Renée Fleming is a world renowned singer and 2023 She is a powerful advocate for research at the intersection of arts, health, and neuroscience.

In her latest book, Music and Mind: Harnessing the Arts for Health and Wellness, Fleming has gathered essays from leading scientists, artists, therapists, and educators about the powerful impact of music and the arts on health and the human experience.

Renée Fleming is joined in conversation by Richard Powers, a MacArthur Fellow, and a fellow of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Author of 13 novels.

Powers was awarded for 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Overstory.

Recorded at the University of Louisville Kentucky Author Forum, this is Great Conversations, Renée Fleming and Richard Powers.

[applause] I feel a high note coming on.

Aaaaa.

Speaking of which, Renée, sitting here, you know, six-feet from you in my concert black.

[Laughs] on either side of this magnificent partner's .. on a set that could come out of Richard Strauss opera production.

Capriccio.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm triggered and I'm remembering a dream from my 20s that was so traumatic, I can still remember it after 40 years.

I'm in a concert hall, you know, much like this one.

It's filled with eager expectant people, hundreds of them.

There's electricity in the air.

The music starts up and it's like nothing I've ever heard.

It's like some other planet.

What are those instruments?

Wait, how does that counterpoint work?

What is this key progression?

It's astonishing.

It's ravishing and then a soprano starts singing and it's the most gorgeous voice I have ever heard.

It's just transporting and everything goes south in a heartbeat when I realize I'm standing next to her on the stage.

[Laughs] The piece is a duet and I'm supposed to sing the tenor line.

[Laughter] And I'm a bass.

This is good.

I'm thinking at least I have my clothes on.

[Laughs] That's a classic, classic.

Yeah.

I don't .. novel in progress and all the pages are going all over the floor?

Well, no, that's the amazing thing about your deam.

But I have those nightmares all the time.

Oh, really?

The singing ones.

They were, in fact, it got to the point where I knew that I was procrastinating about preparing something or learning something when I started having those nightmares.

It's opening night and what language is this opera...?

What is it?

Right.

What am I supposed to do?

I don't have a costume, you know.

Fantastic.

All manifestations of it.

It's great to know that someone can reach the very, very top, and still discover in her sleep that music is capable of taking you from ecstasy to terror, from one measure to the next.

[Laughs] Absolutely.

Yeah.

That's why it's called "performance."

Yeah, I guess.

So, I won't be joining your world anytime soon, but tomorrow you will be joining mine again for the second time.

Happy Publication Eve.

It's gotta be a fabulous feeling to see this second book into the world.

Yeah, it is, it is really exciting.

In fact, I looked back at the calendar and realized that this started in the summer of '21.

Yeah, the book itself is, is already, you know, the process of the book is already more than two years.

Yeah.

But it is also part of this longer process that you've been involved in now for almost a decade.

Right.

That the book grows out of the sound health initiative, this cooperation between the Kennedy Center and the National Institute for Health.

And apparently that whole journey, although it may even have longer antecedents, which you can tell us about.

But that whole journey nine years ago started on a very, very tense evening at a very nerve wracking dinner party in Washington.

Can you tell us about it?

Right, right.

It's when I met Dr. Francis Collins actually.

So, my hus.

Longtime director of the NIH.

Right.

This is 2015.

We were invited, my husband and I, to an auspicious dinner party at sort of the, one of the most exclusive restaurants on the outskirts of Washington.

And so, of course, I said, "Let's go.

This will be great."

Otherwise, you know, the Little Inn in Washington, and we show up and there are -- it's not one but three justices, Sir Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Antonin Scalia, and Kennedy was also there, Anthony Kennedy.

And so I was seated between Ginsburg and Scalia.

Which you don't wanna do at any dinner time.

[Laughter] Well, they were, you know, opera fans and this was literally the week that marriage equality was decided and they were not particularly getting along.

Yeah.

You know, that week.

[Laughs] So in fact, there's a great video of her talking about it how scathing his rebuttal was.

And so I said to, I found time to meet Francis and say, why are scientists studying music?

You know, I would say sure they have better things to do.

And he said we want because we have this brain institute, we wanna learn about the brain.

So we had that conversation.

I had just started at the -- was having conversations with the Kennedy Center about becoming an advisor.

It and, he brought his guitar and so we started singing, there was a band, a trio there and we started singing together everything we knew and, and everybody relaxed, we went outside.

It was a beautiful night.

Everybody sang along and, and the, the really the combination song was the times they are a changing.

Which for that particular weekend was perfect?

And so we started collaborating.

I just love this image of Scalia and Ginsburg singing the water is wide.

I can't go to war together.

[Laughs] Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah, all of it.

Amazing.

I mean, it was this land is your land.

And because Francis really has, he comes with a book, he comes with the guitar and the book like, like his own fake book.

So he was predisposed to this idea that music and health were tightly linked.

And of course, there was a fair amount of research already in 2015 to establish the beginnings of our understanding of how that might work.

Right But he also knew that there was a lot of work to do as a musician.

He was willing to put his own reputation and, and authority on the line.

But I was stunned to learn in the book that of the 27 institutes that are in the National Institute of Health portfolio, all the little subgroups that have their own specialty in their own domain and their own point of concentration.

That 22 of them when they asked said we see a role for music in our portfolio.

Right.

It was incredible that.

That's extraordinary.

Yeah.

That there had never been a collaboration like that.

Yeah.

With the NIH.

Yeah.

You know, these organizations are relatively siloed.

Yeah.

Because they're studying more specific focus things.

And so to date.

Now, $30 million has been devoted to research.

Yeah.

With the NIH.

From, stems all from that evening.

That's fabulous, yeah.

Accept your invitations to dinner parties.

[Laughs] [Laughs] And, and sing when the guitar starts playing.

Exactly, yes.

Well, you know, I, I imagine after that project got off to such a wonderful start and so many a agencies buying in and so much money being made available to researchers that you would be inclined to doing a kind of survey of the state-of-the-art.

And the, the idea for the book presented itself to you.

But my guess is if that you are at all, like if your experience was at all like that of so many colleagues of mine who said I'm gonna edit a collection that you were a little surprised coming out.

[Laughs] That your idea going in was a bit naive about how much time and effort might be involved.

I do so many things in my life out of ignorance.

Yeah.

I mean, the, even the first book, I had no idea the book The Inner Voice that I wrote with Ann Patchett.

I had no idea how time consuming that was going to be.

Yeah.

But this one I thought, oh, this will be great, I'm gonna get everyone else to write their chapters.

They'll do all the work.

Exactly.

I was, I was taking a page from David Rubenstein who puts out one of these, every six months.

Right.

Because he has a television show and he interviews them, but he edits everything, et cetera.

It has been so time consuming and so much work, but a real labor of love.

And, and, and it must just have been astonishing how much there was to learn.

Not just about making the book.

Right.

But what these folks had to say.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah.

You have 41 chapters.

Alrighty, I know.

It's an incredibly wide net that you've cast and there's reasons for that, that I'm sure we'll get to.

But you know, because some of these pieces have multiple authors.

You were working with 58 authors.

Right.

And I'm an author.

[Laughs] And you know, my idea of hell.

Are you saying you're a diva, you're saying you're [diva]?

I'm saying my idea of hell is trying to get any four authors to meet a deadline.

I mean, you know?

Yeah, yes.

Let alone to coordinate with each other about how it might be done.

58 authors.

Yeah, it took a while, it took a while.

I have wonderful people in my office who helped me tremendously with all of those logistics.

But, but deciding what kind of pillars that I wanted to put into the book and then who could represent them.

And frankly, even since we started on this book, the whole field has become so much bigger.

Yeah.

Right now, it would be an overwhelming... Yeah.

...task I think.

So this is more focused than based on my experience until then.

But yeah, it, it's, I'm glad it's big.

I wanted it to be big.

My thinking behind this was I wanna give a gift to this sector.

Yeah.

I really want to say to the public, you're my public really.

You will find this work fascinating.

And it, its subject matter is big, huge and it's this interconnectivity that the, the endless ramifications of what music can do for us inside our lives at every level that you come away with.

When you read the book, I mean, in a way you set out to do this sort of foundational thing to say, I'm gonna write a book that would, or I'm gonna get these other folks to write a book.

[Laughs] Probably have been easier to write it yourself, you know.

Yes.

But the, the idea that you, at the end of the day, you would have a book that could function as a kind of formative foundational survey of all the directions that music can go in, in.

I really wanted to show the breadth of what was happening in the field.

So this is why we also have architecture represented by Liz Diller.

We have on John Chatterjee and visual art and, and of course, dance from Parkinson's with Mark Morrison and David Leventhal.

So, so I really, I wanted to give the, the whole full is full of spectrum as I could.

Yeah.

And also presenting in terms of accessibility for the audience, not just scientists and hardcore science, but really artists as well, in our perspective.

And practitioners, clinicians, therapists.

Educators.

Yeah, education is a big, a big chunk of the book as well.

All right.

No, I'm really proud of it and I'm glad I did it.

I'm really glad.

Yeah, I am too.

I, you know, and while it may be complicated enough, let's say so, you know, some of the chapters are more technical than others.

And long enough that not everyone is gonna read it cover to cover, you can read it to cover, to cover because I did it and it's magnificent that the accumulative sense.

First of all, the number of times that I cried, you don't expect to cry very much at a foundational work of, you know, science and social science.

But the number of moving stories that these practitioners have in these chapters.

Me too.

Are a bit shocking.█ Yes, yes.

I agree.

And inspiring so much inspiration.

Yeah.

From people who, who really built something from scratch, who saw a need in their community and created you know, Sanford in Philadelphia and Francisco Nunez and then in New York.

And it's just really, and Tom Schweitzer and, and him struggling with Long COVID at the same time being an incredible visionary about what, what type of music therapy organization could, could really alter his entire, entire community.

And the stories of people making recoveries that you would not expect them to be able to make under the auspices of music, just, you know, deeply moving time and time.

Yes.

Well, Roseanne Cass' chapter is heroin.

Absolutely heroin.

I had no idea that she went through that.

I, I can, can you imagine for decades?

Yeah, yeah.

So, she had, she was misdiagnosed for a number of years until finally, somebody said you have cry one which is a malformation of the brain.

And ultimately, she had surgery and then the recover.

The chapter is a lot about her recovery to how to regain her music after the surgery.

I mean, what a, what a harrowing situation.

Yeah, and how important music was for her to, to.

Right.

To go through that ordeal and survive it.

Yes.

Yeah.

So, so my experience of of reading cover to cover, I mean, I, I mean, you, you've said that your first language was music.

I can't make that claim, you know, as strongly as you can, but it was certainly a of early language for me.

And I, I sang forever and, and throughout my life, I played several instruments.

You know, I wrote three novels about music.

I came out of the book at the end thinking I've misunder -- I've underestimated music.

I've misunderstood music.

Oh, my.

And there's more to it.

From you.

That's amazing So...

It, it's amazing.

And I, and I think we're just at the beginning.

I mean... Oh it is.

It's baby, it's baby steps at this point.

But the time of our singing, I could not believe you writing about the art of the recital in that book.

And I just kept sending it to people saying, don't we wish critics could write like this, it would, it would revive the entire art form.

You know, it was just so extraordinary.

But, you know, having, having that visceral experience while reading made the, the science more powerful for me too.

There's a, there's a wonderful way in which art and science corroborate and create symbiotic relationships inside the book in the same way that the practitioners identify those processes in the field.

So, you know, the, the book got off to a real bang for me as far as, you know, reconsidering what I think music does to us.

In these first chapters.

I mean, Aniruddh Patel talks about whether we are actually evolved musical creatures and, you know, there's a long standing debate, you know, between Darwin on the one hand who said, yes, we, we have to, the music has to be something that we have all just like walking and speaking, you know, and William James who sort of articulated the opposite idea that music grew up as a kind of frill as a kind of happy accident of these other things, these other survival adaptations that we made.

And it's just a sort of serendipitous thing that we enjoy it so much.

And I always kind of lean toward James.

I don't know, you know, what, what, what you're thinking on this was prior to the research.

So well, I didn't know that you the learning curve for me from the first day of sitting at the NIH and hearing two days of, of lectures, including Ani, he was one of them was just it blew my mind.

Yeah.

Because I didn't even know what research was.

I didn't know that, music therapy was, had all this training behind it.

Yeah.

There was so much I didn't understand that.

I just assumed that if something worked, it would be accepted.

Right.

But it's this micro, micro building of, of evidence.

over time that really makes things come to life.

But I now really firmly believe that we evolved for music because... Yeah.

█singing, predating speech by a long time.

And that's what he says, that convergence of evidence in at least five different fields suggests that we may have been using music to communicate long before we could make words.

Right?

I mean, when you think Neanderthals had the same vocal mechanism that I do and I always think, well, what were those operas like?

[Laughs] Yeah, exactly.

And, and, and in fact, you know, I mean, he, he doesn't get into the this but you know, the, the, the notion that we were making musical instruments 35,000 years before we started doing agriculture.

Right, yes.

40,000 years before we started to write.

The bone flute.

I know it's remarkable.

Yeah.

And, and also I was just in India and I, I watched a couple of, I was trying to really learn about Indie before I went on holiday.

And one of the things I discovered is that there are monks who are singing chants.

And when linguists really came to try and figure out what it is that they were saying and what this language was, they eventually said it predates speech.

Yeah.

It's from animals.

Yeah.

So, and they're still singing them today.

Yeah.

But the, the point is that I I think this mimicry probably of birds and, and other animals both, you know, for also for survival as well as for beauty.

Yeah, and, and some of the things that it allows us that the adaptive advantages that it gives us are things that we've forgotten.

Like how, how rapidly we can communicate emotion using pitch sets, you know, that we can't do in words and how something so simple that, that Ani does talk about as beat synchronization.

The fact that I can clap my hands and you can match that pulse,.

Yes.

Which we can, you know, all primates must be able to do that.

They cannot.

No, no.

They cannot.

The only [parrots] I think in us.

Yeah.

The fact that you can -- no, I shouldn't go down this road because all of a sudden we'll be singing our duet.

[Laughter] But you can.

The dream, the dream is coming back.

It was me.

Time to wake up, Richard.

That you can sing a pitch and I can match that pitch in octave lower.

Right, right.

How does that happen at half the frequency of what you're singing, right?

Yes.

And, and if you transpose a song to another key, I instantly recognize it as a song.

Well, you know, you could, you, you intuitively you'd think, well, take a bird song and transpose it up a third, the bird's gonna respond to it.

It does not.

No.

No.

Yeah, it's interesting.

You know, and Ani, I think recently was studying dogs.

Yeah.

So he was looking for howling dogs.

Yeah.

To see if they could switch pitches.

Yeah.

And transpose their howling.

Yeah.

I don't know where he is in the study, but it's really interesting.

So if you have any howling dogs, you send them to Tufts.

But to move from that to Daniel Levitin's piece where he starts to talk about what's actually going on in the brain when we make music, when we listen to music.

Just fabulous.

He's such a great communicator too.

Yeah, I mean, his book, "This Is Your Brain On Music," you know, was.

It introduced most of us.

Yeah.

█to the idea that music is a brain.

That these are deep seeded things.

Connected, yeah.

Yeah.

Did you like this thing?

You know.

So the idea is that sight, the brain breaks music down into primitive things and, and, and has specialized regions for dealing with those primitives, but then it builds it up slowly in larger and larger networks.

So you have a little pitch center.

I mean, I love this.

He, he says there are what he calls to topic maps in the pitch center of the auditory cortex, so that a few neurons over here are specialized in recognizing C and just next to them, a few other neurons are specialized in recognizing C-sharp.

So there's a little piano keyboard on your audit.

Isn't that wild?

It's amazing.

Yeah.

Edward Chang now at UCSF is doing studies like this.

Yeah.

You know, patients have to agree to it because it happens during brain surgery.

But we're eventually gonna be able to map all of this.

Yeah, yeah.

And then there are centers for duration and loudness and timbre and those get put together into every kind of musical expression and articulation that we have.

It's so complex.

Yeah.

it's amazingly complex.

But here's the, the wild takeaway that I was really knocked out by in his chapter.

He says the -- starting with those four primitive regions and building up our ability to understand music that music as a stimulus or as an activity continues to register to connect network wise and synapse onto every area of the brain.

Right.

...that we have mapped.

Every known mapped area of the brain.

I love this.

I repeat this a lot.

It is really remarkable and there are -- I don't think there are other activities like that.

Several of your authors say they can't think of another stimulus.

Now, I think we have to make an exception for dance because dance and music are, are really tightly connected, but in a way, they're not entirely separable because when you think that the auditory cortex synapse is directly on to the motor cortex, that the thing that moves our muscles.

Right.

What your researchers are saying is that when you hear music, you're already dancing.

Yes.

That motor cortex is already being stimulated.

Well, and what I love too is that you feel the rhythm before you're cognitively aware of it.

Yeah, yeah.

So, I mean, this happened to me on a street in, in Lithuania.

I was walking down the street and I thought, well, this woman across the street, we're walking in rhythm with each other.

Why is that?

And then I heard the music coming out of the bar.

Right.

And I went, wow, we're in with this music that we weren't aware of.

Yeah, you're not, you're not telling yourself to walk that -- No, the body felt it.

Right, right.

It's coming directly from the auditory cortex into the, into the motor cortex.

But this is why this is so good for us and has so many kind of eventual sort of advantages in health care.

Is it, is it because it's so complicated and because it has such an effect on us, it's really in the air, it's in our DNA and it's something that's kind of we're just not getting how important it is for us to utilize this?

And, and that's what the light bulb that went on for me by you know, by the time I finished this book, you know, for to hear these researchers say when you listen to or make music, you are in deep conversation with the frontal lobes, the part of the brain that does cognition.

Right.

...perception, memory, motion, attention, social cohesion, emotion, everything that the brain does, the music net network can do.

That's, that's a really amazing list.

Yeah.

Because using those things is, is what we're using for so many disorders.

So much development for children.

Right, right.

...for mental health, for so many different Parkinson's, Alzheimer's.

All of those things because it's mapped in so much of the brain.

In fact, if you start to think of music as this master system, whose function is to integrate all these disparate little committees in the brain, then of course, it's gonna have to be central to our idea of health.

Well, and, and rhythm is really the basis of it.

You know, when in the womb, Children are hearing the.

That's right.

...heartbeat and hearing so much of the body functions that are rhythmic.

Naturally.

It's all rhythm and language is rhythm.

Yeah.

There's so many wonderful kind of illustrations drummers who kind of beat out.

Oh my goodness, yeah.

...language.

Yeah.

So yeah, it's really it's my friend, Susan Magsamen says, who wrote, "Your Brain on Art," last year?

It's a beautiful book.

She said it's the elephant in the room.

Yeah.

That it's everywhere, it's all around us.

And yet we haven't really quite.

Yeah.

...zeroed in on it.

Well, you know, as more than one of your authors says, health and healing and the word whole, w-h-o-l-e are all etymologically linked.

And if the goal of health is to make the person whole, then of course, you're gonna be using this system that touches upon the entire brain.

The whole brain music is ubiquitous throughout all the systems.

Yeah, I heard a very moving speaker last week who is in palliative care and he said, very simply.

He said he brings in music therapy and, and things get unlocked.

People are able to let go.

Yeah.

Spouses are able to let their spouses go.

Yeah.

And he said medicine treats disease, but not necessarily human beings.

Let me just give my list of specific medical interventions, challenges that have been shown to benefit from musical mediation.

And you tell me if there's anything in the book that I've missed problems with movement.

Movement, yeah.

So Parkinson's stroke.

Right.

Closed head trauma that music in particular rhythmically amplified.

Therapy.

Yeah.

Can get people who cannot walk to walk.

Right.

Problems with speech.

The use of song to get people who are heavily aphasic who can't say their own names.

Melodic intonation therapy is one of my favorite and it's really phenomenal to see and it can work in one session.

Yeah.

Someone who's had a stroke can begin to communicate in one session with a therapist.

Yeah, it's mind blowing, cardiovascular health.

You have a writer who says that 15 minutes a day, sitting in a chair singing can improve your arterial health.

It's exercise for people who are in some form of cardiac failure because they're so sedentary.

Yeah.

And singing.

I'm happy to say is that is exercise.

Yeah.

So endothelial and vascular function improves.

Yeah.

Dementia and memory problems.

There, there's an incredibly moving story of a, of a woman who used to play violin Sonatas with her husband who could not recognize her husband who was terrified and anxious when he arrived.

And when he played the music that they used to play together, her whole facial expression changed.

She made eye contact with him and knew who he was and, and recognized him through this, this memory that, that was resistant to.

It's the last memory to go musical memory and people who have seen this and they many.

Yeah.

,,,are so they just know somebody came up to me at the end of the night of the honors and said, I heard one of your presentations and we, our father was in late stages of, of dementia Alzheimer's and he was sundowning and really difficult.

We were having such a hard time with him.

And then I heard you and I remembered that he loved opera and we started playing opera and he's completely different.

Yeah.

He's completely different.

He's calm, he's relaxed.

The quality of life addition that, that, that adds to.

.not only the people suffering from the disease, Yes.

...not only the people suffering from the disease, but those around them who are taking care of them.

And an incredible return on investment.

Yeah.

Just having a music therapist.

Yeah.

Absolutely, right.

Other mental illness, including suicidal tendency.

Oh, I've, I've heard some harrowing stories of, of somebody who was, had tried to commit suicide several times and they just allowed him to create music to, to write songs, to write lyrics so young people and especially who are maybe in a stage that works for cancer as well where they don't necessarily want to have talk therapy.

They don't necessarily wanna tell their parents how they're feeling.

They can't express it.

This is true also for veterans who've had traumatic, you know, experience PTSD.

Right.

But they can create, they can create, they can express themselves through writing music or the math are incredible at Walter Reed, that particular initiative and it's, it's remarkable to have this artistic outlet.

Yeah.

That will enable them to survive.

Yeah.

Loneliness.

Oh, loneliness and isolation is a worldwide epidemic.

Yeah.

Dr.Tedros said that, in addition to that, that depression is up 30%, by 30% in the world.

And just listening to music gives you endorphins that are so powerful.

Which incidentally, you know, the expectation caused by music is the same as, as that caused by, you know, opioids and sex and all the best things in life.

You know, that Pleasure Center is.

It's sure, yes.

...really.

Yes, but even better is social outlets that singing in a choir.

singing in a choir.

Joining a band, all of these things...

Nothing.

...remaining active, also, creative aging on a positive side.. Yeah.

...is just learning an instrument or learning something new dancing.

Yeah.

All of those things.

But somebody also just said that VR is working tremendously in elder care.

And I said, well, what are you showing on VR?

She said, it's reversing all kinds of depression and things.

She said, swimming with dolphins.

I said, I wanna do that.

[Laughs] That sounds good.

Swimming with dolphins while Richard Strauss is playing in the background.

Yes, exactly, exactly.

Stress and PTSD.

Yes, absolutely.

So stress for sure.

I mean, and pain and, and that all goes hand in hand and if you're going to have a procedure and now finally, I think that medicine is getting wiser and they're playing music in the office.

There's a video at Mott Children's Hospital of an eight year old girl who was terrified of any medical procedure and unfortunately had to constantly have seizure testing and she would sob hysterically.

But they, in this children's hospital have a creative arts studio.

So she developed a bond with her music therapist.

She sings, she calms down and imagine that how the room feels that the doctors and nurses who are administering this.

And most importantly, they don't have to give her strong sedatives which are dangerous.

Yeah, yeah.

...for Children.

So it's, every children's hospital should have this.

As Andrea Visconti writes in her piece, every child, every growing child should have access to this ancient toolbox that we've been using for so many things since the beginning of time.

Right.

Yeah.

I'm gonna run the rest list quickly because we could, we could go for a long time this evening with individual cases.

Well, I'm just so happy you read the book.

Oh, my goodness.

Thank you.

Yeah.

[Laughs] Oh my goodness.

It had a profound effect on the autism, aging, cognition, attention, focus, pain, brain damage, rehabilitation.

Right.

Now to segue to the Renée Fleming story, these are idle interests for you.

In your life, you have struggled with two, at least two major health issues.

Yes, so it started I had bouts of intense stage, right, starting in middle school.

And, you know, fortunately at that time, we didn't know, you know, the kids are now telling each other that they can stay home, et cetera, et cetera.

So, and I was very, I was very good.

I was, you know, I was a good student, etcetera, but I, I was not a natural performer at all.

And then I've had every once in a while, another kind of bout and the worst was at the end of the nineties.

So, I almost quit singing, really derailed my career.

and then hand in hand with that as if it couldn't be worse.

I started having intense pain and the pain would be in my neck and trapezius muscles and I couldn't sing and this would just be, I was miserable and all of this would, leading up to a high pressure performance.

I was convinced I couldn't do it.

I can't do it.

And a lot of it would lift the minute I walked on stage.

So I, I knew it was psychological.

Yeah.

I knew it wasn't real, but I didn't know how to, how unpack it and how to get through it.

Thank God, I didn't quit singing or stopped.

Because when I, when I read your account of this in "The Inner Voice," it was harrowing for me to read.

Yeah.

Just as a vicarious watcher.

I just can't imagine.

I mean, you describe being on the verge of incapacitation.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I can't go on, I can't go on, you know, and at first when I was at the met and had something really big, my voice teacher was alive at that time and she would go to the dressing room and walk me to the stage with her eyes like this.

You are going on.

Wow!

And, and it was so, and where I was afraid the most interestingly, it wasn't the hardest thing.

It wasn't the high notes, it was nothing loud.

It was the naked moments.

It was the exposed pitches.

Yeah.

Where you felt alone.

Yeah.

...on stage that I just went, hooooo, you know, I just, was like someone was choking me.

So about eight months to get through that one.

Incredible.

And you describe being in the thick of this at the, the bottom of it.

Yeah.

...having to do a 60 minutes special on you.

In having a panic attack.

Yeah.

And for the first time in my life and thinking, why can't I see it's a tunnel.

I can't see anything.

Wow, wow.

And you, if you'd watch that, you would never know, you would never know there was anything wrong.

That's a performer.

Isn't that wild?

Yeah.

And you know, I did a lot of reading.

I was looking at, you know, what are people saying about this?

What, you know, I was trying on my own because frankly early in my career, medicine wasn't even con they were saying the mind body connection doesn't exist.

So things have changed dramatically.

Yeah.

There's a huge understanding now about these kinds of things, anxiety, et cetera.

Yeah.

You wrote that one of the things that turned the corner was, you know, in talk therapy, the suggestion that you might be suffering from something called success conflict.

Right.

Right.

It's a real thing.

I mean, if you think about the actors and politicians who have sabotaged their lives, when they see appear to have everything, it, it's a deep discomfort with success with feeling that you don't belong there, you don't deserve it.

Whoever, you know, you have to unpack that as well.

Right.

You know, where is this coming from and why don't you deserve?

You know what I mean?

It's, it's, it's complicated.

Yeah.

Once you know about it, success conflict.

I mean, it's not, people don't talk about it very much but you'll see it, you'll see it.

You'll go.

Okay.

That when you were a young singer in your, in your tens, and twenties and you were scrambling and you were taking every audition.

Yes.

...that came along and you were getting second place.

Right.

That, that was okay.

That was okay.

Second place was great.

Yeah.

I was comfortable with that.

Yeah.

First place.

Not so much.

Yeah?

[Laughs] And, and then on, you know, on top of it, and I'm thinking what could be the worst professional requirement when you're falling apart?

How about premiering the role Blanche DuBois?

Exactly, yes.

In case your ho hold on sanity wasn't tenuous.

Exactly, I know, I thought, I don't know if I can do this at all.

But in fact, it was the best medicine.

You said that there was something about being able -- there was something cathartic about being in that role.

I could channel it.

Yeah.

...through her.

Yeah.

And lighting her of craziness.

It's true.

And also because it was new.

So I wasn't being judged.

Yeah.

With anyone else's performance.

[Laughs], you know, people had to, had to come up to my performance.

Right, that was it.

That helped.

But, but it was really just having, being able to perform what the kinds of things I was feeling.

Yeah.

And then there's a beautiful, beautiful moment at the end of this chapter as you're starting to come through.

I don't know if you, if you know what I'm leading to.

So you were, you were in a production of Figaro, which you had done how many times?

Right.

And Jonathan Miller asked if your daughter Amelia, six year old Amelia could come on stage with you.

I mean, it's not in the libretto, right?

No, she doesn't -- they don't have children in the libretto.

Right.

And I said, oh, I would not, you know, I don't wanna do that to my child and yada yada.

And he just said, well, just ask her.

All right.

She was about six years old.

Yeah.

...at the time.

And I thought, okay, that's reasonable.

And she said, yes, mommy, I wanna do it.

Right.

I wanna do it.

And I'm so glad we did.

Yeah.

It was therapeutic for you.

It was therapeutic for her.

She was so beautiful.

Yeah, yeah.

And, and in the first area, which is the two arias are the really.

Right.

Frightening thing in that opera.

And she at the end of the area, she come, came on stage so cute and really did a great job.

But then you tell this heart, you know, melting story about the final chorus where neither you nor anyone else in the production told her not to sing.

Right.

And, and you're singing.

Yes.

And all of a sudden you hear this small voice belting, you know, she doesn't know the words, but she's gonna get in there.

Belting it out.

Absolutely.

[Laughs] And I'm like, what, where, where is this coming from?

Yeah.

Oh my God, it's Amelia.

And she was, and it was just with exuberant.

So she was doing what she thought she was supposed to do, which is sing with all of us.

And then you describe taking her hand in yours and finishing out the, the opera.

Yeah.

And that's health.

Yeah.

And that's wholeness.

Absolutely.

And then you were -- I know I'm gonna cry.

Just turning the corner.

[Laughs] Oh, God.

[Laughs] Crying is good for you.

Has a lot of health benefits.

We have to you know; resilience is an incredibly important quality that we all need.

We need it now a lot.

Yeah.

And it's just something to keep focusing on.

Yeah.

And, and you know, using these kinds of experiences to propel us forward.

You amaze me because you write a book and then you write another book.

[Laughs] Almost as you're promoting the first book.

You're already.

Don't talk to me, lady.

You know, at an age.

[Laughs] No, I, I reached this age two years before you did, but at an age where everybody else is starting to go back to the rocking chair with the scrapbook.

You are on a plane every three or four days.

Yeah.

You're singing, you're still singing in all three of your triple prong genres.

You, you, you are commissioning new work.

You're sitting on these boards; you're giving lectures you're teaching.

You know, it's.

I try not to think about it.

I just, I just don't, but the thing I'm doing now, which is probably bringing me the most joy was inspired by The Overstory.

Okay.

I read The Overstory at the beginning of the pandemic.

And just that was it, my world opened up.

I just wanted to be outside the whole first year that we were grounded.

I was gardening, I was walking, I was hiking and, and I had this idea, you know, the song literature I love from the late 19th century, early 20th century all frames because of the poetry, the human experience through the lens of nature and why isn't contemporary music like that?

So, and it mirrors very much our lives.

So I said, I wanna do a project that juxtaposes that music which is all have incredibly beautiful also with new commissions that represent our relationship to nature now.

And that's the, the, the Voice of Nature CD.

Right.

For which you won your.

the Grammy.

The fifth Grammy, I think.

Nice, round number five.

I like that.

Right.

I'm good now.

But Yannick Nézet-Séguin was a wonderful partner.

And I said, I wanna take this on the road because I won a Grammy.

And I've, I've inserted things like things that I've recorded but don't sing like the theme from "The Lord of the Rings," where I'm the voice of Gollum.

All right.

Yes.

All right.

And a Bjork, a beautiful Bjork song and.

it was another one of your daughters who said, you have to capitalize on this Gollum thing, right?

She did.

She said, "Mom, The Lord of the Rings is our Touchstone Why aren't you singing it?

You're in, you're in the movie?"

Right.

I said, oh, I didn't think of that.

You're right.

But, but I wanted film for it and I, again, a dinner party, there's a theme here.

You're right.

I met, someone who said he could introduce me to the CEO of the National Geographic Society.

Wow!

And I had a brief conversation with him and said, I, I want to set -- we have films that go with this music.

It's about a 30 minute playlist that I'm creating.

Would you create the films?

And he said, "Yes, we'll do it."

Marvelous.

So, in three weeks, I had this beautiful piece that I now tour everywhere and I love doing it.

See, you know, this is what I mean.

I sit home in the woods, say, well, what do I do today?

How about another book?

[Laughs] And you just keep going and going.

This bit of programming, by the way, you, you say in a voice that you're a, a compulsive programmer and when you plan a recital.

Yes.

You make it and unmake it and remake it and you just are thinking about every possible way that these pieces talk to each other and connect.

Right.

This is a bit of brilliant programming because it has 1 foot in the 19th century.

Correct.

When their relationship to the nonhuman world was so different than ours.

Right.

And many things could be taken for granted.

Yes.

And it has 1 foot in the 21st century.

You commissioned three pieces for the, for the disc by, you know, a, a trio of really remarkable composers, all, all young composers and each one of those pieces in their own way is talking about how we can no longer have that relationship, that our relationship to the non-human world is a very different thing.

Yes.

Yeah.

And it's wonderful what they came up with actually, and I didn't choose text for them.

And, you know, Kevin puts, chose the story and looks.

It's so beautiful.

Yeah.

And really is about grief.

It's a stunning song too because what does that opening remind you of?

The piano comes in before, before the sopranos starts?

I know it too well.

What -- It's like Schumann, it's like.

Yes.

It's like a 19th century song.

Well, he's a fabulous pianist, so.

And then, little by little, the 20th century starts coming and then the 21st century is there and the whole treatment of dissonance and the whole palette of the harmony changes.

And you feel that movement viscerally in the way that we're talking about because, because the auditory cord.

And I love singing it.

Yeah.

It feels great in my voice.

And Nico Meoli's piece, I love it.

The way that he uses Thomas Traherne, this metaphysical poet, from the 18th century.

Intercut with news, texts from -- yeah.

Robinson Meyer, who has been like for the Atlantic.

Yeah.

He was a reporter on climate.

Right.

Yeah, it goes back and forth and it really works.

Thanks to [inaudible].

So, yeah, that I love this project and I'm really glad I can take it around.

What music gives you health?

What music gives you goose bumps?

Either to perform or to hear?

Well, there have been pieces that I've been, I used to get obsessed with music, you know, something that I wanted to learn or was learning.

I, I had the pleasure of studying with Jan DeGaetani when I was in Aspen and she, I walked into her studio and all of her scores were this large or had.

Yeah.

...huge circles on them.

And I thought, oh, that's what singers do.

Well, no, she just specialized in really challenging new music pieces.

She was such a champion of mezzo-soprano.

George Crumb.

Yeah.

And yeah, and I loved that music so much so.

So that was inspirational to me.

I fell in love with the Rake's progress when I was a student.

Right, right.

And in so many pieces that I would just -- if I love something, it's gonna be a deep dive.

Yeah, I mean, you've been such a champion of new music too, which is.

Yes.

Which is a delicate balancing act for someone who's succeeded in the core repertoire as you have to keep pushing yourself out.

Well, I sort of said I'm doing these, I now it's time for me to do things for myself.

Yeah.

And I love new music.

Yeah.

So Kevin puts during the hours at the met and you know, I, I said to Peter Gal, I said, what do you think about the hours?

I assumed he would say no.

The hours was Kevin puts and, he said, yes.

Wow!

I want that.

Wow!.

And it was 40% of the audience had never been in the met.

How extraordinary.

...last year.

So, we're doing it again.

Starting next week in 10 days.

That's.

Yeah.

.reviving a forum.

That's right.

That's incredible.

Let's hope it, you know, hope we get a lot of audience again this time.

Yeah.

Well, you know, that's what opera was.

Right.

It was all new.

When you think, I mean, how many times have you done Figaro?

And you've done multiple roles there, right?

Yes.

It was from a play.

They were from contemporary works.

It was from a revolutionary play.

Right.

You know, and, and here's Mozart and DePonte sitting down saying, how can we get this libretto past the censors?

Exactly.

Because all the young people in the city are gonna come and they're gonna want revolution.

That's right.

So how can we give them revolution without getting cut off?

They were all from novels or something in traviata was huge failure when it first premiered.

Yeah.

And, and then it was a massive success after that, but they were all from contemporary work.

That so, so I think we do ourselves a disservice by saying we have to freeze that repertoire in place.

Right.

And treat it as if it was always classic because it was not.

Well, and the thing about Kevin's music is that I look for composers who are extremely high quality in terms of what they produce, but also accessible for the audience.

It's, you've gotta have, it's a sweet spot, I think.

And that's what I'm looking for because we need beauty.

We need also things that really touch us and move us and inspire us.

And only, only that process makes us whole, right?

Yeah.

Back to health.

What, what roles are the most fun for you to perform or have been the most fun?

Absolutely.

The Marschallin and Rosenkavalier was my favorite.

She was the most interesting complex character that I played.

What a proud character.

Yes.

Yeah.

A fascinating woman.

I never got tired of it.

And I sang her for a long period of time and she was very different to me in the beginning than in the end.

Well, isn't, isn't that artistic growth, right?.

Yeah.

You, you, you, you look back on how you interpreted something.

And aging.

Yeah.

Yes.

Exactly.

You say no, I wanna do this again.

It's true.

In fact, that leads me to a -- speaking of Strauss, but that very process of reexamining what you did when you were young.

Another piece that you are strongly associated with, which are four last songs.

Oh, yes.

So you know -- I've sung them more than anything in my repertoire, Barnatan.

That's what I think.

And I think -- I'm doing them in Atlanta next week.

And I think it's one of the only times that you've gone back and rerecord an existing piece that you've done right to put it two different -- It's the only time.

The only time.

It's the only time and that piece recordings are driven by conductors.

Right.

In certain repertoire.

And that definitely was, was one of those situations.

Yeah.

There's a great quote by the, by the art historian, E.H. Gombrich.

He says, "There are no wrong reasons for liking a work of art.

There are only wrong reasons for not liking a work of art."

That's a great quote.

But I, you know, for me, the four last songs are so epic.

They, they loosely and also he had great taste in poetry because they -- you're not spoon fed anything.

They kind of create a stages of life scenario in, in which you can inject your own ideas and feelings and experiences.

And that's what's so brilliant about it.

I mean, these are four songs written by an 84-year-old man.

Right.

And they're all about death.

Right after The World War II.

Right after the war, right?

Yes.

And you would think that this would be a heavy, heavy thing, but it's not, it's transcendent.

It's transcendent.

Yeah.

I mean, the third song is about Astro flying.

It's about flying in sleep.

That's right.

It's, it's it and it, it sounds like it,.

Yeah.

That violin solo.

I think that's the audience's favorite every time.

Well, it's -- But I love the force movement.

Yeah.

My breathing slows down.

I'm in the zone completely and I've been singing this for years and it always has this effect on me and by the end, I'm sure my heart rate has gone way down.

It's the kind of thing that your writers in the book write about that you're in training to this, to this harmonic structure, you're in training.

Yes.

...to this rhythm.

And your entire physiology.

Yes.

...is changing.

And that happens to, to me as a listener.

Well, and, and as an aside, I love that music therapy uses this with incubated children with NICU children who can't be touched because they're born with addiction.

Yeah.

So the stimulation is too much for them.

It's too much for them.

But a really great music therapist can entrain to their crying and by extending the pitches slow and calm the baby.

Yeah.

So this is really in our DNA.

In fact, one of your writers points out that the calming effect of music is more powerful even than the mother's voice.

It's remarkable, yes.

And, and if that doesn't prove.

Yes.

...that we are made for music.

Right.

Yeah.

Well -- So you talked about fourth in evening [inaudible].

Yes.

And how it puts you into an altered state.

I get goosebumps from that fourth for a different reason.

I mean, that reason for sure.

But something else happens at the end and I'm getting goosebumps now thinking about it and trying to find a way to, to articulate it.

Is it the Larks?

It's the quotation at the final cadence of the soprano.

Do you know what I'm talking about?

Yes.

It's Death and Transfiguration that he wrote at the age of 24.

Yes.

It's so moving.

So here's a man of 84 saying 60 years ago, I wrote another piece about this and I kind of got it right.

But I'd like to put it in another context now because I know what I'm talking about now.

Right.

Right?

And to hear those seven notes from Death and Transfiguration and to, to see it, the old man talking to the young man talking to the old man.

It's just -- It's amazing, isn't it?

Yeah.

And, and also the, the fact that the horn is used so prominently.

Yeah.

...in the piece and his father was a horn player.

I, I.

So it's so powerful.

And so to come back to Daniel Levitin's assertion that this all what's happening in the auditory cortex is spreading throughout the entire brain.

It's giving us ideas.

Right.

It's giving us memories; it's giving us emotions that aren't mediated by either me memory or ideas.

It's giving us emotions that are made more powerful because of memories and ideas.

Everything that the brain can do is happening when you add these associations into the music.

And you can say, you know, it's also moving to me because of the work that you have done and Renée Fleming so strongly associated with these pieces has given a decade of her life now to studying music and health and that's in those songs now too when I hear them.

But you know why?

Because through my whole career, which has been, it's a hard lifestyle.

I'm not gonna lie to be traveling all the time.

But so many people have come up to me after performances and said your music got me through cancer.

It got me through the death of my parents, the death of my loved one.

And, and people actually, people have connected with me and I have followed their cancer treatment for two or three years.

They're still listening, they're coming to performances, et cetera.

And so I thought, you know what, that's the greatest gift I could ever receive from the audience.

And so of course, that also I'm doing it for them.

Extraordinary, extraordinary.

We've talked about the association between the connection between music and memory and it's a tricky one.

And sometimes we can remember better when we set something to a little musical jingle.

I mean, they're very tightly connected.

I'm wondering if without the music, you can remember the final stanza of Beim Schlafengehen, the third song of the four last songs?

I would have to sit here and go.

And play it through and sing it through.

Yes, yes.

It's a muscle memory at this point.

I'll give you the English translation, as my little send off.

And the soul.

This is my translation.

"And the soul unguarded wants to float in free flights around the magic circle of the night to live deeply, and a thousand times."

I put it to you, Renée Fleming, that you have lived deeply and you have lived a thousand times.

And I believe that your work on stage and now off stage is gonna bring health and wholeness to generations of people to come.

Thank you for all of that.

Thank you, Richard.

Thank you.

(applause) Wow!

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