[ Sings indistinctly ] [ Imitates creaking ] ♪ It's very hard... ♪ Woman: The voice is such a unique instrument.

It is located in this place in your body where you have your heart below it.

You have your brain above it.

Only the sound of the voice, I think, can really go to those deep emotional places.

And when we hear that, there can be a greater compassion and understanding and community around the world.

♪ Ooooohhhh ♪ ♪ Oooh oooooh ♪ I was so excited to be a part of "Resonant Bodies" because it occupies a really special place in New York, giving people a platform to express themselves and also giving a kind of context to contemporary music, which is really exciting to me as it's been a big part of my career.

[ Singing opera ] So I wanted to represent basically composers that I'd worked with in an operatic context and that I'd had real contact with, you know, people who either had written the music for me or had worked on the music with me in some way.

And so I chose these six different composers.

And so I'm excited to both tell stories about working with these composers and my journey with them, what it's like to have the living composer there as you sing the music, as you develop the music, which is a totally different process and how that impacts all of the other music that I sing.

I think the collaborative nature of music is -- is often not really acknowledged.

Obviously, composers are in charge.

They're the boss.

But as they are writing for these different instruments, in my case, the voice, they want -- they really want the input of what you can do.

Sometimes it can take their composition farther because you have these superpowers and sometimes it limits what they have to do in that they can't have that note held over three bars.

It has to be held over two and a half bars because you have to breathe.

And then they can push the edges of that and extend your technique and what you're able to do.

[ Singing opera ] I think the fact that words are so important to all of the pieces tonight is what makes these pieces opera for me.

[ Singing opera ] Almost all of them are from an opera, a larger piece, but they all feel operatic in that there's a character and there's a dramatic embodiment in that text.

And what that does to the music, I think is really interesting.

Music can so quickly get me to a place of character, and especially because all of these pieces I've performed on stage in some kind of dramatic context, I have that kind of sense memory.

My goal for tonight is to find a way for each moment of each piece to really connect emotionally, not to feel like a concert.

It can't feel like an opera because there are no sets and there are no costumes.

But to feel like a really compelling emotional experience, even if it's only for two minutes at a time.

[ Singing opera ] I think a festival like this allows people access to things they didn't even know existed.

It's mining both the well-known people and the unknown people, throwing them together and allowing for discoveries on all ends.

[ Cheers and applause ] Hi, everyone.

I am so excited to be a part of this incredible festival and all of the different kinds of resonating that are happening are making me vibrate.

And I wanted to share some of the composers that I have worked with.

So tonight I'm gonna tell you a little bit about each piece, because I've chosen works by people I have met, I have talked to, and in some cases, they've written these things for me.

So it informs the whole way I approach it and the way I think about things.

And also I feel like, in general, as I look back to the baroque repertoire I do, we forget so often that these baroque composers were also working with human beings.

And so knowing that I've asked the composer to please make that note shorter or, you know, I think I can hold that longer or please make it higher.

All of these things have -- have created a repertoire.

And as we all expand outwards, it's important to also think about creating a new repertoire for the future.

So this first piece is by composer Gregory Spears, who I met when... Man: Whoo!

Whoo!

[ Laughter ] ...I was at Princeton, he was a grad student, and he was very mysterious.

And so we all would whisper about him and say, "Who is that grad student?"

and, "What's he up to?"

And we made friends.

He started writing music for me.

We had a little quartet together in our early 20s called The Owen Quartet, which has since disbanded, unfortunately.

But he wanted to really study voice and -- and how he could shape things for the voice.

So for this piece, he said to me, "You know, I'm writing a piece.

It's about -- it's this sort of operatic -- It's from a dance opera.

And it's about a guy who's half man, half wolf.

And he's struggling with that, you know, being torn in two."

And I said, "Oh, well, I'm singing 'L'Orfeo' right now, and there's this part where he starts on a B flat and Orfeo then makes these leaps upward."

And Greg said, "I love that.

Let's use that in different extreme ways.

And so that's what we've done in this aria where the half man-half wolf has been isolated from his pack and finds himself in the forest alone at night.

[ Piano playing "Fearsome This Night" ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ Fearsome ♪ ♪ This night ♪ [ Singing indistinctly ] ♪♪ ♪ Fearsome ♪ ♪ This night ♪ ♪ I am but a half-hearted thing ♪ ♪ Fearsome ♪ ♪ The fight ♪ [ Singing indistinctly ] ♪♪ ♪ This night ♪ ♪ This ♪ ♪ Night ♪ ♪ I am but a half-hearted thing ♪ [ Singing indistinctly ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Singing stops ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ Half of my heart thumps ♪ [ Singing indistinctly ] ♪ With white wolves' feet in both ♪ ♪ Night of a wolf ♪ ♪ And I ♪ [ Singing indistinctly ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Singing stops ] ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Singing resumes ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ Fearsome ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Oh, fear ♪ ♪ Some ♪ ♪ Fear ♪ ♪ Some ♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Cheers and applause ] I worked with composer Suzanne Farrin starting in, I think, 2015, and we did this residency and she was talking about these poems of Michelangelo.

Now, of course, I have never heard of his poems.

I knew his artwork.

So I was so engrossed in this particular subset, which she pointed out there was speculation that he wrote them about Tommaso, one of his models who he himself was fixated on.

And so he writes these crazy things.

"I wish I were like a worm so I could rub against a rock and shed my skin and make that skin into a garment for you."

[ Laughter ] Whoo!

It was steamy, crazy stuff.

And Suzanne has this incredible way of almost juxtaposing tonality with microtonality.

And I was learning so much from her and she was taking my instrument like, you know, a sort of flute or an oboe or all of these instruments she had more experience with and making different extended techniques with it.

But the scariest thing for me and for many singers is singing a cappella.

She said, "There's one piece I want to write and it's about the marble.

And we imagine this block of marble that Michelangelo faced like a blank slate."

And she said, "you know, it was the figure of Tommaso stuck in the marble trying to come out."

And, you know, famously he had this subtractive philosophy of you take things away until the figure emerges.

And in this piece, the consonants get stuck in the marble.

And I love that as she plays with different half tones.

So this is "Ne' Marmi."

[ Piano plays note ] [ Clears throat ] ♪ Si come ♪ ♪ Nella penna e nell'inchiostro ♪ ♪ E l'alto ♪ ♪ E 'l basso ♪ ♪ E 'l mediocre stile ♪ ♪ E ne' marmi ♪ ♪ L'immagin ricca e vile ♪ ♪ Secondo ♪ ♪ Che 'l sa trar ♪ ♪ L'ingegno nostro ♪ [ Cheers and applause ] I love extracting these little fragments, fragments from that larger piece Suzanne wrote called "La Dolce Morte," which we went on to do at the Met museum at the armory.

But even an aria, it's important to remember, is just a fragment we extract.

And each time I go back to these fragments, I remember this one thing a friend of mine said, which is that it's like breaking into an orange.

You know, when you put your thumb in, there's that little spray that releases and there's that fragrance that stays on your hands and in the air kind of magically, but you don't see it.

That's what happens each time I break into these fragments.

I remember the entire process of putting this together.

In this case, the next piece, I met the composer, Jimmy López, and knew he was to put me in his opera, "Bel Canto," but he hadn't written it yet.

But we met at the San Francisco Opera and he said, "Let's go for a drink."

And we went out for a very late night of drinking at the end of which he said, "I know I just met you, but I'm getting married and I want you to sing at my wedding."

[ Laughter ] And I said, "Okay."

I'm thinking he'd wake up the next morning and think it was a bad idea, but, in fact, he wrote me a piece for his wedding and in doing so, got to know my voice so well that the aria that went into the Lyric Opera's production of "Bel Canto" is something very special to me that harkens back to that marriage, to that drunken night, and also, of course, to this young terrorist, this young South American terrorist in "Bel Canto" who has been toting a gun around the entire night.

And all of a sudden, he climbs up on a ladder and we see him as if he's in the jungle on a tree saying, "I've been singing since I was a child and all I want is to sing, to sing like this Western woman, this diva who's been held captive here in the house.

That's who I really am, not this gun-toting man."

And it gives us the window into this supposedly evil guy, all of a sudden, in the middle of act 2.

So this is "La Voz de los Arboles" from "Bel Canto."

[ Piano playing "La Voz de los Arboles" ] ♪♪ [ Singing operatic song in Spanish ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Singing and music stop ] [ Cheers and applause ] It's funny how you meet people.

I was giving a talk at Princeton University, my alma mater, and there was this beautiful, redheaded woman and she approached me afterwards and she said, "We must know each other."

She turned out to be a dancer, a William Forsythe dancer.

She went on to work with a lot of different people, including students at Harvard, and said to me, one day, "You should work with this young composer.

He's barely 22.

His name is Matthew Aucoin."

And I said, "Okay."

We met up.

We started making music together.

He said, "I want to write something for you."

And now he's been commissioned by the Met and is writing an opera for the Met and has won a MacArthur and all of this.

And yet I always see him as this 22-year-old who I was working with trying to understand his kind of frenetic genius.

And so somehow, there's that relationship built into this Dante poem he set for me, which is about Virgil and Dante and the sort of professor and student and the ways in which they learn from each other and this incredibly magic moment.

And they know they're on sacred ground of some kind when he plucks a piece of grass and magically the grass regrows.

There's also a great deal of tension between them, in some cases, sexual tension, in other cases, a sort of desire to go beyond, to go to another place.

So this piece has an incredible amount of colors, an incredible amount of technical challenges, which Matt likes to throw me.

And I say, "I can't do it, I can't do it."

And -- and sometimes I can.

[ Laughter ] So we'll see if tonight's one of those nights.

But this is also an incredible way Matt has with the Italian language.

Somehow it was rooted deeply within him at a young age.

And so he colors it beautifully.

This is "This Earth" for [speaks Italian] [ Piano plays note ] [ Singing in Italian ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Cheers and applause ] I was in Helsinki and I was in the stomping ground, the homeland of Kaija Saariaho, and I was to sing one of her operas directed by Peter Sellars.

So you have the very diminutive exuberance of Peter Sellars... [ Laughter ] ...juxtaposed with the towering solemnity of Kaija Saariaho, which was very stressful.

[ Laughter ] And I would always, you know, it was remarkable because she had written this piece, it wasn't the premiere, but it was, I think, the second performance of it.

So she was changing things.

And I would go up and say, "Oh, uh, could I, uh, sing this note that way?"

And she would say, "Yes."

[ Laughter ] And I remember it all led up to this moment in the theater where she had put electronics on the voice, so there was all of this feedback that would happen.

And I am sort of playing a no-theater ghost who descends to have, as Peter Sellars called it, I think, ghost sex with someone from the real world.

And should I tell you the craziest story about it?

[ Audience murmuring in agreement ] I feel like it's a really inappropriate story, but I was with Davóne Tines, and this is the kind of story you can tell everything at "Resonant Bodies."

He's a wonderful baritone.

And we were sweating and we were singing this Kaija Saariaho piece together.

And Peter, you know, said, "You must at this moment come together and the energy between you and your lips just barely touch."

And so we did that on stage.

And as we pulled back, Davóne had been sweating so much and -- and emoting so much that a long string of snot... [ Laughter ] ...extended between us.

At which point, I-I was really struggling to keep it together.

He, of course, had completely lost it, but I was the one singing.

In order to try and not look at this shiny, lovely strand of gossamer snot... [ Laughter ] ...I attempted to swipe it away.

[ Laughter ] I had to do it in a kind of Peter Sellars... [ Laughter ] [ Cheers and applause ] It was one of the high points of my career.

But -- but I remember, as we were putting it together, there was one magical moment and it was this very excerpt, which is -- I can't say it's an aria, but it's so special to me in which everyone else, including Peter and his huge presence, had left the theater and Kaija asked, "Oh, could you stay one minute?

We will try just a couple of things with the sound technician."

And there I was in the Finnish National Opera with just Kaija Saariaho in her red scarf, perfectly upright and singing her music for her.

And it was very special, and it was this piece.

[ Piano playing "A Flute's Voice" ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ A flute's voice ♪ ♪ Has moved the clouds ♪ ♪ Of Shushinrei ♪ ♪ A flute's voice ♪ ♪ Has moved the clouds ♪ ♪♪ ♪ And a phoenix came out ♪ ♪ From the clouds ♪ ♪ They descend, descend with their playing ♪ ♪ They descend ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Pitiful ♪ ♪ Marvellous ♪ ♪ Music ♪ ♪ Music ♪ ♪♪ ♪ I have come down ♪ ♪ To the world ♪ ♪ World ♪ ♪ I have resumed my old playing ♪ ♪♪ ♪ And I was happy here ♪ [ Cheers and applause ] Thank you so much.

What's amazing to me is that there's a disparate musical style in all of these compositions and somehow the core of the human voice always remains the same.

And you hear it through these things, the sort of Olympic feats of the human body.

And I love that and I love it no more than in this next piece, which has become so dear to me as I ramp up into Philip Glass memento.

[ Audience cheering ] I hope you can all come to "Akhnaten" this fall at the Met.

It is -- it's a very special piece to me.

It's an incredible spiritual journey to the ancient world.

And that was really my introduction as a singer to Philip Glass.

And as I got deeper and deeper into it, as I decided I wanted to put some of it on an album that I was making, I was in London and I was biking to rehearsals.

And I found this piece that was originally written for The Roches -- a female trio in the '80s with lyrics by David Byrne.

And Glass clearly was inspired into something different from his normal fare, almost a sort of pop song.

And as it existed, it was not, um, classical.

But we asked Glass if we could make some arrangements for a 37-piece orchestra that normally played Baroque, and he said, "Yeah, go for it."

And that's what I love about him.

He's so open to... And I said, "Oh, you know, and in this piece, can we cut that and transpose it?"

"Yeah, no problem."

So I adore that.

And -- and in general, my sort of reverence for him is juxtaposed with the times I've actually hung out with him, including one pre-performance "Akhnaten" ritual, where I was, you know, being shaved and being put into gold leaf and all the things that happened before I go on stage.

And he walked in.

So we all kind of stood up, and I closed my bathrobe.

[ Laughter ] And I, you know, he looked as if he had something to say.

And so, you know, the makeup artist left, and he said, "So, um, uh, how do you practice?"

[ Laughter ] And I thought, "Oh, well, is this like a test?

Should I..." And I said, "Well, you know, with 'Akhnaten,' there's so many repetitions that really the only way I can get it in my head -- I can't make charts or numbers or count on my feet -- I have to just do it so many times, it's in my body.

And he said, "Yeah, me too.

I'm having this problem with my own music because I got to perform it next week and I just have to practice so much.

[ Laughter ] And I said, "Yeah, yeah.

Well, you did it to yourself."

So...

So he's just the most kind, wonderful soul.

And as singers, as composers, as singers and composers working together, the people we are, the relationships we have always come straight through the music to the audience.

This is "Liquid Days."

[ Piano plays note ] ♪ Oh, round desire ♪ ♪ Oh, red delight ♪ ♪ The river is blood ♪ ♪ The time is spent ♪ ♪ Ohhh ♪ ♪ The river is blood ♪ ♪ The time, the time is spent ♪ ♪ Is spent ♪ ♪ Is spent ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Ooh ooh ooh ooh ♪ ♪ Ooh ooh ooh ooh ♪ ♪ Ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ♪ ♪ Ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ♪ ♪ Ooh ooh ooh ooh ♪ ♪ Ooh ooh ooh ooh ♪ ♪ Ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ♪ ♪ Ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Love likes me ♪ ♪ Love takes its shoes off ♪ ♪ And sits on the couch ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Love has an answer for everything ♪ ♪ Love smiles gently ♪ ♪ And crosses its legs ♪ ♪ Well, here we are ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Well, here we are ♪ ♪ Sleep ♪ ♪ Sleep ♪ ♪ Sleep ♪ ♪ Sleep ♪ ♪ Sleep ♪ ♪ Sleep ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Being in air ♪ ♪ Turning to speak ♪ ♪ Losing our way ♪ ♪ Pour it all out ♪ ♪♪ ♪ We are old friends ♪ ♪ I offer love a beer ♪ ♪ Love watches television ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Love needs a bath ♪ ♪ Love could use a shave ♪ ♪ Love rolls out of the chair and wiggles on the floor ♪ ♪ Jumps up ♪ ♪ I'm laughing at love ♪ ♪ I'm laughing at love ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Drink me ♪ ♪ Drink me ♪ ♪ Drink me ♪ ♪ Drink me ♪ ♪ Drive breaths ♪ ♪ Drive sleep ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Why do you ask?

♪ ♪ Still is the night ♪ ♪ It is much further ♪ ♪ Than we thought ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Ooh ♪ ♪ Ooh ♪ ♪ Ooh ♪ ♪♪ ♪ In liquid days ♪ ♪ Land travels hard ♪ ♪ Fly home, daughter ♪ ♪ Cover your ears ♪ ♪ Ooh ♪ ♪ Fly home, daughter ♪ ♪ Cover your ears ♪ [ Cheers and applause ] [ Cheers and applause continue ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪