it once and parts of it I found hard going. I think some of the language and the dialect stuff is almost impenetrable. But I think what’s really inspiring about it is the setting and the feeling of the moors.

We went and stayed up there for a few days visiting the area where the Brontës were. Understanding more about the history of the area and their family’s connection to it was more inspiring for me than the novel itself.

How do you, as an artist, take the environment in which something is set as inspiration for the work that you do?

Good question. We always start really broadly so there are things connected to the to the story. But what’s really informative for me is is going into that place and feeling the dampness, feeling the weather. The way the clouds can come over very quickly and then pass and everything’s illuminated. Then a storm rolls in and then it’s snowing and it’s so turbulent and so reflective of the relationships in the novel. Immediately I feel that there is an epic-ness in the story, in the setting, which is appealing for the stage. As a composer you can just do big grand sort of gestural work and pick the right moments for it and then just bring it back. So really it was the dynamic of those juxtapositions that are used.

Class differences are an important part of this of this story. Did that influence the way you approached the music?

Definitely. The folk element of the story is constantly at play against the sort of civilized society. I really wanted to feel a sense of the baroque in the music. But also the sensibility of English folk; some really simple sort of plain harmony work. Coincidentally the guy who was living next door to me throughout lockdown is one of Bristol’s well-known folk artists. A guy called Sid Goldsmith. He’s a folk singer and song collector and fantastic concertina player and guitarist. It just felt like it was a really great opportunity to bring that voice into the piece. That true, authentic folk sound, and then try and set it set against the wild, the cosmos and the refined brush cross grange side of it as well. 

What’s interesting is you’re talking about baroque and folk music. In listening to Cathy’s Curse, I was imagining Patti Smith singing that song.

Yeah. That’s sort of comes out of nowhere. Hopefully when you get to see the show you’ll see that’s a sort of a peak that takes a while to get there, but it pops out for for good narrative reason, I think.

I don’t know whether Patti Smith was an inspiration, but were other artists? Particularly Kate Bush who famously recorded a song about this story. Beyond the other references you’ve talked about, are there contemporary influences that find their way into what you’ve done for Wuthering Heights?

I’m always influenced by my own sort of mystical journey. Here in Bristol there’s a tradition of bass music, of dub, reggae and trip hop and reggae. I always want to bring a bit of that into it because it’s also a piece of me. But in terms of that tune, really the influence was Lucy McCormick who was playing Cathy when we devised the show. She’s just an outstanding vocalist and performer in her own right. 

It wanted to feel like you were in a garage when you were 14 and you had been playing the guitar for a few months and you were just starting to make a noise with your friends. It was that discovery of being able to express a very particular feeling through making a big noise with guitars and drums. So nobody specific in pop music. I’d say Lucy was a big influence.

Why do you think this novel, written so long ago, serves as such catnip for creators to not just turn them into plays, but turn them into musicals or operas, or in this case, a sort of hybrid show? 

I don’t know. I guess there’s something enduringly fascinating about the central love story of Cathy and Heathcliff which is really not the largest part of the novel. Really it’s an upsetting love. Although there’s passion, there’s hatred and there’s this fascinating sort of tension between those things where we’re not even sure that we want them to be together at all. But it’s so rich, isn’t it? I think maybe it’s the complexity of their love.

It seems like stories where the couple doesn’t end up together or there is death are the ones that we respond to the most. Why do you think we as as a people so strongly respond to stories where couples don’t end up together? 

Gosh, I don’t know. The thing that pops into my mind immediately was the World Cup. It feels a little bit like football. The English fascination with football because we barely ever win these big international things. But it’s that similar feeling of really getting behind something and ultimately ending up in disappointment, but then coming back again and again. Perhaps we get off on it.

Emily Brontë only wrote this one novel. She died a year after it was published and was only 30 years old. If somehow she could flash forward into the future and sit down in the audience and watch this show, what do you think she would have to say about what you and Emma have done with it? 

Wow. It’s different, isn’t it? I think she’d think we love it. I think that’s clear. I think we care a lot about it and I think we’ve poured a great deal of ourselves into it, which I think she did, too. The life that she led and the things she endured in order to be able to to be this historic figure, I think we’ve paid tribute to it. I think she’d enjoy it. I think she’d probably be pretty baffled by a bunch of it, too, and maybe a little shocked at some of the language. But I think, overall, she’d give it a thumbs up.

To see the complete conversation with Ian Ross, please go here.

*Due to weather related issues, the entire run of Wuthering Heights has been cancelled.

Main Photo: Sam Archer and Leah Brotherhood in Wuthering Heights (Photo by Kevin Berne/Courtesy Berkeley Repertory Theatre)

The post Composer Ian Ross Goes Into the Moors appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

Now she’s singing the words and music of Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo in Invincible – The Musical which is having its world premiere at The Wallis in Beverly Hills and will run through December 18th. The book is by Bradley Bredeweg and the show is directed by Tiffany Nichole Greene.

Gipson has been with the show throughout its development. As Madame Montague she plays a widow who advocates for peaceful resistance against the Capulets who are running Verona. She has an extraordinary voice and a stage presence that anchors a show mostly performed by younger actors.

Last month, a few days after the first previews, I spoke with Gipson via Zoom about the show and her role in it. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full conversation, please go to our YouTube channel.

Before we get started talking about Invincible, I want to ask you about Shakespeare’s play, Romeo and Juliet. Why do you think this play about star-crossed lovers has inspired so many artists to create their own variations of it and why do audiences eat up this tragic story?

Romeo and Juliet is the classic story of everybody’s ideal of what love is to them. I think most of the world comes from backgrounds where there’s some obstacles that prevent them from being with each other. They have to do everything they can to fight to be together – which is the story of most teenagers. Parents usually don’t like the other person or there’s something that makes it hard for a lot of teenagers who really love each other to come together. I think this hits a lot of people and their experiences of how love happens for them.

I think a lot of people use this story because you can insert so many things into it. You can put a Black person with the white person, the Indian with an Asian person, a short with the tall. Opposites that are supposed to be together get to come together. Romeo and Juliet allows every diversity whatever it is gay, straight, Black, Hispanic; whatever the differences may be, they can come together despite them.

In Invincible there is no Mr. Montague and there is no Mr. Capulet. There is only Mrs. Montague and Mrs. Capulet. So tell me about the role you’re playing, Madame Montague, and what she takes on the way the show is structured. 

This is postwar and Madam Montague represents a sign of, I would say, Martin Luther King sort of peace where she’s trying to teach her son about how to fight and stay in the fight for equality by using the philosophy of non-violence. Her husband has passed in the war so people are looking to her unofficially as a leader.

The same on the Capulet side. She’s not really in charge. But, since her husband was the one that was in charge, everybody kind of looks to her as well. These are two women who have are running each sector of Verona with unofficial leadership.

They have their way of doing things. Madam Montague is the peaceful way. The Capulets are about a dictatorship and the Montagues are about democracy and having equal rights. So my goal in this story is to teach my son to fight for what’s right in the world and your place in the world without being violent.

How does this music work in telling the story? 

It’s amazing how they did it. Bradley Bredeweg is the book writer on this and I think he’s been working on this 12 years. Pat and Neil came in and they made this beautiful, wonderful piece. Jessie Vargas, who who did all the music for the show, arranged so many of the songs. You still know what the songs are because they’re Pat Benatar and they still have the melodies. But the way he arranged them to underscore the falling in love is just simply amazing. They sing We Live For Love. It’s a little bit faster when she recorded it, but Jessie slows it down. It’s a moment when they’re falling in love with each other and realize that this is what we live for. People try to keep us apart and wow, look at what we’ve just found – something so beautiful.

I sing a song called Let’s Stay Together. I’m trying to reason with Romeo about not getting out there and trying to fight the physical fight with any of these Capulets because they got more weapons than us. They’ll take us all out. We don’t need any more war. Be peaceful. Do your protest. Stand up for yourself and don’t listen to all that craziness with all your friends out there. Stay right here. Remember the love. Let’s stay together.

What role, if any, did Pat Benatar and her music play in your life?

Being from Peoria, Illinois, we had one rock radio station and two country music stations. When I was 13 – I’m telling my age – but I remember going to one of her concerts and there were two girls in my neighborhood that turned me on to Pat Benatar. To see somebody like Pat come on TV, feeling the angst that we felt as kids, and being strong and powerful and being tough, you didn’t get to see that in female artists at the time. So she was kind of coming in to change the whole landscape of how we thought about who we are as women.

The very first time I got to be involved in this show was probably five years ago when they did their very first workshop. It was amazing. I couldn’t even believe it. She’s very involved in the show. She’s there every day, all day, her and Neil. If it’s not her, it’s Neil or both. They are hands-on in the process. Even from the start with the first workshop she sits down and talks to us individually. Telling us why she wrote this song, what it means and where she was in her life. I just want to pinch myself that it’s Pat Benatar and Neil Geraldo that I’m getting to talk to and have dialog about their songs and their life.

How do you think this show will resonate in a country that is so polarized? Where people have to put those they don’t agree with in a separate area so as not to be bothered, not to be spoken to, not to be listened to?

I’m sure Bradley thought to be inclusive because this is what Bradley Bredeweg does. Every story that he’s ever done has always been about inclusivity and bringing everybody in. I love the storyline and the cast is so diverse. Romeo is an African-American boy. Juliet is a Filipino girl. Madame Capulet, Sharon Leals, is part Filipino and part Black. I’m a Black, African-American woman. Benvoglio is non-binary. Mercutio is gay. The girl who plays Nura, she’s, I think, part Japanese, part white. Even our director is an African-American woman. So many diverse [artists] in the cast and crew. 

You and I became acquainted through the For the Record series. Anybody who was in Los Angeles who saw For the Record Tarantino or Baz Luhrmann, Scorsese, or the rest, knows you from those shows. How much did those shows inform who you are today as an actor, as a singer, and how are you able to apply those skills to something like Invincible?

I can’t say enough about For the Record. That’s my family. I was resurrected during that series. I had been in L.A. doing mostly television film and hadn’t been in the theater a lot. I would sing here and there at different things. I got into For the Record at the most amazing time. I came in the beginning when they first started.

With For the Record you better know how to do everything very fast because at that time they were putting shows up in like two weeks. I grew as a singer in the series. I didn’t even know I had that range like that, that I can hold notes. Now I’m soprano. I used to be alto, low alto. Now my range is increased. I’m not afraid. I feel like I can be thrown anything and I can deal with it. I can do any part because in For the Record I got to play a man. I got to play Sam Jackson. I’ve gotten to play so many diverse roles because that’s how For the Record started. It didn’t matter.

In her memoir Pat Benatar wrote the following, “I’ve enjoyed every age I’ve been and each has had its own individual merit. Every laugh line, every scar, is a badge I wear to show I’ve been present, the inner rings of my personal tree trunk that I display proudly for all to see. Nowadays, I don’t want a ‘perfect’ face and body. I want to wear the life I’ve lived.” Without going into any specifics about your age, as you get older, do you feel the same way Pat Benatar does that you want to that you want to wear the life you’ve lived?

Sometimes you feel powerful when you can achieve something as yourself. Like getting cast in this role as a mom of a son. It’s a powerful role and I get to instill something to my boy. I went into the role for this audition as myself. No makeup, just my hair and my voice and what I brought in. When you’re validated by getting a role as you are, then you love who you are when you make those accomplishments as you are.

When you don’t get something or you don’t achieve something because of something about yourself, then you start looking and question those things about yourself. Am I really good enough? Is my voice too big? Is it too small? Was it the tone of my voice? Did they not like that? I always have to go back and look at what I’ve accomplished in my life as Dionne. I’ve never gotten any plastic surgery or anything like that. I think about everything that I have done. I go, you know, I was hired because of something in me they love. So you appreciate that.

I totally agree with Pat on that. When you see her she looks so beautiful. She’s so happy. Her relationship with Neil, it’s so magical. You see what the key is; why she looks so good; why both of them look so good, is because the happiness that they have with each other. That really keeps you happy inside you. You have somebody who wants you, who loves all those things of you.

Looking at what she’s accomplished and kind of comparing it to myself, I would say the lessons I would get from that is being who you are and accomplishing things. Being the authentic person that you are will help you as you grow older to appreciate everything that you have. 

To see the full interview with Dionne Gipson, please go here.

Main Photo: Dionne Gipson and Aaron Alcaraz in “Invincible – The Musical” (Photo by Sean Daniels/DVR Productions – Courtesy The Wallis)

The post Dionne Gipson Is All Fired Up… appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

So it was quite a surprise to me when in the late afternoon last Thursday I was asked if I could do an interview with White in advance of her appearance with Seth Rudetsky at The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills on November 3rd. I wanted to talk with her, but I was pleasantly surprised that it came about so quickly.

Two hours notice to interview her after that evening’s performance of Hadestown. There were no ground rules. Nothing was exempt from conversation. At 10:30 PM in New York and 7:30 PM in Los Angeles we connected via Zoom, each of us with a glass of wine at our side. She had white wine, I had red. Her dinner was cooking, mine would be afterwards.

Before we get into the interview, White has made a name for herself on stages around the world. In addition to her role as Sonja in The Life, White has appeared on Broadway as Effie White in Dreamgirls, Mama Morton in Chicago, Grizabella in Cats and Funmilayo in Fela! In Los Angeles she appeared in a production of August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom in the title role.

What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. The interview was very enjoyable and I had hoped to post the video, but she asked me not to due to the incessant attention she was getting online. The end result is a slightly longer interview than I usually post, but hopefully an enjoyable one.

Since we’re doing this post-show, what are your post-show rituals?

Our post-show rituals depends on the night. Tonight is Thursday night. So we had an early show tonight. We had a 7:00 show. On Tuesday nights I come straight home because I have two shows on Wednesday. But on Thursday night I will have a glass of wine. And maybe not. And I cook something to eat. I feed and take care of my animals. I have a dog and a cat. I just relax and chill and maybe watch a movie, maybe watch something on TV. I try not to watch the news too much because it makes me sad. But I watch the news enough to keep up with what’s going on in the city and in the world.

My post-show rituals on other nights include coming home and getting something to eat, taking a bubble bath with candles lit and just kind of taking off the day and getting ready for the next day. When you’re in a Broadway show you pretty much live for the show. Everything you do is to prepare and to be prepared for the show the next day, over the next two days, over next week. So that’s what I do. I try to take care of myself. 

I saw Hadestown on Broadway before it won the Tony Award. When I first heard that you were taking on the role of Hermes it answered the question that I had as to whom could possibly replace André de Shields? I know that a friend suggested this part to you and said you should think about this. At what point did it make sense to you? What was your response when the producers said it makes sense to us, too?

Susan Davison and I were sitting right here at this table, I believe, and we had heard that André was leaving. I said I’ve got to do that role. I only said that because I’d seen the show opening night and I just thought it was a magnificent show. It was very moving. It was very timely. It has a lot of very important messages for the world that we’re living in today. I just thought, Oh, I’d love to do that role. I didn’t think anything else of it. I really just didn’t dream of it.

So Susan said, “Well, you should call your agent”. So I did and my agent said, “Wow, that’s a great idea, Lil. I’ll talk to the people.” They thought it was a great idea and that’s how it happened. 

That is the best possible example of going for what you want.

And positive thinking because the word “no” never came into my mind about this. It just didn’t. I’m not being egotistical or anything like that. I just thought it would be a great idea. 

You saw the show from the audience’s perspective. Now that you’re on stage and have been doing it for a number of weeks, has your perspective on why the show works as well as it does changed? Do you have new insights as to why Hadestown resonates as much as it does? 

As Hermes I get to see it a lot from my own perspective. And I think that it’s moving, it’s an emotional ride and it speaks to the times that we’re living in. Even though based on mythology, there’s a lot of truth in what’s being told on the stage in Hadestown. The actors are bringing it. They are giving you the truth of the story.

I keep saying it’s timely. They talk about building a wall. Why would somebody build a wall to keep other people out? Who are the people being kept out? It’s the love and the caring for someone and the self-doubts that we all have from time to time, maybe on a daily basis, maybe not. But we all have some doubts about what we can do to make our dreams fulfilled. And so there are lots of things that I see now because I’m on the stage.

I see and I hear that rumble of Hades voice every night. I see the love between the Eurydice and Orpheus every night. It’s really, to me, a demonstration of what our realities can be if we pursue them, if we pursue the right kinds of things. It’s a different perspective watching it every night, watching the workers every night sweating. I get to see that every night and I get to look at the audience. I get to watch them watch the show and it’s very telling. I mean, I saw a man in the audience and, to me, he could have been the devil because of the way he was responding to a particular moment in the show. It could be my imagination, but maybe not. 

You and André got to work together in a musical a lot of people don’t know about called Gotta Dance (2015). As the baton got passed from him to you did you have any conversations with your former stage mate or did he offer any advice to you?

We talked very briefly and he’s thrilled for me as I am thrilled for him to, too. He’s moving on to a wonderful show, Death of a Salesman. One of the things that he said to me that I really held on to was it’s a lot of work. When he said that I was just beginning rehearsals.

Now I really understand what he meant because the role is not just standing and reciting and telling the story and moving the story along, but it’s also remembering cues about props. Then where to stand and where to walk and when to say what. It’s a lot of mental work. What I’m finding is that this is not one of those shows where you can kind of walk through it. You have to really be in it and be aware of what’s happening in every second – which you should do anyhow.

I don’t like to walk through anything. I like to be in the moment, every moment, because that’s what translates to the audience. That’s how you get people to understand what the story’s about and to see the characters that you’re portraying. I think that you have to stand in them, go 50/50, because, of course, you have to be who you are – your personal self has to be in the mix there to portray the character. You have to give 100% every time because every night, every show, there’s someone there who’s never seen it before. 

I don’t want to rehash the challenges that you’ve been through in the last week and a half or two weeks. 

No, we’re not going to talk about that. 

But I want to know from an actor’s perspective what are the challenges of keeping all that noise outside and not let it impact the work that you want to do? 

I think the blessing of it is that I do have a character to portray. So I can throw myself 100% into that character and forget about all this other stuff. Because in the scheme of things, the people who come into the show to watch the show the next day and the next evening, they don’t want to know about any of that. They want to see the show. They want to know what happens to Eurydice and Orpheus. They want to know what Hades has to say. They want to see what Hermes is going to do.

So I don’t want to bring any of that into what I’m doing on a daily basis. There are certain things that are going to be addressed. And they should be. But that’s that. 

How do you, with all of the distractions, find happiness at this point? 

Listen, I am blessed. I’m a mother, a grandmother. I have pets. I have plants. I live in a beautiful apartment in New York City. I’m healthy and I’m loved. So that’s what keeps me going. I’m loved and I know that without a shadow of a doubt. So with all of this other stuff that has been happening, this is what I know for sure. That tiny little bit of people who don’t, don’t count. Because I’m only coming from love, you know? I think that’s one of the things that really keeps me going and keeps me grounded.

What excites you most about still being on stage at this point? 

Oh, it’s always the work. The play itself. The music. Listening to these wonderful musicians on stage and the audiences. During the lockdown I did some work here in my apartment with my music director and we did several performances that were videotaped and live streamed. It was fun and it was good, but there’s nothing like having people in the house or people in the audience.

Even if I had people here in my apartment it would be nice. It’s the people; the reactions and the interchange of energy. Whether you’re a jazz singer or blues player or an actor who does acting and doesn’t sing, or whether you’re somebody who only sings and doesn’t act, whether you’re a dancer or a painter or a sculptor, it’s about people witnessing what you do and their reaction to it. It’s tied to your heartstrings and that’s what does it for me.

it’s interesting that you said “whether you’re a jazz singer or not,” because I came home from running some errands today and I listened to TSF Jazz radio out of Paris. The first person that came on was Dinah Washington, whom I happen to love dearly. I was thinking, God, I would love to see a show about her. Then when I found out we were talking two hours ago and saw that you did Dinah Washington, I thought I have to ask you about her. 

She’s a heroine of mine. She was a force of nature. She was a business woman, she was a tough cookie and she demanded excellence from everybody around her. I loved playing her because I got to play an icon – a really wonderful iconic figure in Black music who didn’t stand for any mess. She did what she wanted to do in terms of the music. She spoke loudly about civil rights and she contributed to the success of the civil rights movement. She wanted things the way she wanted things and so she had it that way. I loved playing her.

In December of 2000 Stephen Holden in the New York Times wrote a review of your cabaret performance. He said, “Listening to this gifted theatrical pop soul singer, it is easy to wish that belters like Patti LaBelle and Aretha Franklin would show a similar sense of balance and sensitivity.” When you aren’t just reviewed favorably in their company, but set up as an example for them, what goes through your mind? 

That’s the first time I ever heard that quote from Stephen Holden. Stephen Holden has written me many love letters and I’m really very happy that he gets me. 

I’m speechless to be honest with you because these are the people that I grew up listening to. I think they’re brilliant, not just singers, but brilliant musicians in the way that they can turn a song and make it palatable and make it honest. I feel like that’s the best way to be as an artist – to be honest. If I’m honest with what I’m doing the audience is going to get it.

In August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom here in Los Angeles you acted more than you sang. What did you like most about that role and about being part of that production?

What I liked most was the acting, the ability to bring that character to life. I love to sing, obviously, but there are other aspects to my artistry and I like being able to explore that part of it. I felt very fortunate to have the brilliant cast that we had and to have Dr. Phylicia Rashad as the person leading the helm. She really helped me so much get into that character and make it real, make it truthful.

So let me ask you something about risk taking. I’ve been a longtime Fela Kuti fan and I when I saw Fela! in New York I thought it was a brave show for Broadway. The show ran 463 performances. In an environment where pre-sold entities are given top priority I love the fact that a show like Fela! could be on Broadway. Do you believe Broadway can be as equally brave today as it was when Fela! was put on stage? 

I absolutely do. I think it just takes brave producers who are willing to put their money where their mouth is. Fela! was something that made people a little bit uncomfortable. They stand up and dance a little bit. You had a man with his shirt off smoking weed on a stage. You had a man with 27 wives saying these are all my wives. And you had a woman, me, playing a ghost. She was literally a ghost of his of his mom coming back.

It wasn’t your typical Broadway show, but I think that that’s what makes the world go round. We can portray the sharp edges of humanity, of intelligence, of art. I think it’s important for us to view and experience all of it.

We have to open our minds because the world is so big now. It’s big and it’s small because we can travel from here to Japan in a day. People’s ideas change about marriage, about the feminine and masculine and all of that. There’s so many different things that are going on. We have to keep up. 

When you received the Tony Award for The Life I loved the dance that you did. I revisited this today and was moved when you thanked your grandmother for putting you on the table to show your family your talent. If your grandmother could see you on stage in Hadestown today, what do you think she would say about everything you’ve accomplished so far in your career? 

Oh. [She takes a minute before continuing.] I think she would say “You did good, baby.” I think that she would probably not love everything that I’ve done so far. I don’t suspect that my grandmother would have loved to have seen me in The Life, but my mother did and my Aunt Lillian did and my uncles and my aunts and my cousins. Everybody in my family who came to see it understood that this was my job to play this role. I don’t know that my grandmother would like that at all. But right now she’d be very happy. 

And what would you say to her? 

Grandma, thank you for coming. Thank you for coming, Grandma. Are you hungry? You want to eat something? Because she would do that for me. She’d say, “Baby, that was good. Baby, you’re hungry? You want to eat?” Yeah. She’d feed me and give me kudos – as with all of my elders in my family.

With that Lillias White’s dinner was just about done. Our planned thirty minute conversation had lasted over 45 minutes. To think, three hours earlier that day it wasn’t something either of us imagined doing.

Main Photo: Lillias White in Hadestown (Photo by Matthew Murphy)

Update: In an earlier version of this story, we posted that Fela! 28 performances. That number was inaccurate. It has been updated to reflect the actual run of 463 performances. Cultural Attaché regrets the error.

The post A Post-Show Chat with Lillias White appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

Born in Argentina, Golijov took the contemporary classical music world by storm in 2000 with the debut of La Pasión según San Marcos. His 2003 opera Ainadamar and his 2004 song cycle Ayre are performed around the world. In fact, Scottish Opera is performing Ainadamar on tour in Glasgow and Edinburgh beginning on Saturday.

Then for multiple reasons Golijov’s muse seemed to go into hiding. For a decade there would be no new works from him. As he told Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim in the New York Times in 2020, “I was really depressed…It was painful. And then it was peaceful, and now it is liberating.” Grossman’s book was part of his liberation.

Golijov’s song cycle, also named Falling Out of Time, is being performed on tour by the musicians for whom the composer wrote the work: Silkroad Ensemble. The first performance takes place on October 27th at The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts. (See the end of this interview for the full schedule).

Late last month I spoke via Zoom with Golijov about themes of loss, the power of walking and his plan to write more joyful music moving forward. What follows are excerpts from that conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. If you’d like to see the full interview, please go to our YouTube channel.

You regularly ask your students, in a follow-up to George Crumb’s statement, “Music is a system of proportions at the service of a spiritual impulse,” what is the spiritual impulse for which they have to find the proportion? What was the spiritual impulse so that you could find the proportion and the compositional structure of Falling Out of Time?

I think it’s two impulses. One is the fear, to the extent of becoming a failure of the imagination, of what that experience is in life of losing a child. I think that any parent probably has the same. But more than that I personally know seven sets of parents who have lost children. I realize that we all turn our gaze away from them. It’s such an unimaginable loss that we make believe, “Oh, you know. This didn’t happen.” I think that is a terrible thing. So I guess that’s the impulse – I’m forcing myself to not turn my gaze away from something. It goes against what we think are the laws of nature. 

What I need is a desire to accompany these people up to the point where someone that experiences such loss can be accompanied, because grief is isolating. So it is a little bit of an impossibility, but yet I did not want to go through life without at least attempting to create this act of accompaniment. Again, knowing the limitations of that accompaniment.

What is your personal relationship to grief and how did that find its way into your music?

I don’t consider myself to be very unique as a person, in terms of experiencing things deeper than other people. But I realize that I do have, like other composers or other creators, this ability to perhaps translate the experience, not necessarily personal, but what I feel that people are experiencing into what you call, rightfully so, proportions.

To answer more directly your question I do tend to be more private in my grief, I guess, than other people, perhaps. I don’t see that as a good quality. So perhaps through the music I can connect in ways that I cannot connect as a person.

David Grossman told The Guardian, “In order to do almost anything, you have to act against the gravity of grief. It is heavy. It pulls you down and you have to make a deliberate effort to overcome it. You have to decide that you won’t fall.” Do you think that the act of creativity requires that, or is that just the act of living?

I think that what he says rings true to me. I wouldn’t generalize it to any act of creativity, because sometimes you are simply joyous. I imagine Bach had such vitality and Mozart. Knowing David, I think that is very true. He’s also a source of creativity. But I do understand that in this particular kind of a creation you have to go against a certain tremendous gravity, right?

You did a really interesting interview with with Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim where you talked about the ten year drought that you had experienced leading up to this. In re-reading that interview it struck me as though that journey may be very similar to what The Walking Man in Falling Out of Time has to deal with in terms of getting over loss and finding a way to breathe. Is that is that a fair assessment? 

Yeah, definitely. There is a parallel there. I think that is important in at least the way I perceive the journey of The Walking Man and the journey of people that experience these, quote unquote unnatural laws. To realize that there’s no Hollywood ending, no acceptance, obviously no triumph, no redemption. But there is what you just said is finding, once in a while, a place where you can breathe. And that’s enough. 

There are a lot of people who use walking as a way of overcoming situations. Whether they do the Camino de Santiago across Spain or the Inca trail in Peru, walking seems to be a way for people to come to grips with whatever circumstances they are facing or to come to new enlightenment about what it is they’re going through. What role has walking played in your life in terms of being able to free yourself emotionally, free yourself creatively?

I love the metaphorical walkers in music like Schubert or Mahler. But in my case it’s more like swimming. I know that for David walking has always been a real thing in his life. He starts every morning walking a few miles. In my case, for at least ten, 15 years I say to my partner, “Let’s do that Camino de Santiago. When will we do that?” But one day we will do it. I think that is something amazing. Just the fact that people conceived of the idea of pilgrimage. Which in the end this is arriving to yourself, right? I love the metaphor very, very much. Unfortunately I’m more of a water animal than a land animal. 

David’s novel, and your music by extension, depict a world where grief is universal, which, of course, we know that it is. But what I also love is that it’s democratic, it’s apolitical. Regardless of the circumstances, it seems like we have a way of better understanding who we are at our core when we recognize the similarities. I think that your music and David’s novel remind us who we can be regardless of our borders, regardless of our political ideologies. Is there a bigger statement that you and David want to make about the world in which we live in and how much we share in common versus what our differences are?

That’s just true. Before I even knew David’s book I wanted to do a piece about this, but it was more political. I’m happy that I didn’t succeed in that. I had two attempts. One was an opera for Tanglewood. In the end I ended up writing Ainadamar. It was about parents who lose children in the Middle East, both Israelis and Palestinians. Then I started Iphigenia for the Met which also had a political component. That didn’t work out. These two failures led to something that I think is much more true to the human experience. Like you just said, that transcends politics. 

Is the act of composition a political act? 

Political. I don’t know. It might be, I think, a little even deeper than political as a faith act – an act of of believing that life transcends death. Because why would anybody create anything if the end is death? It’s defiance of death itself, right? I guess I’m not articulating it properly, but I think it’s even deeper than purely political. But I think that any act of true creation is an act of faith in life.

How you think this work resonates now that we’ve been through almost three years of incredible loss worldwide as a result of pandemic, or we’re seeing what’s going on in Ukraine with circumstances that yield to a parent losing a child. Do you think that this work resonates differently now than when you wrote it?

Perhaps? I think yes. In one sense there are certain things that most of us consider that we understand. Yes, their grandparents die and parents die. Then some of our friends, then we do. But we don’t think about a parent outliving a child in the same way. In a more global way we did not think about the world stopping and people starting to die of all ages. So in this sense the piece speaks to something that is, quote, unquote, unnatural or quote unquote, illogical, such as the death of a child or a pandemic. Yes. The work resonates in a way that would not have resonated before the pandemic.

On the other hand you know how we are. We want to forget very quickly, right? Even myself. I wrote in my whiteboard “write just happy music for the next ten years.” You know what I mean? So the answer to your question is yes. And life goes on.

To see the full interview with Osvaldo Golijov, please go here.

Falling Out of Time by Osvaldo Golijov will also be performed at The Chan Center in Vancouver on October 29th; The Reser in Portland on November 1st; The Harris in Chicago on November 3rd; The Clarice at the University of Maryland on November 5th and Annenberg Center at the University of Pennsylvania on November 6th. (You can click on each venue’s name for tickets and more information.)

Falling Out of Time has been recorded and is available for streaming or purchase.

Main Photo: Osvaldo Golijov (Photo by Stephanie Berger/Courtesy osvaldogolijov.com)

The post Osvaldo Golijov Takes a Walk on the Grief Side appeared first on Cultural Attaché.