Jennifer Higdon on the Grammy stage

Jennifer Higdon

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How Female Classical Composers Are Encouraging Gender Equality

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This year’s GRAMMY-winning Classical composer, Jennifer Higdon, speaks with the Recording Academy about how to succeed as a woman in this male-dominated industry
Crystal A. Frost
GRAMMYs
Apr 8, 2020 - 10:19 am

Throughout music history's illustrious, centuries-long repertoire of eclectic creations and multicultural musical endeavors, women composers have been continuously silenced. Plagued by the harrowing struggle to have their voices heard, only a handful of pre-20th century women who dared to compose actually won the battle to be performed, recorded, and remembered. Any scholar of Western classical music can attest to the fact that Fanny Mendelssohn, Cécile Chaminade, and Clara Schumann are three of the few pre-20th century women composers whose names come up in conversation on a regular basis in the classical community. In fact, Clara Schumann was an example of a composer who, if not for her husband and father encouraging and believing in her, would have turned away from pursuing her creative dreams.

"I once believed that I possessed creative talent, but I have given up this idea… a woman must not desire to compose — there has never yet been one able to do it. Should I expect to be the one? It would be arrogance..." - Clara Schumann 

For 20th-century women composers, there were noticeable improvements. British composer Ethel Smyth, for instance, took part in the Women’s Suffrage movement in England, composing the official anthem of the Women's Social and Political Union entitled, "The March of the Women." The uplifting song, which has been arranged for choir, orchestra and even saxophone quintet, reached the ears of the entire nation and goes down in history as one of the early testaments to women’s compositional potential.

But was it enough to kickstart real change? In 1903, Smyth became the first woman to ever have an opera presented by the great Metropolitan Opera in New York when they performed Der Wald. Why didn’t the Met embrace another female-composed opera until 2017, more than a century later?

"Comrades, ye who have dared, first in the battle to strive and sorrow. Scorned, spurned, naught have you cared - raising your eyes to a wider ‘morrow." - Excerpt from Ethel Smyth’s "The March of the Women"

The year 2020 marks the first in history that three women have been nominated for the GRAMMY for Best Contemporary Classical Composition in the same year: Caroline Shaw, Julia Wolfe and Jennifer Higdon, who walked away with the award for her groundbreaking Harp Concerto, which Gramophone described as "a delight," performed by harpist Yolanda Kondonassis. In total, only three women have won this GRAMMY in Recording Academy history, and only seven women have ever been nominated. But thanks to the determination of longtime disadvantaged female composers, the field of classical music - one which is easy to perceive as dated—is on a path towards progress. Classical composers like GRAMMY award-winning Joan Tower, GRAMMY award-nominated Missy Mazzoli, and Pulitzer prize-winning Ellen Reid have demonstrated to the classical community—and the world—that women composers have been silenced for long enough.

This year’s GRAMMY-winning composer Jennifer Higdon faced her fair share of challenges early on in her career. Getting her start at age 15 when she taught herself to play the flute, it took years before Higdon developed her striking rhythmic, neo-romantic style, and more than a decade before she would be taken seriously by the classical community. But several concertos, an opera and three GRAMMYs later, Higdon’s list of accomplishments is as long as it is rich, even marveling fans as recently as two weeks ago when the Library of Congress announced that Higdon’s GRAMMY-winning Percussion Concerto has been inducted into the National Recording Registry. Higdon, who is currently practicing social distancing at her home in Philadelphia while she works on her upcoming opera Woman With Eyes Closed,  took a break to share a few lessons with us about how she arrived at this level of success, how she remains proactive, and how other women can follow in her footsteps.

Program Directors are out there looking

When asked about what improvements are still needed in the classical community, Higdon replied, "I want to see more women on programs." And Higdon makes a strong point, given that only 1.8 percent of music performed by the top 22 orchestras in the United States included women composers in their programming, according to a survey of the 2014-2015 concert season. And among living composers being programmed, women accounted only 14%, which means we can’t go blaming Beethoven and Mozart for the imbalance.

The question begs to be asked: why do we still see this imbalance in concert programming? According to Higdon, there are several right answers, and they don’t all involve gender bias. “Sometimes people just don’t know enough women composers. They just don’t realize how many women are out there working—working hard,” Higdon explains. The truth is, women composers are out there—just as many as there are men. In fact, at the Curtis Institute where Higdon has taught composition since 1994, more than half of her composition students are women.

Thankfully though, according to Higdon, in the past couple of years, people have become a lot more cognizant of the fact that there aren’t enough women composers on classical concerts. "It’s getting better, but I think there’s lots of room for improvement." She goes on to explain how, more and more often, artistic administrators who do the programming for orchestras are starting to look around for women composers to include in their concerts.

When the answer is gender bias, people are not inclined to share their biases and prejudices anyway. "People don’t come up and tell you, ‘Oh we’re not going to program you because you’re a woman,'" Jennifer explains. Consequently, women composers can be left questioning themselves, in the dark as to why they aren’t being heard. But Higdon is a radiant picture of steadfast perseverance, as no ounce of prejudice was ever enough to stop her from creating her best work. "I can remember in the early days when I was starting my career, probably in the late 90s, people were saying things to me like ‘I can’t believe a woman wrote that.'" At first, Higdon’s reaction to comments like these was to ask, "Really? What does that mean exactly?" But eventually, her response evolved into, "Yeah, a woman wrote it! It’s a fact. You need to get used to it."

We succeed when we unite

Another lesson we can learn from Higdon is that women get further when they unite and help each other. In 2010, Higdon won the Pulitzer Prize for her Violin Concerto, which the Pulitzer committee described as "deeply engaging...combin[ing] flowing lyricism with dazzling virtuosity." It’s clear the experience was both humbling and overwhelming for Higdon. "The expectations are so high…I must’ve done at least 200 interviews in two weeks," she recalls. So when female composer Caroline Shaw won the prize a few years later, Higdon did not hesitate to help. "Right after winning the Pulitzer, she came down to Philadelphia and we talked about trying to cope with the intensity of that prize—how it’s a little overwhelming," Higdon shares. "We sat down and had coffee and talked about my experience, and how to not let the pressure drop down on your shoulders."

Higdon also makes a point to promote her female peers as often as she can. "Sometimes an orchestra will contact me and ask me for suggestions of composers they should check out, so I have a list of women composers that I will send," she describes. "I'll ask them what they’re looking for and then pass along as many names as I can." Higdon’s approach is a refreshingly simple yet positive way of being proactive.

The community of women in classical music is vast, and their ability to unite rather than compete is how they are succeeding. One album released last year, Project W (the "w" standing for "women") is an excellent tribute to women composers’ efforts by the Chicago Sinfonietta, which is known for doing works by people of color and women. Featuring only new orchestral works by female composers, the album is also conducted by world-renowned female conductor Mei-Ann Chen, whom Higdon describes as a "dynamo" when it comes to inclusivity. 

Organizations like Women in Music (WIM) have also aided this move towards progress. Founded in 1985, WIM is a non-profit organization out of New York that is committed to educating, empowering and advancing women in the music industry.

Let your music do the talking

Perhaps the most important lesson emphasized by Higdon is that no composer should ever give up and stop writing, even if she feels excluded, outnumbered, or unheard. "Keep writing the best music that you can," Higdon says. "That’s going to be the best argument to get your music out there; to have music where people go, ‘Oh, I want to hear that again!'" The sound advice is as empowering as it is true, for it comes from one of America’s most performed living composers. It is Higdon’s experience that if you keep creating your best work, eventually the fact that you’re a woman will become less and less relevant. The music will speak for itself. 

“Keep writing the best music that you can. That’s going to be the best argument to get your music out there; to have music where people go, ‘Oh, I want to hear that again!’” - Jennifer Higdon

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Concetta Abbate

Photo: Vera Comploj & Erika Kapin

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Violinist Concetta Abbate Talks Trauma, Empathy & The Healing Process Of 'Mirror Touch'

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The prolific musician and music teacher shares the process of creating a poignant album from candid conversations with women and people who identify as nonbinary
Robert Ham
MusiCares
Sep 25, 2020 - 9:07 am

When violinist Concetta Abbate set about writing her second album Mirror Touch, she had a clear vision in mind: to reveal the scars of some trauma from her past and how making music helped her through it. But as she started speaking about the project with friends and other people in her orbit, they started to open up to her about their experiences and struggles.

“They’d say, ‘I want to contribute something. I have some perspective on it,’” Abbate says, speaking from her home in Brooklyn. “Because when you share your own story, people feel comfortable and compelled to share their stories.”

Inspired and moved by what she was hearing, Abbate decided to open these songs up wider. She began a series of conversations with a variety of women and people who identify as nonbinary dealing with mental health issues, and learning how hard it can often be for those folks to advocate for themselves and engage in self care.

From those freeform chats, Abbate composed a suite of 12 gorgeous songs that float between the worlds of modern classical and neo-folk. Using her violin and delicate vocals as a starting point, she relied on spare instrumentation—lightly played drums, guitar, and woodwinds) and a lot of open space. That leaves a lot of room to focus on Abbate’s lyrics, which filters the many stories she heard and absorbed into poignant, poetic verses that use just enough detail to be recognizable to the people that inspired her words, but open-ended enough to allow anyone to find solace within them.

In between giving lessons at Teacup Music, the community music school she founded, and working on new material, Abbate spoke with the us about the creation of Mirror Touch, the therapeutic power of music, and why self-care is so vital to us all.

What can you tell me about the experience of interviewing people for Mirror Touch?

It wasn’t really interviews so much as conversations with people where we found the commonalities in our experiences. That was where I started to think about this concept of mirror touch, which is a really extreme form of empathy. It’s actually a neurodiverse condition—an extreme version of synesthesia where if they see somebody, say, holding a cold glass of water, they actually feel the cold glass of water on their hands. I think a lot of artists are on that spectrum and can relate to going through the world in a kind of porous way.

It can be a difficult thing for anyone to bear the weight of hearing people’s stories of trauma or anxieties. Was that something you were worried about or were you able to keep yourself at a slight remove?

A large part of my livelihood is being a music teacher. I run a private school in Brooklyn teaching adults and kids. When you work one-on-one with someone, you end up being the first person to hear about a lot of difficult situations. It’s something that, as a music teacher, you don’t really get trained to deal with because you’re not a therapist. But the reality is that there’s some overlap there. Once I confirmed it that actually made me a lot more confident when other people approached me with things that are going on. And it actually makes my music lessons a whole lot more productive. So much of that external stuff gets wrapped up in performance anxiety and feeling stuck when you’re practicing. I feel I grew a lot in terms of feeling prepared to have these kinds of conversations with people.

I feel like this record comes along at a strangely perfect time in our world. With so much extra time on our hands, people are going through periods of introspection.

I actually started working on the album three years ago and I had finished recording it last summer. Then I had a hand injury in the fall. I was going to put it out earlier, but it just so happens that it’s coming out now. It’s a weird time to be putting music out because I feel like I don’t know if I should be drawing attention to myself right now. But people really want music to listen to and I feel that, because of all the time I invested in this project, I know that it’s valuable and I know people are going to get something useful out of it.

Was there an aha moment for you when you realized how therapeutic music was for you?

I used to practice for hours and hours when I was in high school, any chance I could get. I just loved practicing violin and viola. At the time, I was not aware that that was a coping mechanism. I had to find a balance in my life. I can’t practice for eight hours a day. I have to work. I think the aha moment came from teaching other people. You see similar patterns. You’ll hear another person express something, and you’re like, “I wish I had that awareness when I was a teenager.” But it’s good. You’re given that gift, and now you might be able to do something about it. That’s why conversation and listening and empathy and validation are so important. As we share perspectives, we build and grow.

Was it a conscious decision to only speak with women and nonbinary people for this project?

It was kind of a coincidence. It wasn’t anything I actually thought out. But I think, historically, certain demographics of people feel more comfortable talking to me. I could also be because men are less likely to express personal feelings and emotions. But if enough people are willing to share their stories, the systemic problems of society start to reveal themselves. You start to see repeated patterns in these stories. Like, “The doctor invalidated my complaints about my pain.” Or “They didn’t respond quickly enough when I had this problem.” I think that’s the value of group storytelling. It’s something I think about a lot. What does that say? What does that reveal about our society?

How much did the conversations you were having inform the writing of the music? Or was the music already mapped out before those happened?

I’d say they definitely informed the way the music sounds. It wasn’t an afterthought. There were two people that I spoke to and connected with artistically that passed away, and I posthumously wrote music for them. When they were gone, it was like, “Oh, this is what I got out of this person’s story,” and it became a direct response to their life. There was one track called “Mis,” which came from a very direct interview with a friend who said, “I want you to write a song for me!” There are some that are little more vague. “Forgetful” is about a few different people. I was reflecting on their experiences and it all meshed together.

Have you played the songs for the people they were written about? How did they respond to what you created?

They loved it. They were really happy to have this collaborative dynamic. There’s one piece that I wrote for this friend who passed away. I have not shared with their family yet. I’m still holding off on it because I really want to make a video for it, and I’m not really sure how their family will react to it. It’s always a risk when you make a piece of art to see how people will interpret it and receive it. But overall, it’s been a good experience.

You've also talked about the importance of self care, and I feel like music plays a part in that.

Yeah! I grew up in a really competitive world with music when i was very young. I was doing a lot of concerto competitions from the time I was in elementary school. I remember wanting to quit and not wanting to play. But when I didn’t play, all of the sudden I had this big question about my identity. And this was all before the age of 12! [laughs] “Who am I if I don’t play violin? No one’s going to value me.” I started realizing that there are so many other values that I get from practicing and learning music. I realized that I couldn’t sustainably play music if winning a competition was my only motivation.

That’s the way I teach music. With all my students, we talk about what we love about practicing. I’ve chosen to devote a lot of time to figuring out how music can be the most beneficial for the person that’s practicing it, and to take away performing for other people as the ultimate goal. I have students who never perform but they play every day. There’s something really special about that—that music is a personal thing instead of a product.

What do you want people to take away from Mirror Touch?  

There’s a lot of space in the music, and silence. The instrumentation is really spare and sparse. And that’s really intentional. When we have conversations, there should be a lot of moments of silence and listening. And when there’s space, there’s room for the listener to give the conversation their own meaning. In the sense of the music, with such sparse instrumentation, you can be really creative and you can imbue your own meaning on to it. It’s only giving you the basic outline. I hope that people reflect on communication and how they communicate and how music is linguistic. It’s conversational.

Inside VAULT Productions' Real-Time Doc On Electronic Music's Evolution During The Pandemic

 

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Lang Lang at St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, Germany

Photo by Stefan Hoederath

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Lang Lang On The Inspiration Behind His Latest Album & Why Aspiring Concert Pianists Should Never Give Up

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The piano virtuoso opens up to GRAMMY.com about the ways in which he immersed himself in Bach's 'Goldberg Variations' and the deeper inspiration behind his new album
Crystal A. Frost
GRAMMYs
Sep 20, 2020 - 8:00 am

Optimistic, bold and authentic—who better to take on the Goldberg Variations than 38-year-old piano virtuoso, Lang Lang? The GRAMMY-nominated concert pianist and philanthropist released his 10th studio album on Sept. 4, fulfilling one of his lifelong dreams of recording Johann Sebastian Bach’s most challenging solo keyboard work, the Goldberg Variations. First published in 1741, the work consists of a theme and 30 variations and was written for a young keyboardist named Johann Goldberg to play for the Russian Ambassador, Count Keyserling, as a treatment for his insomnia.

Lang Lang, whose music career began 20 years ago when he was barely 18 years old, has built up to this moment for all two decades, having also studied the beloved Bach piece in his youth, like young Goldberg. For this groundbreaking two-part recording project, the Beijing-based pianist traveled to Bach’s very own St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, Germany, where he recorded the work both live in concert as well as in the studio in Berlin.

In this interview, Lang Lang opens up about the ways in which he immersed himself in Bach’s world and the deeper inspiration behind his new album. Read on to learn what sets Bach apart from other composers, and why young pianists should never give up their dreams.

You just completed a massive project which involved recording and performing one of Johann Sebastian Bach’s most important works in his very own St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, Germany. What was this experience like for you?

It was like playing next to Bach’s spirit. It’s unbelievable that he worked the rest of his life there, from age 38! I also played his Baroque organ, which still looks almost the same as when he was there. In fact, I visited several other locations with Bach history in order to connect with him. On the way to the St. Thomas Church, I stopped at his first job’s location in Arnstadt, Germany, where I tried his very first Baroque organ. I also went to his home, which is now a museum in Leipzig, and played the Goldberg music from his original manuscript on his harpsichord! It is really incredible—it is almost like he is still alive.

What is it that you love about Bach that sets him apart from all of the other composers?

Bach was the beginning of a huge generation to come. For us concert pianists, Bach made so many voices with his mathematical methods. His music was not only horizontal and melodic, but vertical—making the keyboard sound like a symphonic orchestra! Before Bach, music was melody-driven and, while it had beautiful melodies and nice feelings, it didn’t have bricks. After Bach, the harmonic component of music became much more solid—he built pyramids with music. In a way, he is the greatest architect of classical music.

I understand that you studied Bach’s Goldberg Variations when you were just a teenager. Is it true that you performed this major work in full at just 17 years old?

Yes, I was a replacement of Andre Watts at Chicago’s Ravinia Festival. It started when I played a Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto, which was my first time playing in one of the major five American Orchestras. I was so overwhelmed after the concert, and then Christoph Eschenbach and a few other musicians asked me whether I can play more music…specifically Bach, who is considered more challenging than Tchaikovsky. I told them, “Yeah! I know the Goldberg Variations." He said "Okay. Do you want to do it?" It was crazy and I decided, "Yeah, yeah sure let’s do it!" So I played the whole thing actually, that night, and that was my first big public appearance.

The Goldberg Variations is such a massive, complex body of work. How did you begin intricately studying something so giant at such a young age? What was your secret?

I watched a film, on video cassette at that time, of Glenn Gould playing The Goldberg Variations in 1981. This was 1992 when I was 10 years old. I was watching Glenn Gould play this on the crappy television, and I thought to myself, "Wow! I never thought Bach could be played this way!" Until that point, I was quite reserved when I would play Bach because I always thought Bach was very strict, where you can’t do crazy things. And then I see Glenn Gould—he played with such excitement and everything he was doing was so unusual, so exciting, and so beautiful! It was then that I realized, wow—you can actually play Bach in a much more emotional way than I originally thought. So I began practicing the Goldberg Variations as an exercise, and that is how it all started.

GRAMMYs

Lang Lang performs Bach's Goldberg Variations at the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, Germany.
Photo credit: Stefan Hoederath

And now we fast forward 20 years later when you are 38—just like Bach was when he began working at St. Thomas Church. Are there any important lessons you drew from your younger self or others as you began this new recording project?

I think the greatest part about starting so young is I was able to memorize it so well for this project—it is a very hard piece to memorize! But the more important development occurred in the last three years as I began getting into the Baroque style on actual Baroque instruments. This is something that I never had training in as a kid because I was always just playing on the piano. As you know, piano is a very different instrument from the harpsichord or the organ. Though there is an authentic way of playing Bach on the piano, I decided to go and study with a harpsichordist Andreas Staier, a German Baroque master. It was he who really helped me to understand everything: the structure of the Baroque sound, the strategy, and more importantly, how to work on the slower passages.

It seems like so much goes into learning Bach! What else makes Bach’s music unique?

To play Bach is really like playing jazz music. The reason I’m saying that is because, in classical repertoire, like Beethoven or Brahms, if you change even one note you are probably already dead to the classical music community. But in Bach’s Baroque music, you get to add all different sorts of ornamentations. In fact, all across the Baroque repertoire in France and Italy as well, there were so many decoration notes and ornamentations! Because of this, every night you are playing the piece a little differently, so in that way you are really like a jazz musician. Bach also never writes dynamics or articulations clearly, giving us much more room to do improvisation. To me this is still unbelievable, and a great advantage.

This album features two full recordings of the Goldberg Variations—one in concert, and one in the studio. You pointed out that performing live in concert you get to enjoy the work as a collective whole, but in the studio you get to enjoy the nuánces of each individual movement. Which of these recording environments do you prefer, and why?

Actually, I love both! The studio is very great because I can be relaxed and take a lot of time to listen back, and if I don’t like something, I can re-record it. Glenn Gould said he 100% prefers studio recording for Bach; that way he can work really hard and have a timeless piece. This is why I decided to record the Goldberg Variations in the studio. But at the same time, I first wanted to have the experience of recording the piece at Bach’s church in Leipzig in order to feel Bach’s original spontaneous feelings. If I had known it was going to be such a magical night though, I would have had eight cameras and an entire crew! The live recording sounds like an old record, and that is only because of the sound of the church. That kind of sound you can not copy in the recording studio; you cannot mimic that atmosphere. In the studio, you do everything five times. So, while it also comes from the heart, it doesn’t have the sincerity and authenticity of the concert hall where all you have is that one beautiful moment.

Which of the 30 Goldberg Variations is your favorite?

My favorite variation is Variation 25—it’s the slowest, most painful, and struggling, but with real hope. It’s almost like snails trying to climb the mountain; even though it feels like he/she goes one step forward and two steps back, it’s still going up very slowly, which is why I really think this variation is the most special one. To practice, I would say Variation 26. This is a great variation; a very joyful one to practice.

When you look back on the past two decades, what other music projects or achievements are you the most proud of?

I would say my Carnegie Hall Live in 2003 is something that I feel very proud of, and it was also my Carnegie Hall recital debut. Also, my recording with Maestro Nikolaus Harnoncourt, The Mozart Album, is another I feel very proud of. And then, there is one more: Prokofiev 3 and Bartok 2 with The Berlin Philharmonic. Of course every recording I try my best, I really do, but I think for these recordings I had a more personal means of expressing on behalf of the composer, and expressing the piece itself. I feel you must really know the historical context and take a lot of time in order to understand these particular composers. This is completely unlike composers from the Romantic Era because, even though you may not know their lives so well, their music is so emotional that you can just receive their spirit very easily. But with Mozart, Bach and even Bartok, you have to really dig. Bartok actually has a very dry sense of humor…it is like he knows something mysterious from another part of the universe!

You’ve collaborated with Metallica, Herbie Hancock and many other big names in the past. Do you have any other big collaborations coming up after the pandemic ends?

Well, I was very excited when actually during the pandemic I had a collaboration with Celine Dion, John Legend and Lady Gaga for the One World concert back in April. I was really grateful to be a part of that. I am also grateful to the GRAMMYs though, actually, because they are sort of responsible for several of my collaborations. Who knows, maybe my next one will be with some other big pop artist or something EDM! That’s what’s so great about the GRAMMYs—there are no limits—only good music!

Speaking of your virtual concert in April, how has the quarantine been for you?

I'm okay. I have spent the time practicing at home and learning new repertoire. I am also teaching. We have many schools both in America and China, so we decided to begin a lot of online teaching. In fact, we are also planning a virtual concert at my Foundation, which is in partnership with the GRAMMY foundation for music education. The virtual concert will be in December for all of our music students in America, China and parts of Europe to do performances, and professional musicians who are involved will give talks about the importance of music education in the world. So the quarantine is not great, not ideal, but it's okay.

What are some words of wisdom that you would like to share with young pianists who look up to you and are pursuing a career as a concert pianist?

I would say, never give up your musical dream. Know that it is really hard to become a professional musician, so you have to be really strong in both your mind and in your heart. There will be a lot of difficulties in life, but music really makes us think much bigger than who we really are. Music really brings us to another dimension in life, so the goal is to always remain fresh with your music-making. As a professional player, you can get bored of practicing and lose direction, but you must never stop searching for new ways to improve yourself. That flame, our fire in our heart, it is passionate and can be disorganized but we must continue to practice music every day to never let the flame die.

"The 'Canon' Is Racist": How A Collective Of Black Musicians Are Exposing Racism In The Classical Music Community

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Yo-Yo Ma

Yo-Yo Ma

Photo: Jason Bell

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Yo-Yo Ma On His Lifelong Friendships, Music's Connection To Nature & His New Audible Original, 'Beginner's Mind'

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In 'Yo-Yo Ma: Beginner's Mind,' the latest entry in Audible's Words + Music series, the household-name cellist examines his place in the world through the lens of a Zen Buddhist concept and with a central question: "Why am I me?"
Morgan Enos
GRAMMYs
Apr 8, 2021 - 11:26 am

For decades, Yo-Yo Ma's life has been a Möbius strip of meetings and concerts and airport terminals. Then COVID-19 washed away that hurry-up-and-wait existence for a while.

At his Cambridge home in a snarl of wildlife, the 18-time GRAMMY winner and 27-time nominee crossed into a realm of self-examination. He took inventory of his life history, including his immigrant background, lifelong friendships and role as a 65-year-old classical musician and public figure. Ma also mulled over the Zen Buddhist concept of a beginner's mind. This means a consciousness open to new ideas, unfettered by preconceived notions and eager to play and explore. 

This idea is central to Yo-Yo-Ma: Beginner's Mind, the latest entry in Audible's Words + Music series where Ma explores his roots, relationships and place on Earth in the 21st century. It's always been essential to his art, too. "A beginner's mind is something that I have to practice each time I perform," he reveals to GRAMMY.com. "It doesn't matter… what I did last night or during the full day. I could have played really well last night, but it doesn't matter. What matters is how present I am at the moment of performing."

Beginner's Mind isn't just for Ma fans; it's a must-hear for anyone feeling encumbered by world events and yearning to see the world anew. GRAMMY.com caught up with the one-of-a-kind cellist to discuss how he linked up with Audible, the nexus of music and nature, race relations in America and setting up youngsters to be stewards of the planet.

Yo-Yo Ma: Audible Original

The cover image to Yo-Yo Ma's Audible Original: Words + Music: Beginner's Mind.

How are you doing?

I'm OK. I'm happy spring is here. Are you in New Jersey?

I am. I'm in Hackensack, and I can see the trees blooming outside my window.

Oh, that's fantastic. I heard the cherry blossoms have blossomed earlier than they have in 1,200 years.

Incredible. Why do you think that is?

I have no idea. It must be the water! [long belly laugh]

As good an explanation as any. Are you in New England?

Yeah, I'm in Cambridge.

Have you lived there a long time?

Yeah. A long, long time. I went to college in the area in the early '70s. And when I was married in '78, we lived in Cambridge, moved away for a while and then moved back again. So it's been kind of off and on for many decades.

It's certainly a beautiful time to be in this area. I listened to your Audible Original three times. I thought it was beautiful and heartening. How did you link up with Audible for this project? Had you done anything like this before?

You know what's funny? I subscribe to Audible, so I've listened to a lot of historic books. Sometimes, on long car trips, my wife and I would listen to some of the books. We've listened to Hamilton and George Washington and Rust, I think,was another book, and just varied things over the years. 

On my own, I heard James Taylor's [Audible Original, Break Shot: My First 21 Years] maybe a year ago or something. I loved it. I thought, "Gee, that's a very neat thing." So when this came up as an idea, I sort of already had heard the format and thought, "Gee, that's really neat." So I welcomed the chance to put some thoughts down and here we are.

Three times! Are you crazy?

I wanted to prepare! So they approached you, or vice versa?

Yeah, they approached me. I think maybe they had seen a lecture that I had given in Michigan and they thought, "Oh! We might ask this guy to do something." I didn't particularly think… Maybe a lecture would be interesting, but somehow it turned into this.

It's certainly a unique format. How did you come up with the central thesis?

It didn't start with the central thesis, but more or less, I wanted to describe a number of long-term friendships and sort of get to the idea of [incredulous laugh] "How did I become this? This 65-year-old guy thinking the way I do?" Because I didn't always think the way I do, right?

I think the pandemic lent itself to making some forays into self-examination—'Wait, what happened 50 years ago?' I was doing these digital platform concerts with Emanuel Ax, who's featured in it, and it's almost now a 50-year friendship. And I did Songs of Comfort and Hope with Kathy Stott; I've also known her for over 40 years. 

And so to be able to work with them during this time and to talk made me think, 'You know? That'd be really great.' Because I treasure these friendships. They're amazing people, musicians, artists—but most of all, friends, and we went through a lot together. So by process of thinking about what we were doing together during this time as well as reminiscing, I sort of got to talking about this sordid life I've been living for years!

I was going to ask how you settled on four stories to tell. But by the way you describe these four essential friendships, it must have been a no-brainer as to who you'd focus on.

Absolutely. There are good things and bad things about touring, and what I've always noticed is that when you move around a lot, the coincidences multiply. 

At first, you think, "Oh my gosh, this is crazy! How come I just met so-and-so at an airport or some random place? How come we bumped into one other? What a coincidence!" But after the fortieth or fiftieth time, you realize, "You know what? That's probably because I'm not stationary. The fact that I don't stop moving [means] the chances of bumping into people multiply.

So many people have influenced me. Certainly, Kathy and Manny, but I thought about the move, being an immigrant, going to college, for example. They also changed me. They really were fundamental in directing my focus on whole different ways of thinking. I mentioned Marlboro [Music School and Festival]; I mentioned the Kalahari [bushmen]. These were seminal moments that changed the way I would think from then on, after that experience.

Yo-Yo Ma

Yo-Yo Ma in the Kalahari Desert, 1993. Photo courtesy of Yo-Yo Ma.

Early on, you quote something the physicist Richard Feynman told you: "Nature has the greatest imagination of all, but she guards her secrets jealously." What does this mean to you or elicit in your mind?

Oh my goodness. Well, first of all, I think from a musical point of view, we're taught, in a way: "Don't play anything unless you can hear it first." Music, for me, is always—first of all, it stimulates the imagination. And I end up thinking that sound is, in a way, the interpretation of something else. Something that's imagined.

There are some people that think music is just sound, and it's sound for sound's sake. That's absolutely possible, but I think I have a preference for teaching that music also is a translation of thoughts and ideas and feelings and structures and energy and space and time. 

And through sound—the manipulation of sound—you can express all of these things and the person's inner core, or a society's soul or you can represent peoples' voices when they no longer exist or whose voices have been taken away. 

So, nature—I always think that if you think of sound as energy, the phrasing of something always can be described as something in the physical world, as something we've actually experienced. Therefore, when you then tie two notes together for a phrase or to get to a groove, you are trying to replicate, to get into the pocket of that feeling, of that sense. And that is what makes music alive, in my opinion.

Therefore, Richard Feynman saying "Nature has the greatest imagination"—yes, we want to have the greatest imagination possible, and we want to, in fact, practice and discipline our imagination so we can extract something from our experience and then be able to replicate it and get other people into that same state of mind that you are in when you work.

The fact that Richard Feynman—a physicist—said that was extraordinarily helpful to me. In saying, "Yeah, that's right! So it's not about Bach and Beethoven and Bob Dylan and whomever." Yes, it's their genius, but they're also extracting things from nature. And we're part of nature, too. What we extract, we can actually focus on and transmit to another human being. That information, that knowledge can live in somebody else. And my job as a performer is to make that transfer possible.

I looked into the concept of a beginner's mind a little bit. It comes from Zen Buddhist philosophy. And in the Audible Original, you discuss its meaning and extol its value. In your mind, how can we retrieve and restore this ability in adulthood after all these filters have stacked on each other?

One way I try to do it in performance is that often, as musicians, we play at night. We play after we've experienced, often, a full day. I don't know about you, but at 6 p.m., my mind is cluttered from a whole day where things have happened. What we try to do as performers is to have a clear mind and start with a clean slate.

Taking a nap in the afternoon is really important to me because it declutters the mind. I can start the day over in preparation so I can be fully present when I start to play the concert: "I'm going to tell you this story; this is how it begins." And if I have a full day of dreck in my head—of stuff that's gone on—it's going to be harder for me to get to the narrative and be totally present.

So, a beginner's mind is something that I have to practice each time I perform. Because, actually, it doesn't matter to you, if you're in the audience, what I did last night or during the full day. I could have played really well last night, but it doesn't matter. What matters is how present I am at the moment of performing.

And from a slightly different point of view, I think it comes down to first principles. What are the first principles for a musician, or for a physicist, or for a scientist? What's your North Star if you are a leader or if you are a teacher or a doctor? For a physician, maybe it's the Hippocratic Oath. And for a scientist, you want to find the closest thing that can be replicated according to a certain number of conditions of something you're testing. And it has to be true every time you have those conditions. You can't fake your data.

So, what is the most important thing you have to start with? Associated with a beginner's mind is the idea of first principles—which comes from science, but are values that come from philosophy, ethics, religion, society. "Do unto others," right? Society has those principles and we know what they are. 

The question is, are we practicing those things constantly? Because that's what we need to do to build something that people can trust.

Yo-Yo Ma & Emanuel Ax

Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax. Photo courtesy of Yo-Yo Ma.

From what you're describing, it sounds like a beginner's mind is easily transmutable to anything, from loving somebody to designing a space shuttle. Anything a human can do can be graceful thanks to first principles.

Yeah, absolutely. And you can see the limitations of that at the beginning of meeting somebody. 

I can tell you, for example, I was kind of shocked when you said you had listened to this thing three times. You could have listened to 20 minutes of it and done an interview. But you didn't. That said something. So either you had nothing better to do and it was set on perpetual play, or you wanted to listen to it. And, my goodness. So, you cared. Maybe I'm taking an overly positive view, but "Oh, wow. Morgan cared." That's amazing because you did more than you needed to in order to get something done. That says something about you and affects how we have our conversation.

I appreciate that, Yo-Yo, because I did care. I took notes and thought about it and slept on it. This was in my hope to elevate it from a good interview to a great one.

But little things, right? You reveal something about your principles when you do little things.

Your first story in the Audible Original is about your family's emigration to the U.S. As you tell it, you and your mother took to this new beginning while your father stayed a little staunchly stuck in his ways. It seems like what you're saying here is that by showing up and leaving the door open to new possibilities is paramount to being a successful and thriving individual. What's your take on that?

I both believe in the goal and process. I think both are incredibly important. I think living fully, the process allows you to reach a goal that actually may change because of the process. I think when you are open to things, that's very often what can happen with ultimate goals. They have shifted.

I think I remember Stephen Colbert saying that he started out as an actor. He wanted to be a serious actor and if you asked him at age 22, "So, you think you want to have a comedy show?" he'd say "You're crazy." But he did it very seriously, the acting bit. And one thing led to another, so he ended up in a goal in an unexpected place. I think my father had more specific goals, and he also was trying to provide for his family. He had to immediately use whatever skills he had [to do so]. It's not like he had immense choice in the matter. 

Hopefully, I'm not at the end of my life. But by the time I do get to the end of my life, I don't know whether I look back and compare what my father might have thought at the end of his life; we may have ended up in the same place. I don't know. Or we may have ended up in very different places. 

And what success might mean for each one of us could be so different because his life was so completely different from mine. What he lived through was something I can hardly imagine. Even for someone who has a good imagination, it's hard to imagine the period of that century that he went through.

When I survey notable people I admire, I've noticed that in youth, they typically wanted to be in a different field than the one we know them for. One of my favorite authors, the media theorist Douglas Rushkoff—do you know the name?

Yep. Yeah.

His roots were in acting, too, but he held onto that sharp left turn. And now, he gives his talks with that theatrical flair. It didn't just go away even though he chose a different path.

Oh, that's neat! That's neat! You know, some of my closest friends that I met in college struggled so much thinking "I do this. I love this. I don't know what to do. People say I have to choose." For two of my friends, it was between music and medicine. They're very talented musicians; they also wanted to be physicians. 

And what they ended up doing—they ended up being physicians, but 30 years later, they ended up being able to incorporate music into the medicine they practice and to incorporate medicine into the music they perform, thereby creating unique careers. They created a place in the universe that didn't exist before from making a fusion of two interests that people did not necessarily think went together.

Yo-Yo Ma

Yo-Yo Ma at the Trent School in 1962. Photo courtesy of Yo-Yo Ma.

Perhaps it's easier to make that pivot when you're young. In your Audible Original, you say that upon moving to America, you faced a dizzying array of subtle differences from the shape of cheese to cardboard milk cartons instead of glass bottles. Instead of being paralyzed by culture shock, though, these differences fueled your imagination. You were young, though; can an adult cultivate this attitude toward the world?

I say in the Audible [Original] that the time in your life that you need something new can also affect people very differently. You can go from one space to another space at exactly the same time, but if it's in a different time in your life—my biological family reacted to that very differently. 

So for me, it was the fact that adults actually, sometimes, would talk to me and not talk at me. I liked that. I thought "Gee, that's possible." I didn't know that was possible before. It made a deep impression and made me like this place a lot and want to be part of this place. Rather than feeling that I'm an outsider in this place, it made me want to belong to this place because there was something incredibly attractive about it.

I want to touch on the book The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity, which you mention in the Audible Original.

Oh, I love that book!

It'll arrive in the mail soon! Why does the phrase "Why am I me?" resonate with you? Concurrently, when you consider a lifetime of music and self-examination, have you landed on any ballpark percentage of how much nature versus nurture you are?

That question will probably never get resolved.

Sure.

I see different slivers of it at different times. For example, I may think one thing, but I'm also a grandfather. My wife and I have two children and my daughter now has three grandchildren. We see in both our children different traits of us—and I won't tell you whether they're the good traits of the bad traits! [laughs]

Also, we see this in our grandchildren! We also see traits that possibly come from my wife's father. Their great-grandfather. So definitely, there are personality traits and things that supersede nurture. But I also think that on another level, how important the construction of values [is]. Or when you start with certain values, the lives that get constructed are a result of nurture. 

I think values play an incredible role as genes do. Experience can lead them to make a 90-degree turn, which changes their life, but they're still guided by the values and still have the genes that they came from. So, those are also interesting experiments.

At the end of the Audible Original, you note that "recognizing our shared humanity has never been more central to our survival," and that knocking down racial, gender-based and religious boundaries is conducive to that. Right now, I see a lot of obsession with racial difference, even when it's in the service of "anti-racism." "As a Mexican person, as a Black person, as a white person, as an Asian person..." Is there a productive way to acknowledge our differences without driving artificial wedges between people?

What's interesting is that the United States is not the only multi-ethnic society. Ancient Rome was multi-ethnic. For a while, Rome also was subject to very specific laws that gave rights and privileges to Roman citizens. But you're asking a different question.

I think it's very important to go into the weeds and try and figure that out from our immediate time frame. But I also value perspective. I value the perspective that time can give as well as different disciplines. We can look at ourselves biologically. If we look at ourselves genetically, the huge chasms in racial-ethnic differences become minuscule. 

[We can] look at humanity and our present world from, let's say, what I experienced in Ecuador. When I asked Ecuadorians "What do you think about post-colonial history?" the Ecuadorians looked at me and said "You know, we have a 12,000-year history. 500 years is just not very long." 

I was really stumped. I thought, "Damn, we [might] discover more and more about our past because we have so many ways of knowing about digging into mounds and ice-core samples and we know about tree rings and [radioactivity]—all kinds of data searching." For example, we know what the Iceman ate for his last meal from what they figured out from his stomach.

So if every country started its history from 12,000 years ago, that would put our world religions in a much smaller sliver of history. It changes your perspective. Carl Sagan used to talk about the little blue planet. From an astrophysicist's point of view, we're just a tiny blip. Does that help solve our big problems? No, but it certainly puts our egos and self-importance in a different perspective.

I can look at life from a 65-year-old. If I talk to a 20-year-old, I have a different perspective. But the 20-year-old also has a different perspective, and it's important I listen to the 20-year-old because that 20-year-old is going to live another 60, 70, 80 years, hopefully, and will have a lot to do with shaping the world that the following generations will experience.

It's important to have those conversations so that we can encompass 100 years of experience. And that's what Indigenous folk do. They think in seven generations.

Yo-Yo Ma & Jill Hornor

Yo-Yo Ma and his wife, Jill Hornor, at the White House in 2011. Photo: Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images​

In conclusion, let's focus on our current generation. People might be too overwhelmed or bitter or jaded to cultivate a beginner's mind. It's tough to peer into your own mind when you're dragging your kids through Zoom school. What's your advice for those people, to show them they can adopt a mental state where they feel new, fresh and excited about the world?

I think one is not to give up on your ideals. By that, I don't mean be rigid on your ideals. But never forget you always have a beginner's mind. You can be in touch with what you think is good. That doesn't change. 

I do think that Gen Zs are more in tune with their values in wanting to choose where to shop—thinking more about the food cycle and climate change and living with fewer cars and material goods. Wanting to lead a life that's less segmented, in a way that's using their values. And I think it's the job of someone like me to accelerate giving them custodial responsibility so that they can live a long time and in a way that's good for the world.

I want to encourage that generational dialogue to show that you are capable of responsible caretaking earlier on. For people like me, not to say, "You're got to wait to earn it." Bulls**t. If you can do it now, do it, and we should help as much as possible because you will make the right decisions because you're closer to not having made certain compromises that get you stuck in golden handcuffs.

Wonderful talking to you, Yo-Yo. I hope we can talk again in the future.

Sure. By the way, Morgan, since we're talking generations, how old are you?

28.

OK. Perfect. So you're just around Gen Z—a little bit above. So good luck, go do it and I hope life goes well for you.

Vijay Iyer On His New Trio Album 'Uneasy,' American Identity & Teaching Black American Music In The 21st Century

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PJ Harvey and John Parish perform at Primavera Sound Festival in 2016

Photo by Jordi Vidal/Redferns

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PJ Harvey's Lost Album: John Parish Discusses 1996 Gem 'Dance Hall At Louse Point'

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On the occasion of its recent reissue, we tracked down John Parish to talk about 'Dance Hall At Louse Point' and his earliest memories of meeting PJ Harvey as an ambitious teenager
Zach Schonfeld
GRAMMYs
Nov 10, 2020 - 10:19 am

PJ Harvey rarely looks back. The songwriter’s career has been defined by a restless sense of reinvention, each album cycle accompanied by a fresh persona—the blues roar of To Bring You My Love, or the glossy alt-rock romance of Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea—ready to be discarded at the next creative whim.

But 2020 has been an exception. Harvey has spent much of the year rolling out a vinyl reissue series of her back catalog, along with some accompanying demo albums. The latest vinyl reissue is something of an outlier: Dance Hall At Louse Point, Harvey’s abrasive 1996 collaboration with ex-bandmate John Parish. Harvey and Parish had first met in the late 1980s, when she joined his band Automatic Dlamini. In 1996, they combined Parish’s musical demos and Harvey’s lyrics on an album that would plunge the singer-songwriter into an avant-garde realm of disturbing monologues and banshee-wail vocals.

Credited to John Parish & Polly Jean Harvey, Dance Hall was largely overshadowed at the time by the immense success of To Bring You My Love. In retrospect, it’s an underrated gem and something of a lost album in Harvey’s catalog; as Harvey herself later acknowledged, "People don't even count that, yet that's the record I'm really proud of."

On the occasion of the album’s recent reissue, I tracked down John Parish to talk about the album’s unusual backstory and his earliest memories of meeting Harvey as an ambitious teenager. Since then, Parish has co-produced most of the singer’s solo albums, and in 2009, the pair reunited for a second collaborative record. This interview has been lightly edited and condensed.

At the time you made Dance Hall At Louse Point, you had already known Polly for a number of years. What was your first impression when you first met her in the '80s?

She was like 17 when I first met her. She was coming to see my band, Automatic Dlamini, whenever we played in her local area. We all got to chatting after a gig. A mutual friend introduced us, and then she gave me a couple of cassettes of some of her early songs she’d been writing. They were kind of like folk songs at that time, really. But her voice—it was already there. It was fully formed at that age.

I just thought, "That girl’s got a really good voice, I’m gonna see if she wants to join the band." So I just asked her. When she finished school, she came and joined the band and she played with us for the next three years, before she formed the first PJ Harvey trio.

Was there a moment when you first realized, "This person is extraordinarily talented, oh my God."

I mean, I obviously saw something that was really good there; otherwise I wouldn’t have asked her to join the band. You can’t possibly predict how somebody’s going to develop as an artist. I could see that she had the potential to be great. If I said, "Oh, I knew she was going to be a star"—obviously nobody can know those kinds of things.

Do you have any favorite memories of working with Polly in Automatic Dlamini?

She came in at a point when the original lineup was kind of falling apart. I was rebuilding a lineup, and she was an absolutely fundamental part of that. She’s always had an old head on young shoulders. She was somebody that you could talk to and discuss pretty serious issues. As a teenager, she was very serious. And was quite capable of being able to offer good advice. We started relying on each other.

Was she nervous performing onstage with the band when she first joined?

The first couple of shows, yeah, really nervous. As you would be. But no, she got used to it pretty fast.

Tell me about the origin story for Dance Hall At Louse Point. My understanding is that you wrote those songs while on tour with Polly for To Bring You My Love?

That’s semi-right. It was Polly’s idea. It was after Rid Of Me, before she had started To Bring You My Love. I was teaching a performing arts course at a local college. I’d written some music for a theater production, and Polly came along to see it. She absolutely loved the music, and said afterwards, "Would you write me some music in that kind of vein? That I could try writing words to?" I said, "OK, that would be great."

That’s how we had the idea for the album. I was writing the music for Dance Hall At Louse Point at the same time she was writing the music for To Bring You My Love. I then became involved with [To Bring You My Love], which was obviously a big record. And it involved a big tour as well. Took 18 months of our time. While we were on tour for To Bring You My Love, that’s when Polly wrote all the words. She already had a cassette of the music for the Dance Hall record, which she carried around with her on the tour and then wrote lyrics in different cities. Which is why those cities are referenced on the album sleeve.

Were you hearing her lyrics while she was writing them? Or were you both working in your own separate worlds?

She would sort of drop a cassette into my hotel room and say, "I've got some lyrics for this song." I'd hear them as they were coming in. It was always kind of, "Here you go, here's the lyrics." And it would always be completely done. It was very exciting.

I was reading some old interviews with Polly. There’s one where she describes that record as being a huge turning point for her. What do you think she meant by that?

It’s always difficult to talk about how that is for somebody else. My take on that is—and I know this from myself when I’m writing in collaboration with somebody else—it’s a certain freedom you have that you don’t give yourself if you're writing entirely individually, because you have the weight of the whole thing. When you can share the weight, it eases you up to do things you might be nervous about doing yourself, because you’re not sure whether you’ve gone off a stupid tangent and you’re not seeing it.

You can try those things that might seem kind of wayward. And you have another person that you rely on say, "Oh yeah, that’s great. Push it a bit further." Like I said before, she approaches most things very seriously. Writing particularly so. So I think it probably enabled her to be a bit more wayward than she might have been. When I first heard her vocal idea for "Taut," I mean—the entire delivery of the song was kind of extreme.

Which song are you referring to?

I’m referring to "Taut." Which is quite an extreme performance. A lot of the songs, I would give her a title. So I gave her the title "Taut." She didn’t have to use it if she didn’t want to. Some of the titles she used; some she didn’t. But I think it was also quite freeing to suddenly have a word or a line and say, "What are you gonna come up with for that?"

I’m assuming Polly thinks the same. She might have a totally different reason for saying that was a turning point. It could also be that, up until that point, the lyrics she had been writing—you know, Rid Of Me and Dry—were very personal lyrics. Or they could be read in a personal way, couldn’t they? Louse Point was very much stories and scenarios. You weren’t imagining that Polly was talking about herself in the bulk of those songs.

The vocal performance on "City Of No Sun" is also quite extreme and very jarring. Were you taken aback by her approach to singing this material?

I was a bit surprised. In a good way. I thought it was really exciting. I remember the performance of "City Of No Sun" when we were in the studio. She said, "OK, I’ll record the quiet bits first, then I’ll do the loud bits." So she had the engineer set the levels, doing the quiet bits. It’s quite strange timing in that song, to get everything to line up. She hit the chorus; she had two or three go’s and she kept getting it wrong.

At one point, she got it wrong again and she was so annoyed that she just went straight into the loud bit anyway. We had the mic set to be recording this really quiet vocal, so all the needles shot way into the red. It was on tape, which can really compress those kinds of things.

Is that the performance that is actually on the record? You can hear how it sounds a bit distorted.

Yeah. Because it’s absolutely pushing everything. She didn't mean to record it like that, but it just sounded so great. Of course we kept it.

Whose idea was it to cover "Is That All There Is?" by Peggy Lee?

It was initially done because they needed it for this film [Basquiat]. We really liked the way it came out, so we thought, "Oh, it kind of fits on the record." The recording that’s on the album is actually the first time we’d ever played that song. There were no rehearsals. We didn’t really know what we were going to do. Mick Harvey played the organ, I played drums, and Polly sang.

Obviously, most of her albums are credited to PJ Harvey. On this album, she's Polly Jean Harvey. What do you think is the significance of her changing her billing?

That was absolutely her call. I think she was quite protective of me. She very much said, "I want it to be called John Parish and Polly Jean Harvey, not the other way around." It’s difficult, isn’t it, if you’re an established artist and you suddenly work with someone who’s unknown, or de facto unknown. It’s like, "Oh, PJ Harvey and some bloke" kind of thing. I think she was trying to find the best way of making people realize that it wasn’t another PJ Harvey album. I know that later on, when we did the second collaboration, it was PJ Harvey and John Parish. It in some ways made more sense, but you’re never quite sure how you should go about those things when you’re doing them.

Some articles I’ve read state that the record label, Island, was uncomfortable with the album and believed it to be "commercial suicide." Is there any truth to that?

I’m sure there were people at Island who were a little bit unnerved by it. And by the fact that it was coming out not as a PJ Harvey record, but under a different name, when To Bring You My Love had just been such a relatively commercial success for PJ Harvey. Probably somebody said it was commercial suicide. If they really thought that, I doubt they would have put it out. I think they didn’t really know what it was.

I have to give quite a lot of credit to Polly’s manager, Paul McGuinness. I think if he hadn’t been behind it, perhaps Island Records wouldn’t have gone for it. But Paul heard it and he was like, "This is a really good record." Obviously he had a lot of clout and a lot of credibility with Island.

During this period, Polly was also becoming successful very quickly. Perhaps she was overwhelmed by the expectations from the record label or the degree of media scrutiny. Do you think those factors contributed to her desire to separate herself from the PJ Harvey that people knew?

You’d probably have to ask her. My take would be that it’s not quite as thought-through as that. She doesn’t like to repeat herself. The last thing she would have wanted to do at that time would have been To Bring You My Love 2. Her gut reaction is to try and do something different each time. Which is why I think she’s had such a long, successful career. I think there was a lot of pressure after the first album, Dry—the record company didn’t like Rid Of Me. They didn’t want to have this Steve Albini-recorded, very hard-hitting album. They were hoping for something more commercial, like I would have said Dry was.

If you are able to reinvent yourself each time—which, obviously a lot of artists just don’t have that facility—if you can, it sets you up for a much longer, more interesting career.

The album title refers to a painting. How did the title present itself to you or to Polly?

I was, and I still am, a very big fan of the painting Rosy-Fingered Dawn At Louse Point by [William] de Kooning. I told you I was giving Polly some of the songs I gave her with titles. One of them, which she ended up not writing any lyrics to—the title track from the album—is an instrumental. That was just a title I gave it. There was something about a place called "Louse Point" that sounded sort of desolate and rather unappealing, and I just thought a dance hall—I just liked the atmosphere that the title [suggested].

How would you describe this album’s long-term legacy in Polly’s career? Do you think it’s overdue for more attention?

I mean, I know it’s seemed like there’s a hardcore group of fans that like it very much. In the U.K. and Europe, there were a lot of people [who] liked it pretty much straight away. Perhaps in America it took a little bit longer to find its home. Obviously we never came over, played any shows, did anything in the U.S. at the time of its release. A lot of people talk to me about it 23, 24 years after its release and say they love it very much. I guess it has its fans for sure.

Once this reissue campaign is over, do you think we can expect a new album from Polly next year?

Umm… I don’t know. I can’t really answer that.

Are there any more previously unreleased demos, like the Dry demos, that fans can look forward to as part of this reissue campaign?

Nearly all the albums will come with accompanying demos. Probably the only ones that won’t are our two collaborative albums—the demos would all be instrumental versions of the album, because that’s how we went about it.

What can you tell me about the demos for Is This Desire?

Well, there’s a demo version of "The Garden," which I really, really love. Had it been down to me, I would have said "Put the demo version on the album" when the record came out. Because I just think it’s one of Polly’s greatest demos. Generally, I like the demos for Is This Desire? a lot.

And the b-sides from that record as well—"Sweeter Than Anything," "Nina in Ecstasy." I think there are some really extraordinary songs that didn’t make it onto the proper album.

You and me both. I think "Nina In Ecstasy" should have been on the record. That was my favorite track of the whole set of demos. So I was very disappointed that that didn't make it onto the album.

I’m glad I’m not the only one who thought that track should have been on there. Will those b-sides be included with the reissue package?

Not the initial reissue package, because it’s literally the album plus demos of the album. I might be wrong, but I think there might be some kind of b-sides and rarities thing to come out as another package at some point down the line.

Will you also be reissuing the more recent albums, like Let England Shake and The Hope Six Demolition Project?

I think Hope Six is still available anyway. So I don’t think there’s any point in reissuing that. But I think everything that was unavailable is being made available.

Has Polly herself been very involved in preparing these reissues and overseeing everything?

No, I think she’s delegated to people like me or Head. And she’s delegated the artwork; it’s all the people that did it originally who are working on it again. She’s very good at [delegating].

I’ve always gotten the sense she doesn’t like to dwell on her past work. She’s more interested in doing something new.

As all creative artists should be, I think.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, The Honorable Music Lover

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