Lara Downes

Hello, hello.

So, the album, as we call it, is a collection of freedom songs and spirituals. So, when I reference the ancestors, you know, and their hope, I'm directly referring to songs that came out of slavery. That, you know, even in the most impossible and degrading and terrible conditions, were expressing hope. You know, either on this earth or in the next, but nevertheless, that holding on to hope, which kept a people going, you know? And and songs that have come back over and over again as we confront new struggles and new um new ways of overcoming them. So, I I guess, you know, I'm I'm just referring to, yes, this long arc of history that we are just a small part of.

Yeah, I mean I'm a, you know, I'm a product of a time and a place. My mom, my parents met during the Civil Rights Movement. They met at a sit-in in San Francisco. My mom was a Jewish girl from Akron, Ohio. My dad grew up in Harlem, black man from Harlem. And they had both, you know, ended up on the West Coast, and they had three girls, I'm the first. And I think, you know, they were so much sort of a portrait of that moment and that movement, and the hope. You talk about hope, you know, that was experienced, and that was like the foundation of people's lives and actions. You know, to to get married and to create this family, they really believed that we were going to grow up in a better, different world. And of course, you know, to some extent we did. You can't argue that we that we did, but there's always there there's there was still so much work to do. So, and I think that I inherited the clear responsibility to keep doing that work. And the path that I chose was music. You know, I'm not a civil rights attorney like my mom, um but I think that we can all, through whatever voice we have, keep fighting that fight. And I've found a really satisfying way to do that through music that feels useful, it feels meaningful, and um it feels of my time. Like I want to be a musician of my time.

Well, I think that my mission has been to um present myself in the light of what I can make out of our tradition. Like like I need to explain that. So, you know, I think most people, if you ask them, would classify the music that we make—concert music, classical music, whatever we want to call it—as, you know, belonging to a specific group of people and specific origins. And I find huge interest in re-telling that story and broadening that lens and, you know, uncovering buried voices and really showing the diversity of what this music can be. And I think, you know, I have a I have a unique presence to share that reality. Um I feel like what we're doing right now, what we're doing right now as a culture, you know, sort of looking back and revisiting this history. You know, whose history is it? What story have we been telling? That's what I've been doing with this music for the last 10 years, and it needs to be done.

Mhm. Just about a year ago, yeah.

Well, specifically that evening was part of a series of concerts that was curated by my friend Rhiannon Giddens, with the intent of, you know, sharing the work of Black composers. So, we were we were presenting music by Florence Price, but also by Billy Strayhorn and um Hazel Scott, and, you know, a range of artists whose names are not so well known in the concert hall. And it was a beautiful, beautiful experience, you know? Boston Pops, Symphony Hall, um capacity audience. Three nights, we were we were in residence for three nights, and it there was just this joy of of discovery. There was you could feel this energy and excitement to know that there's more there's more to this story than we have known. Um and I'm so grateful to be part of those moments. The price the Price Concerto is a pretty remarkable work. She calls it a concerto in one movement, it's really in three distinct sections, and it represents really the breadth of what she did as a composer. You know, it starts in this very romantic, virtuoso place, it goes through this very lyrical, jazz-tinged second section, and then it ends with this exuberant dance that's full of, you know, African-American rhythms and a really a distinct sound. Um it was great to play it with Keith, he's he's such a scholar and was so so fascinated by the piece and so excited to be in it. Um what you were saying a minute ago, I think it's about lineage. You know, you have this clear lineage as a musician. You can look back and trace your musical ancestors, right? And I can too. Um for a woman, and for a woman of color, it's a little more complicated, and the, you know, the those ancestors have to uh represent a lots lots of different points of connection, you know, that are maybe a little bit less clear. But when you find a a figure like Florence Price, there's this feeling of kinship, you know? To know that somebody went before you and broke down barriers that were so tremendously much more difficult than anything I've ever experienced, you know? And had this creative impulse that pushed her through those barriers, and she was, you know, this incredibly impactful figure in her time. I don't we should we should say, that in 1933 she made history by being the first Black female composer ever performed by a major symphony orchestra.

Oh, she struggled. Yeah.

Yeah, she wrote and wrote and wrote.

You know, and then and then her music disappears, and then her music is found abandoned in tattered manuscripts, you know, in a falling down house in Illinois in 2009. And then I get to bring her music back! What more fun? What more amazing?

Yeah, my mom is pretty much unstoppable, um so I inherited that. She's um she's a huge dreamer, and I think she raised us, you know, with this notion that you really truly can do anything, you've got to figure it out, and then you just go do it. And I think that my career in music has been very much influenced by my chaotic and, you know, eccentric childhood. My my father died when I was nine, so it was just my mom. And um homeschooling was a bit of a of a mess, and you know, we we just kind of we moved around a lot, then we moved to Europe, and we just like traveled to different cities, and it was when I look back I I can't make any sense of it. But I have not um lived my life in music according to any rules that I know. I have just, you know, followed these things that drive my curiosity, and somehow I convince other people to go along with me. Um but that's it. I mean, I do I owe her a tremendous debt of gratitude for just making giving me the notion that I could do such a thing.

Probably, but probably more from, you know, all of those all of those old-school teachers I had as a kid, right?

So, what I've learned, you know how when you're a musician and you grow up and there's this thing about how music is the universal language and music can move mountains, and you kind of know that on one level, and on another level you think maybe that's just the thing that we say. And then maybe you experience it, and I've experienced it, I mean I've been lucky enough to experience it in so many ways. But I think that the place where I experience it and it just drives me every single day is in working with young people. You know, the impact that you can have if you enter their lives through music, through something beautiful that they haven't experienced before, and a story that can connect them to their own human experience, that can immediately open their ears and their minds and their hearts to something outside of what they know. And I'll tell you, you know, I'll give you the example that always stays with me. In 2016, on the morning after the election, I had to get up at 3:00 AM and fly to Louisville, Kentucky. Um and I dragged myself out of bed after, you know, a sleepless night, and I made my way across this like crazily divided country that I didn't recognize. And I get to Kentucky, and I'm working in these um I did a concert that night, and then I was in school classrooms for three days. And in Louisville, Louisville is a very segregated city, and there were kids in these classrooms, the teacher told me they hadn't spoken to each other for weeks, months, I guess, because of where their parents were aligning themselves politically. And here I come, this lady they've never seen before, and I'm sharing music with them by Florence Price, but also by, you know, Roy Harris and Copland, and I'm kind of giving them each, from whatever their perspective, some pathway into the American experience that includes them. But it also includes that other kid across the classroom. And like, you could see the lights going on, and there was a conversation in the classroom that day about racism and about, you know, lack of opportunity and stuff that had not been speakable until then. And so I always think that my the greatest thing I can do on any given day of my life, and I'm doing that virtually now, by the way, I'm not going to they're not going to keep me away from the kids. But if I can go into a classroom, you know, or a virtual space, and I can touch a child who then maybe that evening over dinner says to his or her parents, "I learned this thing today," you know? And it starts a new conversation, or just a new some new way of looking at things, I think that that's an incredible opportunity to change the way that a person moves in the world.

I think it has been taken.

Look, I don't know. I mean, I don't know how to answer that question, honestly. I think that, you know, there are just some parts of who I am as a player. Um you know, I always have the hardest time when I'm giving a masterclass or a lesson, if I encounter one of those young pianists, and there are very many of them, who attack the piano this way, like it's they're going down into the piano, because I never think about my instrument that way. I am, I mean, I I like that metaphor, "under the notes," but I always am, I'm always feeling like I'm bringing it up out of here. So, I'm not I mean, I'm not, you know, a natural-born pianist. Maybe I was meant to be a singer or a cellist or something else, I just don't think about the notes that way. Um and then this element of story that's inside them, I this is not something physical or even intentional that I do. This is just how I feel the music, this is how it comes out.

Right now we're in quarantine, and um actually this Friday I have a collection coming out called The Bedtime Sessions because I just started recording lullabies here at home on my piano during quarantine. Um which sounds, I mean, at first it just felt like an easy, peaceful thing to do, and then it, I mean, it it also assumed this deeper meaning because, I don't know about you, but I've been having, for the first time in my life, the kind of nightmares that wake you up screaming. I think sleep is so, you know, it's so difficult right now, there's so much grief and stress and we're all so scared. So, you know, I I feel like these these lullabies, which are, you know, again I I just went into deep nerd state and started researching, you know, all this beautiful music that you might not even expect to call to call lullabies. Uh I think I can never I can never tell you in advance what the next project's going to be, it just comes. Usually, you know, comes all of a sudden, and then I do it really fast.

Wait, I'm going to write that down.

I don't want to keep saying stories, but you know, messages and missions, and and Stories are important. Stories are really important. Stories are how we understand everything from, you know, our earliest childhood, so I really do think that stories are important. And when you talk about, you know, how do you spend a lifetime, and you know, maybe this has to do with the fact that my father died when I was really young and I saw that, you know, loss can happen and somebody's life can be cut short, and I think that we're so privileged as musicians to have long lives in our music. We start when we're babies, you know, and many of us go until our last days. Let's hope. But I think I've Right? But I've always had this understanding that you just you use that time well. And, um like I said, you know, there was a lack of like rule-abiding um politeness in me, I don't know, I just thought that all things were possible, and I feel like my my job, I I know what my job is. I know what my job is, and I always say to young players, "You know, don't try to be the best pianist in the world, that doesn't exist, there's no such thing. Be the best version of yourself that you can be, you know? And that's not easy because first you have to find out who you are." So, if you're lucky enough to do that, if you're lucky enough to, you know, find the thing that drives you and the thing that you can do well, the thing that you have to give, then do that thing. I mean, you know this as as a composer, you know, you're not going to Still working on it. Right, right, me too.

So, first of all, I think when we come out the other side of this, nothing will be the same. I think the way that, you know, we we share our music and make our music is just going to be different. I'm actually really interested in using this time to build on what is possible. You know, I spent, I'm not kidding, I spent 14 hours on Sunday making a video module for classrooms about the life and music of Florence Price, because it's really hard for me, you know, to engage with 40 kids in a Zoom space, and so I thought let's I should make something that they can experience and then I can follow up with them and we can talk about it. That's better than me sitting here at my piano and trying to keep them engaged in their little Zoom windows. And I'm putting this thing together, and all of a sudden, you know, I'm realizing everything that I can fold into this 15-minute video. They can learn about the Great Migration, you know, and the Chicago Black Renaissance, and they can learn about Jacob Lawrence, and segregation, and what it meant, you know, and and just like this whole world comes together. And I thought, what what if we use this time to really harness that power? You know, so that you ask, where do I want to be? I want to be where I'm needed, and I think that on the other side of this, yes, I really do want to, you know, be with the people, I I miss it so much. But also, what if I can do more from wherever I am? You know, what if we develop a a way that we're in closer contact and we're in more regular contact? I think the hardest thing for me is how I'm, you know, here and there, and I'll go into a community, I'll be in Chicago for three days, and then I'm gone, and I don't see that audience or those kids again for, you know, another what, two years? And this way, I I think that we really can, I mean, until now we've been in panic mode and we've been trying to figure out how to make do, but if we really focus on what we can build here, there's a lot of potential.