>> I've always been a fighter.

Kind of innate, a warrior spirit.

And you shouldn't have to have that to play music.

>> BOWEN: I'm Jared Bowen-- coming up on Open Studio, a new initiative takes on gender disparities in jazz.

Then it's Nixon in Gish Jen's China.

>> It just so happens that I started writing right after the opening of China, and that's just completely coincidental.

>> BOWEN: Plus the Frank Lloyd Wright homes of New Hampshire.

>> For him, architecture in a building like this was a work of art.

>> BOWEN: And we check out the literal underground music scene by way of New York's subways.

It's all now on Open Studio.

♪ ♪ First up, it's Grammy season.

The awards are April 3, but look at this year's jazz nominees and you'll find it's a very male-dominated list.

It's a reflection of jazz as a whole.

But Grammy-winning musician Terri Lyne Carrington is trying to change that by giving support to women and non-binary jazz artists.

The history of jazz has been marked mostly by men-- John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Jon Batiste.

Few and far between?

The Terri Lyne Carringtons of the jazz world.

>> I think the narrative has always been that men play the music and women sing it.

And that's been acceptable for many years.

>> BOWEN: Growing up in Medford, Massachusetts, with a musician father who played alongside the greats, Carrington was an early prodigy, turning to the drums at age seven.

Nearly four decades and three Grammy Awards later, Carrington is one of the most lauded jazz artists working today.

And her big break, she realized only recently, came from another woman.

>> I always thought I got this scholarship when I was 11 to Berklee because Oscar Peterson let me sit in with him.

And the president of the school heard me and they offered me a scholarship.

The part that I kept forgetting was that I was watching Oscar Peterson play sitting next to Ella Fitzgerald.

And when he finished, she took me up to him and said, "This young lady played with Clark Terry last night."

You know, "You should hear her."

So it was an interesting, you know, thing that, you know, I, too, made Ella invisible.

(chuckles) (playing jazz piece) >> BOWEN: Carrington is now carrying on what might be called the Ella effect.

>> You could consider things that are a little, like, bursts of sound and come back down.

(makes loud crashing sound, then softer, steady beat) >> BOWEN: When she's not performing, Carrington teaches at Boston's Berklee College of Music, where she's also the founder of the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice.

The organization's latest effort is called Next Jazz Legacy, and aims to support female and non-binary musicians.

>> We're hoping to shed some more light on the issue of gender inequity in the field and to have some pretty well-known artists step up and apprentice these young musicians.

>> BOWEN: Seven inaugural Next Jazz Legacy awardees have received both a grant and mentorship opportunities.

(playing jazz piece) >> BOWEN: Ivanna Cuesta Gonzalez is a drummer and composer who will be paired with Grammy-winning jazz musicians Wayne Shorter and Esperanza Spaulding for the next year.

>> I come from the Dominican Republic, so I will say we don't have the same opportunity like here, you know.

So you have to be really lucky to probably have someone that is going to show you, like, you can live, you know, doing music.

>> BOWEN: Anastassiya Petrova is another of the inaugural awardees, an emerging pianist and organist.

(playing fast jazz piece) >> BOWEN: Petrova hopes the program will cut through a bias she sees plaguing the industry.

>> I keep experiencing the same traumatic experience on stage, where people assume that if I'm a blonde girl, I dance or sing.

So I thought this program would give me the assets to fight with the world and to stand for myself.

>> BOWEN: Both Petrova and Cuesta Gonzalez also told us that male musicians have often dismissed their playing, saying that because they're female, they play, quote-unquote, "softer" than men.

>> It's hilarious and sad at the same time.

I'm not even mentioning about drummers.

They think, "Oh, yeah, the girl cannot hit the drum."

And we, we see all those amazing drummers.

And Terri?

(laughs): Monstrous.

(playing fast jazz piece) >> BOWEN: It's what Carrington calls the "extra baggage" of being a woman in jazz-- something she's seen drive women out of the industry entirely.

Something she successfully avoided.

>> I've always been a fighter.

It's just kind of innate, a warrior spirit.

And you shouldn't have to have that to be successful or to just play music.

You should be able to be your authentic self and still pursue your dreams.

(jazz piece continues) >> BOWEN: Next, writer Gish Jen.

In novels, short stories, and essays, she has captured the characteristics and conflicts of clashing cultures.

She does it again, and often hilariously so, in her new book of short stories called Thank You, Mr. Nixon.

The book offers a series of fictional tales spanning the 50 years since the opening of China, and coincides with Jen's own visits to the country.

Gish Jen, thank you so much for being with us.

>> Oh, my pleasure.

>> BOWEN: So tell me, what was germinating, what, what made you look at the span of time that we see in your book?

>> Well, you know, of course, it just so happens, very luckily for me, that I started writing right after the opening of China, and that's just completely coincidental.

So the first time I went to China was 1979 with my family.

Like many Chinese fam..., you know, Chinese immigrant families, were dying to go back, meet my mother's family and so on.

And so I went in '79, I went back in '81 to teach coal miners English in Shandong province.

And then I came back that summer, and that very fall, I started my MFA.

So, so all those impressions of China, and, you know, and all that grappling with what this all meant, that was all happening to me in real time as I was learning to write, you know?

And, and, of course, I've continued to write all these years.

And then I sat down during COVID, and I'm looking and I'm thinking, "You know, I should really do a collection."

And then all of a sudden, I realize, like, "Oh my God," and that, you know, kind of... We're coming up on the 50th anniversary of Nixon's first visit.

And suddenly I realized that I had had... You know, I had, I had kind of a record.

>> BOWEN: Well, what was it to chart that and to... To put it all together?

And you realize, as you're reading through, how much has happened, and obviously, we know from history how much has happened, but what it feels like what's happened.

>> Yeah, well, you know, of course, I was just writing the stories, and that's my job, to sort of record how people are feeling and what families are like.

And I'm writing during COVID.

COVID is going on and I'm realizing that I'm going to have to write a COVID story.

You know, that, you know, where all this stuff comes together.

>> BOWEN: It's interesting you say you have to write a COVID story, because I was struck by that, too, and wondering, what is it like to have to write in this time?

Something I think a lot of us just want to... You can watch some television shows and film and, where it never happened, but you chose to write about it.

>> In this case, you know, I, I myself was just aware of this very special pressures on families as they were kind of, you know, stuck in the apartment, you know, an apartment together or a house together.

And I'm very aware of the way all kinds of things are popping out, you know?

And as a, as a human, of course, I'm as dismayed as anybody.

But as a writer, I'm kind of excited.

(both laughing) Well, because we're always looking, you know, we're looking for that arc, or we're looking for something to pop out, you know, something which was latent, we want it to come to the surface.

And COVID, it turns out, was, you know, just the kind of accelerant, you know, that a, that a writer really lives for, one might say.

>> BOWEN: Well, what is it like to write at this time, when so many people are paying attention to Asian Americans in this country, and the violence, and how, how long protection's eyes were turned away from that, from that community?

>> Yeah, well, you know, that's a good question, too.

I mean, I think that, you know, when I sit down, I don't sit down to address any social problem.

But when I stand up, I'm aware that actually, you know, my work, you know, has a place in this whole picture.

And when I looked at this, this collection, I could see that, you know, just at a time when, when people do, you know, they are turning to stereotype and whatever, I can sort of say, maybe, "Read my book."

There's a lot of different kinds of Asian Americans in this book, you know.

(laughing) And they have their good points and their bad points.

I mean, but, you know, but they're, they're very human.

And also, you know, I write a lot about cultural difference.

And that's something that, you know, I think that, in a general kind of way, mainstream Americans are very uncomfortable with cultural difference, but I've, I've written a lot about it, I've thought a lot about it, and it is simply a fact of life.

And so, you know, to me, when I look at all the problems, I do feel like our culture will be better served if we had a better understanding of our culture and other people.

Like, what is that?

What is culture?

You know, why do we have it?

Why does it matter so much to us?

Why does it bother us?

And for me, I feel like, "Well, all right, here's my book; this is my contribution."

>> BOWEN: I'm wondering what the impact of your teaching in China over the years has had on your writing.

For people who might not know your biography, you weren't born in China, so it's a place that you visited.

>> Yes.

>> BOWEN: So, what is the influence?

What's the impact?

What have you drawn there?

>> I have Chinese parents, Chinese American parents, meaning they were born in China.

My parents actually came from, really, kind of 19th-century China.

Like, everybody, even Chinese would say, "Oh, they're very Chinese."

And, like, you know, for me... And that had a huge influence on, on the way I grew up and what I understood and what I, the way I thought.

I think I was looking for a part of myself.

You know, that, you know, every time I would go, I would understand a little bit more.

And so, and, you know, so I guess it's just sort of, say, for me, the opening of China, among other things, was a chance to grapple, you know, with, with my, with my own heritage.

I'm not just talking about the food, do you know what I mean?

It's a lot more than dumplings.

It's a lot more than dumplings.

(Bowen laughs) >> BOWEN: I love to go into people's process, and I was fascinated to learn about how you looked at the economy in your own writing.

Which is, I think you've described it as, you know, it could be considered a very Chinese style of writing, to have such economy.

To what do you attribute that?

>> This is a great example of, of a cultural persistence.

I learned a certain narrative style from my parents, do you know what I mean?

And I learned to, to value certain things, like non-verbal, non-verbal communication.

So if you think about Chinese landscape paintings, I'm sure you've seen, like, it's a very kind of resonant blankness.

And they really prize that.

You know, but the resonance-- it's not just blank, it's resonant, right?

And there's something about that, you know, which is so...

There's a quality about that, that silence or that blankness, which is so resonant, which, you know, it so speaks to so much that we feel which is ineffable and, you know, and, and beyond words.

And I don't want to say everything.

I want to say enough.

But I, but, you know, I want the reader to leave with the feeling that, you know what?

We cannot know everything about these people's lives.

We cannot know everything about what history has done to us, what it means to us.

And that's okay.

Not only is it okay... Yeah, it's part, it's what I'm trying to express as a writer and as a human.

>> BOWEN: Well, I want to end on, on a humorous note, which is your humor, and especially given how much you talked about your family... First of all, the first story in Thank You, Mr. Nixon, this girl writing from heaven to President Nixon in hell, in his-- is it pod?

Is that what... His pool in hell?

>> He's in a pit.

>> BOWEN: A pit.

>> In a pit, because it's hell.

>> BOWEN: In his pit.

>> The ninth ring.

>> BOWEN: It's hilarious.

Did you grow up... Did you come up from a funny family?

It's... Now I'm doing the thing you're not supposed to do, asking a serious question about humor, but... >> It was... You know, I have to say that I think it's genetic, in my case.

My father just has a great sense of humor.

And don't get me wrong, I think also growing up with somebody like that, then it is developed, right?

But I think, I think I have my father's sense of humor.

I can see it in my son, as well.

And in particular, my father was always very amused by incongruity.

You know, when things are just, like, you know, one person is in one reality and the other person is in another reality, like... And that particular kind of humor is extremely helpful for an immigrant, especially, you know?

Because you are often confronted with one person in this reality and this person, you know... (chuckles) >> BOWEN: Is it a mechanism for you?

>> I don't think so.

You know what I think?

I think it really is just...

It's like a fil...

It's like the...

It's just a way of seeing things.

And, frankly, the world is funny, you know?

Well, because it's funny, because, in fact, we construct our reality.

But then we all believe in our own construction.

And because we do that, the potential for something to be funny is always there.

Right?

Right?

It's always, it's always there.

We take ourselves way too seriously.

>> BOWEN: Well, Gish Jen, it has been fabulous to be with you.

Thank you so much.

>> Oh, my pleasure.

♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: What 100 words would you use to describe your community?

How others have done it tops Arts This Week.

Sunday at Symphony Hall, Boston Children's Chorus honors Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., with its 19th annual Tribute Concert, rescheduled from January.

Boston in 100 Words presents posters featuring the winners of its annual short story competition, on view at Bentley University's RSM Gallery.

See and read the stories for yourself Monday.

Tuesday, Belmont World Film is your virtual passport to global cinema.

Register to stream France's The Heroics, the latest installment in the ongoing international film series.

Back Together Again is a Merrimack Repertory Theatre concert featuring the music of Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway.

Performed by a real-life husband and wife, see it Wednesday.

Thursday, a new installation computes how technology and labor come together.

See Matthew Angelo Harrison's Robota at M.I.T.

's List Visual Arts Center.

In Manchester, New Hampshire, there are not one but two homes designed by starchitect Frank Lloyd Wright.

They're both on the same street and open to the public, courtesy of the Currier Museum of Art.

Tickets for this year's tours have just gone on sale, so here's a story we first brought you last fall.

On a New Hampshire street dotted with traditional New England homes, there are two very different ones.

Built more than 60 years ago, when the neighbors cried, "There goes the neighborhood," at least it was going to architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

>> There was quite a stir at the beginning.

They referred to it pejoratively as the chicken coop, but today they've embraced it.

>> BOWEN: It is the Zimmerman House, built for a married couple in 1950 and echoed just a few houses down in a home built for the Zimmermans' friends, the Kalils, five years later.

Both mark a moment when the aging Frank Lloyd Wright, one of America's most celebrated architects, believed he still had much to say.

>> He was influenced by prairie architecture, but also by Japanese architecture.

>> BOWEN: Alan Chong is the director of the Currier Museum of Art, which inherited the Zimmerman home, fully intact, in 1988.

It purchased the Kalil house in 2019, the first time it had ever come up for sale.

>> We regard these two houses as works of art, so they're technically part of the collection.

We maintain them for the public for the future.

>> BOWEN: Both couples, busy, childless professionals working in the medical field, wanted homes that would be modern, but also feel warm.

So they reached out to Wright.

Then in his 80s, he was re-engaging in residential design.

Kurt Sundstrom is the Currier Museum's senior curator.

>> He saw this opportunity after World War II, with people buying homes, the getting out of the Depression, that there was an opportunity to create beautifully designed homes for the middle class.

>> BOWEN: Even if from the front and to the neighbors' chagrin, it didn't look that way.

>> If we look at the street view, the façade of this building, it's like a militaristic building.

It very keeps much the privacy in of the individual.

But then when you look outside, you have this magnificent open glass wall that leads on to these beautifully designed gardens.

And those colors integrate beautifully with this building.

So what is actually a small home feels expansive in this environment, but also very protected from the outside world.

>> BOWEN: In all elements of the home, Wright and his design team were all in.

Surviving letters reveal the couple gave the architect free rein, right down to their stationery and a music stand for the music lovers.

>> He designed everything.

For him, it was the whole, rather than, "I'll just build the house and then you guys can furnish it whatever way you want."

Architecture, in a building like this, was a complete work of art.

You can see, even in the woodwork, the level of detail is extraordinary.

This is Georgia cypress.

He takes planks, and the planks are married when they turn a corner, so they're the same piece of wood.

>> BOWEN: Wright designed both the Zimmerman and Kalil homes while also working on the Guggenheim Museum in New York City.

All three projects are similar in that they adhere to his philosophy of "organic" architecture.

>> These houses are of the earth.

The house almost seems to rise out of the landscape, and you'll see in both houses, certain areas of the house go below grade.

So that integration right into the landscape is essential for these homes.

>> BOWEN: The houses were also studies in simplicity.

Or at least they were supposed to be.

As the Currier's Andrew Spahr explains, they were designed under a system Wright called Usonian Automatic.

>> Well, Usonian was sort of his play on the United States of America, and Usonian was his philosophy for building these houses and villages, cities.

And Automatic was intended to imply that the owner could construct the house.

>> BOWEN: By way of a builder's roadmap, not unlike LEGOs.

>> There are approximately 12 or 13 different, distinct blocks that were designed to construct this house.

There were only seven of these houses built, ultimately, and the owner or the contractor would construct molds, and would then cast these concrete molds to make the blocks.

And you would do a tally as to how many of which kind of blocks you needed to construct the house.

>> BOWEN: To be clear, both the Zimmermans and Kalils hired builders.

And for the subsequent decades they lived in their homes, the couples kept them just as both they and the architect wished, so that two of Frank Lloyd Wright's final projects could also be lasting ones.

>> Their home, they recognized they were only temporary owners, and that it needed to be passed on, and it's the way you buy a work of art, you know?

Someone, a private person buying a Rembrandt, you're just a temporary custodian.

And that's why the Currier is so fortunate to have two homes showing two different aspects of a similar type of home that he was designing.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: Now we meet an aspiring physician turned street musician.

Medical student Iain Forrest explores the healing powers of music, using his electric cello to connect with his fellow New Yorkers.

(plucking out tune on cello) (plucking slowly) >> I started cello in fourth grade, when our music teacher came around with a cart of instruments.

So I picked up the cello and I played the first note, which was a really low, resonant note, and I just loved the sound of it, that bass note.

After high school, me and a friend, we actually went out to the streets of Washington, D.C., and we started playing contemporary songs.

And I remember the reaction of people walking past on the streets.

It struck me like, "Hey, this could be really something special here."

(plays final note) After college, I moved up here to New York City area for medical school at Mount Sinai.

And one of the things that drew me to New York City was obviously the culture that we have of the arts.

And as soon as I came here, I saw street musician after street musician, and I immediately thought this could be my next home.

That's when I looked up MUNY, Music Under New York, and I found out they had a whole audition process.

Sent them an application, did the audition.

(playing "Despacito" by Luis Fonsi) And thankfully, everything worked out, and now I can call myself a street musician in New York City.

And the reason why I chose Eyeglasses is because of two reasons.

So I want to be an ophthalmologist.

I want to help people see better, specifically kids who have lost their vision at a young age.

The second reason, which is a bit more lighthearted, is that Beethoven, he wrote a piece called "Eyeglasses Duet."

When the musicians sat down and read the sheet music in front of them, there were so many notes on it, it was such a tricky, difficult piece to play, that the only way musicians could read the music was if they wore really, really strong glasses.

So I absolutely love the story behind that.

I took inspiration from that.

(vibration resonates) So I play the electric cello, and it's made by Yamaha.

And it's the exact same four strings as an acoustic cello.

The only difference is, they stuck a little pickup inside the electric cello, so it can be amplified, so it's louder.

(playing intro to "Despacito") What I love to do is also use a looper.

So essentially what I do is, I'll play a bass part, a percussion part, a harmony part on the cello, and then I can loop that segment over and over again.

So it essentially comes down to, I'm playing nine or ten different cello parts at the same time.

So it just opens up a lot of doors as to what I can do musically.

(playing "Despacito") I've had people come down, they come off their subway, they come up to me, like, "Where's the orchestra?"

And I'm, like, "No, it's just, it's just me.

One electric cellist."

(playing "Viva la Vida" by Coldplay) (song continues) So unfortunately, there's not much sheet music out there for, like, nine cellos to play, like, pop songs or rock songs.

So, yeah, oftentime, I'll just hear a song on the radio or on Spotify, and then once I've listened to it a couple of times, I kind of extrapolate it out and try to create, you know, a cello rendition of it.

(song continues) Amongst all that kind of, like, chaotic energy of people, you know, bustling and the crowds moving, I think the best part of that is just seeing how the music impacts these people who, you know, are, either have their headphones on, just watching their phone, trying to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible, and then just seeing them being able to stop, just enjoy the moment for what it is.

(playing slow song) In medicine and music, you really have to connect with the human being sitting in front of you.

Helping to uplift them with music, I find it actually makes me a better medical student and hopefully a better doctor down the road, too.

(song slows) (song ends) (applauding) Thank you, guys.

♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: And that is all for this edition of Open Studio.

Next week, actor Richard Thomas takes on a lion in literature playing Atticus Finch.

>> He's not a sort of a distant, righteous king figure.

He's a man going through a real, a real change in his life.

>> BOWEN: And the world as painter Barkley L. Hendricks photographed it.

>> Part of the revelation of what he's doing in photography is that we get to see the world through his eyes.

>> BOWEN: Remember, you can always visit us online at GBH.org/OpenStudio.

And you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter, @OpenStudioGBH.

I'm @TheJaredBowen.

We leave you now with the Boston College Marching Band.

They took over the Citizens Bank Opera House recently for a very apropos rendition of Phantom of the Opera.

It's also a testament to how, during the pandemic, the band played on.

I'm Jared Bowen, thanks for watching.

(playing "Think of Me") (song continues)