Esperanza Spalding

00:00:08 Speaker 1: Pushkin. When Esperanza Spalding won Best New Artist at the Grammys in twenty eleven, she made headlines for two reasons. One she was the first ever jazz musician to win the award, and two she stole Best New Artist from Justin Bieber. The believers are still pissed. Since that first big win, Esperanza has won three more Grammys and released seven studio albums, including twenty seventeen's Exposure, which was conceived, written, and recorded entirely in seventy seven hours on Facebook Live. In twenty eighteen, to released twelve Little Spells. It was inspired by the Japanese healing art ray Ki, with each song composed as a spell for a specific part of the body. Looking at her body of work and how she's evolved from a young, prodigious stand up bass player and jazz composer to an experimental, multimedia conceptual artist, it's easy to see why Esperanza Spalding sees herself as more than a jazz musician, but her improvisational approach to turning abstract ideas into emotionally moving pieces of music pretty much makes her the personification of jazz, whether she likes it or not this is broken record liner notes for the digital Age. I'm justin Richmond. Esperanza sat with Bruce Heilom and Brooklyn to talk about the instinctual way she makes music, jamming with Joni Mitchell, and the opera she's writing with the legendary Wayne Shorter that's set to be released next year. Wow, this voice is really beautiful. It's got a good vibe and it's huge. This is actually reminding me how much I love to be in the studio. It's been about a year, and I think that means it's time to go back soon. You haven't been in a studio in a year, and was for that. That was for twelve Little Spells, for the four Bonus Spells. It's actually sixteen Little Spells now because because of some of the finagling that one must do when you're dancing through the music industry, I wanted twelve and for there to be a second wave and reason to talk about the project again. I was asked and encouraged right for more songs, because apparently I'm I've yet to grow into the awareness of what it is to generate music as commodity. My first instinct is already to figure out a way to just release it big and around and wide. Um. So I wanted to release the twelve Little Spells one every day at twelve twelve leading up to my birthday, and I wanted to just blast them out because I wanted the the effect of the Spells to reach as many people as possible. Um. But that's it. It's hard to capitalize on that approach. So in collaboration with the label, we came up with the idea, well, let's make former bonus Spells and then there's a reason to go get the record. So now we should explain twelve Little Spells, which was your last full album. Yeah, they were twelve songs now sixteen, but they were based on different parts of the body. Did the concept come first for that or did the songs come first? It came as a hit, almost like an instruction manual. I can remember I was in transit. I don't remember from where to where, but I know that by the time I got home to my apartment, I had written out the outline of the whole project that it was twelve Little Spells and the title and what the title was saying, which was an announcement of what this work is as an interim piece before the next big project. So the titles twelve little spells to tide you over to the next full thing. Touch in my, Touch, in mine, the longing deep down. You have to dance now, no, all limbs are readying to rise, dancing the animal with others. And it was a it's a sort of poem explanation of what this project is until the next project, which is about dancing and movement and dancing that the wild, untethered, free forms of dance with structured presentation. Um. Yeah. So by the time I got home, here were the song titles, here were their effects on the body, and I had my instruction manual. And then I spent a month and some change just assembling that structure, assembling that entity from the instruction manual. So you wrote all that on the subway, No, I wrote it all in the castle in Italy. Okay, but m yeah, that was amazing. That was amazing. Every morning I would be, um, you know, go for where will you pick up your espresso in the morning if you so desired? And they had me in the converted pig pen because I didn't want to be in the cask, because I figured it would be extremely haunted. So I would go get my espresso and then walk around the priffrey of the castle back towards my converted pig pen, which is on another, you know, part of the grounds, and I would pass Azar Nafisi almost every day, who was working on her book, And just that process of witnessing, you know, a master craftsman sitting and witnessing the development of their piece page by page, you know, was the fuel, part of the fuel I think for making this happen, because you know, the creative process is abstract. It feels sometimes like you're doing nothing. So it was so encouraging and affirming to witness another person in that practice, accumulating that body that they came to work on. Now there's always the descriptions of you you were prodigy, or this you were that. I would like to lean into the microphone now and spell those myths that I was a prodigy or anything like that. I wasn't a prodigy. I am. I have a talent in music, and I found my way early on. But I have seen prodigies, and I know prodigies, and it's a thing. It's like it's like a subset of the species, you know, and I just I partly want to dispel that myth because I think it it's misleading. You know, it makes it seem like maybe there's something special or something different fundamentally about you know, my makeup as an as an entity, as a humanoid, and it's not true. You know, there are some folks who are and they're exceedingly rare, and then there are other folks who just figured out a way to get a lot of practice in early on and it accumulates and then you can do things that other ten year olds can't do. But it's best of it because I was a prodigy. It's because I I played a lot. You know, I practice a lot. Well is that good? Because you know prodigies and you know, being a prodigy often is it's maladaptive. They don't. It's if you're great at something when you're five, often you're doing the same thing at thirty five. And people are you know, there's always those those great classical musicians who are you know, who are described as the fifty year old child prodigy. You know, they can't kind of get past what they did at a a certain age, right. And I the part that I resonate with about that quote unquote prodigy part is simply the part where nobody can explain why you can do what you can do, you know, And I think part of what sets a prodigy apart is that for the same amount of time that their friend in the music school puts in, this kid just gets more done. Somehow, somehow, there's a to do more for reasons that nobody can explain. And at a certain point, when you want to expand past what it is you've become good at, but you don't remember why you can do what you do, that is intimidating and stressful it can be. And I can't appreciate why you wouldn't you wouldn't lean into that territory. And there are some aspects about you know, my practice that I it's like abousing before the divination. There are some aspects that I don't know. I don't know how that happens or how it works. But when I try to apply that to like a new medium, let's say, like writing an opera doesn't work, then you discover like, hmm, okay, there's a process here, there's a there's a skill set that must be developed to yield the same results over here. As I'm able to yield over there without having necessarily mastered that skill set, you know, So just saying I have compassion for the fifty year old child prodigies out there. What was your first experience of music then? What do you remember? Well, it would be my mother singing in the house and making up little songs about whatever was happening in the moment. So she she had this one. You don't need to cry because your mama is by your mama who love you and will never never leave you. You don't need to cry because your mama is by you know. I don't know where that comes from, but she, she would always have this sort of soundtrack happening to life. There was a wake up song, there was a prepping the meal song. And that is my first memory of music. My first memory of music out there was hearing your mom on my stage's neighborhood. Like I've said that so many times in my life, but it was and hearing your hearing your mom, hearing the box cello suite. I don't know if it was aomara, was the box teller sueeze, but by the way, he was a vehicle and on mister Rodgers neighborhood, mister Rodgers neighbor which also the interesting piece about that episode is after Yoma performed, they went to make Believe Land, and in that episode, the next thing that happened is Lady Amberlin was dressed as an upright bass and the other woman character was playing an upright bass. And I don't have a conscious memory of seeing that. But that, again, was like the download that all came at once, and then it's a humbling reckoning of like, oh, I'm again just I'm just following the programming that I didn't even realize I received, you know, a five. So now was that just a memory or on mister Rodgers Neighborhood that actually happened. I only know that that happened because I've seen it since I don't have a conscious memory of seeing that in the episode. What I remember is hearing I didn't know it was about tells at the time. I can remember the prickling in the this um almost like pain, you know, such a deep sensation of attraction to something that I felt towards the music that Yoma was playing. No conscious memory of seeing the basses. But later when I saw the episode, I went, oh damn, I'm just I've just following the instructions. You know that all came at the same time. Um, those are my first memories of music. Well, you can do worse than following, mister rogers omen I agree. I think you did well. And then your first instrument was what, well, it would have been violent. They didn't have any um, half sized or quarter sized cellos at the program that I first enter music through, so it was fortunately or unfortunately violin and that yeah, unfortunately you didn't like the violin. I didn't really like the violet. I like other people playing the violin, but yeah, I was seeking that sound. I was seeking what I heard. I wanted the cello, and thank god, and then I just get past the tell I want right up to the next floor, up to the base. And then when did the bass start? You know, I don't know if the bass has started yet. It's such a immense territory and for all the technical facility one can accumulate early on again serves a very profound function in music. And I I think that the older one gets, the more one matures, the better they are at actually being a bass player. So I don't know, I don't know if bass has begun yeah, when you started playing. How much were you practicing? I don't remember really, probably a lot, I don't. I don't remember those early days. I just remember um playing by ear and suddenly hearing this music that I was told was jazz and having a very deep, again visceral reaction to whatever they were doing, you know, having no understanding of what it was or how it worked. Um, yeah, are you still that kind of instinctual player or because this is what scares people about jazz. It's incredibly complicated. It seems like endless scales is all that theory? Do you know all that stuff? You know some? Yeah? Yeah, and it never ends because the in not because I don't feel authorized to speak on behalf of the genre in anyway, because I would say I'm a jazz singer when I need to be, and I can play bass for the jazz musicians, but the center piece, like the center of what it is I do isn't really jazz because of that practice and devotion that is required. You don't think you have it, not in that way, not in that way as an instrumentalist, which is fine. It's cool because I can still support the instrumentalists who are in that devotional, devotional practice. But that's how you started. You were you were known as a jazz bassis, absolute best new artist I think, right right? Yeah, And still I wonder what the parallel isn't writing? It's like you can support, you can be a part of something without actually being a devotee of that craft. Well, most writing is all you mean writing music or writing, I mean writing word. So what do you know? Because if I go on YouTube, I see you playing with Herbie Hancock and check Korea. Yeah, what are they? What are you giving them? Then there's got to be more technically sophisticated players are at least more theoretically sophisticated players than you. You're doing this by instinct. What do they get when I asked you to come and play with me? What what am I getting? You're getting listening and lightspeed response and some a dance floor for your dance. I'm giving you a moving dance floor. And I have studied some of the theory, just to say partially, I like to rearticulate this because for any young aspiring instrumentalist listening, I want to make sure that I'm speaking that truth that to be a quote unquote jazz musician like, don't listen to me. Listen to Scott Colly or you know, Ben Williams, Christian McBride or Linda o or players who if you if you want to have a queue into the expression of the jazz pedagogy, listen to those bass players. I'm doing something that's valuable and beautiful in works and supports, but it's not really coming from that kind of devotional space. It's very intuitive and very much in the presence, very much something that evolves in relationship with players. You know, So, yes, I can play with her, but I can play with chick because I'm I'm becoming what is needed in that moment with my technical facility to you know, come as my voice, as my listening as my voice. It's almost like an active listening with players like that. So are they? Are they because you're a band leader as well. When you're playing with players like that, are they kind of setting the tone and then you're responding? Is it more call response with them? Yeah, it's it's more like, well with somebody like you know, Herbie Hancock or Jerry Allen. They want to have the conversation that can only happen with you in the room. It's not like, Okay, I hear these ten songs, you happen to be the one here, so yeah, come get in on this and make this work for me. Especially with Herbie, especially with Jerry, it's more like, oh, who are you? What do we sound like together? And in that space it might kind of be an advantage not be too tethered to a technical or historical or pedagogical approach to making the music, because then you're free to discover what's actually happening in real time, which might not sound like anything that that player did before. It's going to have their character ristic. But that is my superpower, you know, of being president, going like whoa what what is this? Actually? Right now? Let's make it and it won't probably happen again. And that was that, You know, do you have to do You have to make eye contact with a player. To do that, you have to see what he's doing just here? Really, could you do it blindfolded? Yeah? Of course really? Yeah, of course. I don't look. I don't look at the instrument I want to play. No, I don't mean your instrument. I mean I mean I mean the combination of like if if you're playing with you know Wayne Shorter here be hancocked there. Yeah, that's a that's a great day. I wish that would happen more. But you know, string quartets, the players kind of have to see each other, they have to see the cues. I'm wondering how important is that in when you're playing in a jazz combo. Well, I'm thinking of I'm thinking of Wayne's quartet. They are very much connected with each other, looking at each other. But I am positive they could do everything they do blindfolded because they're they're co composing a scene. You know, It's like, I'm sure actors could have a perfectly potent and coherent improvised scene blindfolded because you're you're responding to the reality of emotional response. You're responding to what comes at you, and eventually a momentum of the scene is generated and that is propelling you forward as much as you're creating it as you go. You know, that mode of performance, co composition improvisation is like that. Okay, next time you're with Herbie Hancock, I want you to blindfold yourself and see see how it comes. I don't I wouldn't never ask him to do that, but I'll think I'll just I'll hold it in the space and see what happens if I don't look. I mean, I remember dancing tango a little bit when I was a teammate, and you know, there's certain fundamentals that you learn, and it's an improvisational dance form, right Obviously, when you're dancing with a phenomenal dancer, everything just kind of works, you know. And I remember that experience of being very inexperienced and getting on the dance floor and just be like, oh damn, I can do I'm good. Shoot everything. I'm twisting and turning and kicking all kinds of stuff, and then you go dance with the next partner and it's like fuck. You know, it's like a fumble, looks like a like a civil ware drawer without a divider, you know. So there's also something to be said for the potency of the master, you know that partially just by playing with somebody like that, the the immensity of their musicianship and ability to make everything work kind of heightens your own capacity and shows what is possible. We'll be back with more from Esperanza Spalding after the break. We're back with more from Esperanza Spalding. What's it like working with Wayne Shorter? You talked about his writing before, Ye, what's it like playing with him? We've actually only played a few times, and it felt like visiting another planet. It truly felt like we've been living on one musical planet your whole life, seeing different lands and territories and cities and towns and ruralities and municipalities, and then you step onto what you think is just another land. You know, music starts, Okay, here we are, and all of a sudden you recognize, like, no, all of this is different. All of this is extraterrestrial, all of this is expansive. All of this is just more and different and shaped like the Earth. And maybe the gravity is similar, but it's not. He is so incredibly adept at connecting seemingly disparit ideas in a room, in a conversation, and musically that is, it's like it feels like you have to start listening at light speed to be able to connect what just came over there with what's happening over there. That is nebulous. I apologize it's hard to describe it, but is it scary playing with someone like that? Yeah? Sure, yeah, very much. So, Yeah, And why is it scary? Why is it scary? What does scary? I mean in that context? Is it scary? It's scary in a sense of oh damn, can I can I hang? Can I help? Can I woo? Can I feel free? What is that of the most that I can bring into the space? Will it have a place? Will it work? You know? You know, it's like sitting at a table and a conversations already happening, and you're like, I don't know what anybody here is talking about, but I'm being asked to come and speak. So it's something about having the trust that your life is enough, that what you've lived endows you with insight and perspective and presence, and that the other people at the table actually want to talk with you. So it's not about I'm able to refer to the things that you all have studied and know. It's something about having the confidence that at any point in time we can find like a common space to converse. Do you always find do you always feel confident when you're playing with someone like that you can find it? You ever feel nervous, Like this guy's talk talking about something I can't really of course we don't we all. I mean hopefully that's how you know you're expanding and having new tastes and new experiences. You know. It's not always feel equipped like I'm gonna come in and slay. I don't mean that, but are there times you're playing with someone I'm gonna use Wayne Shorter and you just feel like, man, I'm just disappointing here. I'm not contributing. No, Well, listening is contributing. I mean, that's so much of the gift of somebody who's so full, like a Wayne Shorter, just hanging out with him at the house. I mean just just listening is becomes dialogue, you know, and becomes dynamic, um, because we we need to be heard too, you know. For all that poetry and wisdom and philosophy, philosophical playmaking that one can do, it's not fun when you're just by yourself in the house, right. I think he's really gonna and a musing himself. But um yeah, that's that's valuable. That's what I mean by being the moving dance floor. It is. It's valuable. It's valuable. Um. So a very different artist did you like and I'd like to know more about her influence is Joni Mitchell. Oh, Now, Joni Mitchell is interesting to me because she has she seems to have two audiences. Everybody likes everybody knows Big Yellow Taxi and both sides now and people love her and revere for being part of a generation. But jazz people really like her. What is it you're hearing in her? What inspires you? I mean, jazz people like creative seeking music. You know, in general, all the jazz people that I know don't just listen to jazz music. They we they listen to move that seems to be reching and finding new combinations of the sounds that we're all working with out here essentially, So what is it about her music that what are you hearing there? I think if I actually try to articulate it, it's going to be a lie. Because beyond the obvious that points that we all are drawn to, like the poetic imagery and the unexpected way that she illuminates a scene and brings us into a place in a space, and an emotional understanding of a person or a relationship, there's just some there's something magical and magnetic which doesn't tell you anything, but I the way where I feel the draw. I can't honestly articulate. Um. I think part of it is the attraction to somebody showing possibility that's so far beyond anything that's been revealed in that genre or mode of playing before, you know, as a quote unquote folk musician or as a poetter, as a lyricist. It's like, you know, watching I can't explain it. I should say, when I even said her name, you sort of, yeah, put your hand up to your heart like you're slightly stricken. And that's the that's the that's the Yeah, that's the mystery, you know, that's the mystery. You can hear strands of the sort of thing she does in I think particularly your the Emily album. Okay, cool, that's when I discover her music. Was that right? Okay? Have you ever met her? Yeah? For sure. I jammed at her house a few times, Okay this year last year. Telling that story now, well, I I say, I very surreal experience. Actually back up, tell us that story. How you how you ended up there? Who was there? Well, the first time that I went to her house, I went to her house because um we okay, I had to back up a step further. Last year, I moved to la for seven months to be near Wayne and to be on the ground moving forward the development this opera, because I felt like it had gotten stagnant somehow, you know, just the logistics of work, shopping in and getting it off of the page and out of the speculative into the real, and I thought I need to just go there. You know, Wayne was having some really intense health issues, and I wanted him to feel like this thing is really happening, like we're doing this, we're doing this. So that turned into some very inventive approaches to making workshops happen, Orchestral workshops happened, scene workshops happen. At a time when he couldn't physically write, he was suffering from a metabolic tremor, and so we had to figure out a way to get what he had written up into an orchestra. And I thought that the most invigorating thing for him would be to actually feel coming back at him what he had written, so that it would feel like an opera is really happening here. So we're doing those every week, every two weeks, and at some point it came up, well, Gosh, Joni heard that they're doing Joni Mitchell heard that you're doing this and wish there that she could see it. But you know, it's hard for her to leave the house with blah blah blah. And I don't know whose idea it was. I feel like it was her assistance. So why don't we have the rehearsal at at Jonie's house? So we did. We took us role in the opera, and I mean she wanted to hear it when was working on and thought it was cool. So she opened her home to us. So we brought a piano player and about five singers and a small little orchestra, probably eight players, and we crammed into her music room and she sat next to Wayne and I sat next to Wayne, and Frank Gary, who's working on the set, who will be making the sets, also came over. And it was it was just a surreal moment in time that I actually forgot about until you just said it, because it was so surreal. It didn't seem like a part of this plane, you know, because those I would say, those are two of my favorite creators of all time, you know, And yeah, a lot can be said about the moment. Partially, it was surreal because I was so um dissatisfied with the libretto at that particular moment, I was just cringing that like the master of words was there hearing my like unfinished words. It's so ridiculous, Um, but yeah, I was. I was biting my nails. You know for sure. The whole time was that the first time you'd met her? No, I met a few times before, but I didn't stick, you know, yeah, because I was just drooling and you know, so this time not forming sentence. I was still dreaming, drooling and forming sentences. But she said she liked my my life force suit and that as life force it does, and that really looked at my spirits. Yeah, that did you design that? Of course? Yeah. I wanted to, um, stay in touch with the Yeah, the focal point of my work. I'm seeking ways to translate the Pope. I'm seeking ways to bring us into resonance with our unique and abundant life force energy. And I also wanted a break from worrying about what to wear at events or just in the street or anywhere. And I knew that it was going to be a year of hard work, so I made a work suit for myself. I just said so that's all you wear. Yeah, that's all I wear. How many of those do you have? Eleven twelve? You're like a superhero. You just get in the constant every day. That's the that's the goal. That's the goal. Be a superhero. Yeah. Yeah, my version of it be a super me. You know. Um, so what did you? I'm interested? What did Jone? I've never met Johnny Mitchell? Oh you will, I would love to. Yeah, we're both Canadian after all. Uh huh? Facts? What did she say to you when when she heard what you were doing? Mom? I don't remember. She said all kinds of things. It was it was out of body. It was out of body. But later I did play some jam sessions that I got to play bass for her, and I got to play an arrangement for her of the Wolf that lives in Lindsay and she dug that, so did she? Was she singing when you were playing? No, I just perform. Yeah, when I played for her when she was sinking. I mean it's like living room, like a session like this. You know, she invites over musicians and we play the song she wants to sing, and people play songs that she wants to hear. Or songs that they are working on. Like, so what you talked about playing with with her? Be Hancock, What what's it like playing with Joni Mitchell. Well, it's the deepest listening you've ever done in your life. She's the deepest listening ever because it's not about like, oh, I'm gonna play with Jonie. I. I'm listening for what she's doing in that moment and where her voice is going, and I want to offer the the tones, the rhythms that make it feel good for her to sing at that moment. You know, how did it go? It was perfect? It's perfect. She sang lever Man and a couple of other tunes, had the old song lever Man. Yeah, okay, yeah, she loves you know, she loves classics standing. She had trouble for a long time finding bass player. She always sad bass players didn't understand her music. M because you did, I don't know, I don't know, but hm, that's interesting. It did okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll be back with the more Bruce's conversation with Esperanza Spalding after a quick break back, but before we hear the rest of Bruce's interview with Esperanza Let's listen to a track offer album, Emily's Devolution, which we'll talk a bit more about in a second. First, here's the song change Us. You said you weren't that you weren't the prodigy, and you weren't even now you describe yourself as not you don't feel like you're fully a part of the kind of jazz world you're not. But it's it's. Um, I was just gonna say, you went to Berkeley, which is like the m I T of jazz. Oh god, it's not bless it's heart. It's it's an incredible convening space for anybody passionate about pursuing a career music. It is it truly, truly, truly, truly is. But yeah, it's it's like those terms that nomenclates or of what the music is. I think that the term refers to a very specific kind of devotion. So what I'm saying, I'm not a quote unquot jazz musician. It's just out of respect for for that modality of devotion. I'm devoted to making and to creating, and that's that's its own thing. It's just it's okay with me that I'm that I'm not, you know, an emissary of that devotional practice. And and I think it's something also about wanting to get out from under the signifier of being a jazz musician, because I feel like in some ways I use that or it was used to promote me as a creator. And now, out of respect for what the devotional practice is, I want to I want to make sure that it were clear about what's what you know? Okay, But because you, I mean, you do a lot of different kinds of music. I mean re listening to Emily, which was your album before this one, I think, well, the album before this one you can't get because it was about that. Yeah, but Emily was like a really that was a really heavy I wish our co host Rick Rubin was here because he's an old heavy metal guy. He would like guitar solos. But what were you listening to when you did that album? Damn? I was listening to Hm I a lot of David Bowie, a lot of Jimi Hendrix. Um Cream, not a lot of cream, but listening to Cream a little bit. I had seen that documentary about Ginger Baker Um and you worked with Tony Visconti, who produced a lot of Bowie, a lot of t Rex, Yeah, got a lot of that good vibe in it. Yeah. Yeah. It's like sonically the world that Emily needed to do. What she came to do had those elements that you described. It was loud, and it generated movement, and it was about a power trio and it was about an expression of power and breaking out of whatever had been practiced and whatever had become familiar, whatever had become fixed identity. So that's what Emily needed to burst into existence. And Emily was a real character, did you It's the lava of myself. It was the metal character of me. It was also maybe more than your other work about the songs themselves. You've written a lot of songs, but we tend to think of jazz as kind of a flow, true, and this was more like a song like change us. Oh my gosh, that's right. There's no there's no reason that wouldn't be a top forty hit. I know that's Did you want it to be a top forty hit? I mean I didn't. I didn't want it to not be a top forty hit. But um, that hasn't hmm, I mean damn. I asked Emily what she wanted to do, and those are the songs that came out. And I didn't ask too many questions, you know, there wasn't a lot of well what does what does it? What should the influences be in this? Like what do we want to happen with this song? It was just like, here's the instruction manual from Emily, let's build it and see what we get and we'll morph it from there. You like the instruction manuals. I do like the instruction manuals. I trust that because you also did an album where you said, he was on Facebook Live, We're going to do it in seventy seven hours, yeah, and you did the whole thing yeah, and everybody could watch. Well, that offering performance was the performance of the act of creation. So how do you make an album of creation? They make an album of the creation process. That was the way that we figured out that we could capture or share my favorite part of making things, which is that moment where you get the hit, you think of the thing, and then you forge it. That process of forging it into the thing was the focal point of that project as an act of improvisation. Actually, it's like a I quote weighing a lot. One of my favorite quotes as he says, composition is improvisation slowed down, and improvisation is composition sped up. And that's what that project was. Have you gone back to watch that after you've done? Thank you? No? No, No, I haven't. Why not, Well, it's it already happened, you know, it's like it already. It was a it was a thing that was all in a moment. It's like a kiss or a or a dance on a bridge that you didn't expect with a stranger. It happened, and the magic of it was that it was happening in real time, and then it wasn't going to happen again, and that everybody with us was with us in that moment, at that particular spot on the continuum of eternity. So yeah, I don't, I don't. I don't have any need to go back and look at it. What I compared to when I was watching clips of it was let it be, which is that's what the Beatles tried to do. They tried to show people how they were making an album. Oh cool. That's why I'm wondering if you'd sort of learned something about how you made music if you did that well. Part of the I guess impetus for opening up that process was to share the the ugly moments and the scary moments, and the risk and the yeah, the imperfections that go into making anything beautiful. So to let it be seen that most of the process of making the song was working with something that didn't really work, but you can hear how a seed of that then led to what it became. And I felt like that was something worth sharing in a moment where so much of what we interface with is polished and complete and kind of seems like it just like both dropped down glistening from the heavens. I was excited to share who I actually am, who we all actually are as creators, that that's most of who we are. The majority of what makes us performers and artists and creators is that process. The finished thing is only like the last one hundredth of the whole being, you know, But most artists they want to protected other nine nine. They don't want that out because that's the ugly part. So why do you want that out? I like that part. I wanted to celebrate that part, and you know, that's my element also the same way that performers get on stage and show their best stuff. They show like the best that they have to give to me. Me creating is my best stuff. That's why I wanted to share that as the performance, you know, which is kind of a jazz idea. I mean, probably more than more than pop. When did the singing start for you? I'm I'm you know, I was just thinking. I was like, is that really matter? I mean, probably eight or nine or ten. I feel like maybe we could talk about I don't know what's what's brewing now. I mean sinking started when I was out in the world, probably fifteen. And I feel like this particular moment in my life as a creator, I'm less interested in, like the origin, and I'm more interested in now as an origin point, you know. Okay, well let me reframe it. I'm interested in I'm interested in what's happened because I went back and read some early reviews and they'd say, oh, her slender voice as she sings along, And then you listen to these albums and you're like, no, that's like a powerhouse. Okay, I don't really think about my voice. I have to confess it's um, I really I practice, you know. I try to sing to build. I studied to sit to build capacity and different timbres and all that. But do you sing to compose? I do sing to compose. So you're working on this opera, Oh, yes, thank you, segu Are you singing those parts? Are you? I will sing in some capacity in this operation? No, I don't mean in the final I don't mean in the final product. I mean when you're working on it. Are you? Are you singing in your head? Are you singing out loud? Sometimes this process of igan opera is upside down inside out from how operas are usually mate. Because it took me so long to get the liberto written that Wayne already wrote all the music. So now we're reckoning with this incredible body of work, which is the music that he wrote sort of in these three acts already, and drawing story and language out from that. So in that case, sometimes I sing, but I'm actually trying to hear what an operatic voice would do with some of these lines. And there's a lot of speaking because some of the passages, the music functions as the environment and they're having a conversation recitative it's called, or sometimes just spoken through thinking about or further unpackaging that invitation to write what you wish for the opera seeks to interrupt the repetition of the same story being played out that's played out in this original myth. And I'm looking for a way that as a writer, I can even interrupt the way that the endings are usually created. Um, what's the colemanth of Ifagenia? So she's the one who gets her throat slit. Well, she's sacrificed so that the winds will return, and that Agamemnon and his brother and the fleet they've assembled to go recapture Helen can sail across the ocean to troy Um. And so it's the story before the Trojan horse story that we all know. Um. And by this process of making the opera has unlocked a question about who gets to tell the story, even me as a as a woman in the twenty first century, and it's a time when voices that have often been in the background now get to come up and and direct new narratives, new speculative narratives. We get to bring to the to the public arena, our stories that have been silenced for so long, even in the space I'm asking the question, how do we how do I how do we? How do I break the cycle of the tyranny of the individual voice of the storyteller? And I wonder what becomes possible in the telling of this story when figures, people, characters who are often scripted into storytelling opera singers or musicians or actors. What becomes possible when their voice is activated in the actual design of the story, in the telling of the story. That is really really challenging to do. It's beyond my capacity right now, but that's that's what we're reaching for. Who's telling the story now? Well, I am I mean and Euripides told it, and it's it's part of the odyssey, and it was surely a myth that had been passed on for generations before it got written down. But I am, I am really curious right now what happens when the ending isn't prescribed and instead of barreling towards what we've been told must happen, we say, no, what happens if we leave space for an unknown ending to emerge from us? I guess co creating in real time so that the sort that is the jazz Ethos isn't it. We're going to substitute chords, We're going to change it well, and all of those are just methods for approaching life in real time and improvising in response to what's actually happening. You know. It's not about like, oh, I'm going to change the chord because I'm a jazz musician. It's about while I have I have access to enough material that I can respond to what's actually happening from a large batch of possibility. I'm not I'm not fixed by what I've practiced. I'm not fixed by what I've learned is supposed to happen next. Oh that's it. Yeah, I'm not. I am not limited to what I've learned is supposed to happen next. That's the key to how how I want to break open the ending of this opera. Yes, right, I'm glad we're talking about this. That seems like a perfect place to stop. Yeah, yeah, amazing. All right, Well, thank you so much. Thanks es Bronze Spaulding for taking Tom away from cracking the story structure of our upcoming opera to talk with Bruce. You can hear all of our favorite Es Bronze is Spaulding songs by checking out the playlist for this episode at broken record podcast dot com. Broken Record is producing help from Jason Gambrel, Mia Lobelle, and Leah Rose for pushing industries our theme music spect Kenny Beats, I'm justin Richmond. Thanks for listening.