February 1, 2023 • 74 mins
Hailed by the New York Times as "gripping" and "evocative," Dr. Nkeiru Okoye has been commissioned by Juilliard's Preparatory Division to build a more diverse, inclusive future for young classical musicians. This interview with Dr. Okoye brought listeners into an intimate conversation about her revolutionary work that welcomes and affirms both traditional and new audiences. From her moving piece, "Invitation to a Die-In," which addresses the slaying of unarmed black men to the delightfully whimsical sounds of "Briar Patch," Dr. Okoye is blazing trails for generations to come!
NKEIRU OKOYE is an American-born composer of African American and Nigerian ancestry. After her studies at Oberlin Conservatory, she obtained her doctorate at Rutgers University and became one of the leading African American women composers. Her music has been commissioned, performed, and presented by the Detroit Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony, Opera North UK, Mt. Holyoke College, Juilliard School, Houston Grand Opera, the American Opera Project, Boston Landmarks Orchestra, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the University of Michigan Orchestras, Charlotte Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Sinfonietta, Cleveland Opera Theater, Moscow Symphony, Tanglewood Music Festival, Virginia Symphony, Tulsa Opera, Royal Opera House, Da Capo Chamber Players, Cellist Matt Haimovitz, Pianist Lara Downes, and many others.
Website: www.nkeiruokoye.com
NKEIRU OKOYE is an American-born composer of African American and Nigerian ancestry. After her studies at Oberlin Conservatory, she obtained her doctorate at Rutgers University and became one of the leading African American women composers. Her music has been commissioned, performed, and presented by the Detroit Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony, Opera North UK, Mt. Holyoke College, Juilliard School, Houston Grand Opera, the American Opera Project, Boston Landmarks Orchestra, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the University of Michigan Orchestras, Charlotte Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Sinfonietta, Cleveland Opera Theater, Moscow Symphony, Tanglewood Music Festival, Virginia Symphony, Tulsa Opera, Royal Opera House, Da Capo Chamber Players, Cellist Matt Haimovitz, Pianist Lara Downes, and many others.
Website: www.nkeiruokoye.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Good evening. Welcome to Team Leadership Radio. That's T E
E M. Train, equip, Empower and Mobilized Leadership. I'm your hosts,
doctor Cecilia Martin, and we are kicking off season two, y'all.
I'm so excited because it's going to be just as
(00:50):
amazing as season one. In fact, I have with me tonight.
Doctor Kiru Okoye who is an American composer born in
New York City, New York and raised on Long Island.
After studying composition, music theory, piano, conducting, and Africana studies
(01:11):
at Oberlin Conservatory, she pursued graduate studies at Rutgers University
and became one of the leading African American women composers.
An activist through the arts, doctor o'koyer creates a body
of work that welcomes and affirms both traditional and new audiences.
Held as gripping and evocative by the New York Times,
(01:35):
her works have been commissioned, performed, and presented by Detroit Symphony,
Philadelphia Orchestra, Baltimore's Symphony Opera, North UK, Juilliard School, Houston,
Grand Old Opera. And it goes on and on and
on from Boston to Chicago to Charlotte to Tulsa, the
(01:56):
Moscow Symphony. I give to you no other than the
extraordinary doctor and Kivu o Koye. Welcome, doctor oh Koye.
Thank you so much for joining me tonight. Thank you,
thank you, thank you. CC.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
I'm so delighted to be here, and I am just
I just have to tell your audience that, you know,
I just love you so much.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
You are my sister, you are my friend. And I remember.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
When we were both in Baltimore and you were just
starting Team Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
I'm just so you know, I was just looking at it.
I was like, wait a minute, Team t E a M.
And you said no. I was just thinking wow. And
so I am teeming with pride for you Team Oh.
I love it. Thank you so much, and you know
(02:53):
the feeling is mutual. And you know, I am so
grateful to have been on part of your journey with you,
like you said, since oh gosh, way back when in Baltimore,
just to see the incredible work that you've done. I mean,
you were brilliant then and now the world knows it.
The world is beginning to know it now. Your mother
is African American and your father Nigerian. What is the
(03:16):
meaning of your name exactly?
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Well, my name is from the it's a it's Nigerian culture.
It's Ebo, my father was, and my name means the
future is great or also the future is greater.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Than the past. So I love my name. Every time
people say it, they are prophesying over me. So I
love it. I love it. I love it. Oh my gosh.
I mean that is really powerful. I mean, and it's
so true because your future is so much brighter than
your past, and it goes on and on and on.
(03:59):
They you adequately, I can tell you that much. I mean,
just I can't wait to dive into the work that
you've done. You're such an incredible individual. You're actually a
part of living history as we know it now. You
were introduced to music as a child, and I just
want to know what ignited the passion or interest, particularly
(04:20):
in classical music. Well, you know this kind of.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
It's really a two part question, you know, because the
first thing is that we had a little organ in
my house, and apparently I was just one of these
kids who would just you know, I would just go
over to the organ and I would just put my
fingers on it. And I wasn't from one of these
musical families. Like you know, my father was an electrical
(04:50):
engineer and my mother is she's retired now, but an
occupational therapist. So these are two people who are aliences.
And at one point my mother had been Actually when
she enrolled in college at Ithaca, her original thought was
to be a music education major because she really enjoyed
(05:14):
the chorus when she was in high school, and her
first semester she realized that was just not to be.
So we still had this little organ in the house,
but nobody played it. So I would just go over
and I would just you know, I didn't have to play,
and not no one that came to teach me how
(05:34):
to read music, you know, but I was just huh,
just like the way this soulf.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
So, you know, so it just came to me naturally,
is is my point? Now? The reason I said it's
a it's a it's a it's a two part question
is that you know, my mother would not generally, we
would not play secular music in her house. Wow. So yeah,
(06:02):
so I grew up you know, very i'll say, a
very strict fundamentalist background. I suppose that's redundant, strict and fundamentalist.
I get it, I get it right, get the redundancy, honey,
because my mother was stricted.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
So yes, So you know, obviously you would have other
music coming in because we weren't in and in you know,
one of these enclosed societies, you know. But I would
hear she We would play WQXR, you know, and that
was in New York. That's the classical music radio station.
(06:44):
So we would hear that, and we would hear the
Christian radio station, and we would hear the news, and.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
That's what we would hear on the radio. So that
was the music that I knew.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
I knew that, and I knew some of the him
from our fairly it's a white Southern Baptist church that
we started out going to, and so you know, we
would hear that and you know, some of the different
types of things. But that was the music that I knew.
So that's how I gravitated towards classical music. It wasn't
(07:19):
classical music. That was just the music that I knew.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Yeah, I get it, I totally get it. That's that's
that's amazing. So you have an organ in your house,
you know how old were you when you started playing?
And do you play any other instruments, because I know
you played piano as well. Right, well, actually I don't
play the organ really, So the organ was there, well,
(07:46):
we had it, and because I really wanted to play it,
someone gave us a piano. Latcha okay, so I you know,
I just and we didn't go to one of these
one of the churches where you're.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Having gospel music being played, so it's not like I
would pick it up from you know, by ear.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
And so yeah. So and also you know, my mother
had worked in missions. She worked on a mission in
Dutchess County, New York, which is in Lower New York state,
but for New Yorker's proper they would call it upstate.
But it's not upstate. It's you know, just about an
(08:29):
hour north of Manhattan.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
So you know, with this type of background, that's why
someone had given us a piano, and so I had it.
And about you know, about seven, you know, about seven
years old, I had my first music lessons and I
learned how to read music, and you know that was it.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Now yeah, well, okay, so we have the piano, right,
and you are are honestly excelling because you started composing
at age thirteen. I did. But you know, let me
go back because you asked if I played other.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
Instruments, and it's kind of a compound.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
They kind of go hand in hand. Okay. I was
in the school band and orchestra, and you know, with
the piano, because of the layout, the obvious thing to
do is to play the Glockenspiel.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
So I would play the Glockenspiel. But the glockenspiel are
those are those bells that work orchestral bells.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
I played the heay, gotcha? Yeah, okay, and then I
also played the obo and the well, there's no real
good way to describe the obo because if I describe
it as a double wind, it's like that just doesn't help. No,
it doesn't, but it's it kind of looks like a clarinet.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
It's a bit skinnier than a clarinetka and people say
the sound is a little bit duck.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Like gotcha, okay, I'm all it right. So that has
the same fingering as the alto sax. And when I
say fingering, I just mean when you put your fingers
on in a certain formation, it's going to have it's
going to come, it's going to you're gonna hear a note.
And it's got basically the same fingerings as the alto
(10:20):
sax and as the flute and some of these other instruments.
And so when I got to junior high school, the
band director said, you know, you can't play an obo.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
There's just no such thing as I don't think such
thing as obo's for the marching band. So he got
me on the alto sax. And so that's that's how
that happened.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Wow, yeah, yeah, okay, all right, so let's go back,
because you had also asked about my writing music at thirteen. Yes, okay,
when you really really think about it, I had always
been writing music. I wrote down my first composition at thirteen.
(11:05):
So let me just clarify because clarification helps.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
You know, I would make up these songs in my head,
and I hadn't really thought that it was anything special.
So I just remember, you know, we read a lot
in the house, and I remember publically there were these
Beatrix Potter books. And I remember Beatrix Potter not just
because she's amazing children's author, but I just remember reading
(11:35):
that about Peter Rabbit, and so he remember reading that
he opened the window or maybe he opened the door,
and he would sing his morning and so you know,
there's a little poem in there, and so.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
You know, I of course sang the song because I
thought everybody took back. And it was years later and
I was thinking, ah, you didn't. Also, you know, no,
we did not.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
So yeah, so how we discovered that I was a
composer is different. And I was advancing through the music
program and I had outgrown the neighborhood piano teacher. So
we had gotten me a professional teacher through a number
(12:32):
of things. And ironically, she played for the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra,
so she would play the chillesta.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
And the chillesta sounds like little bells, and so when
you hear the the Nutcracker during Christmas time, that's stump
bump bump bump bum bum bum bumpum, that little chiny thing,
that's the chileesta. Yeah, okay, right, So I.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Would I would go down and I would have those
lessons from her, and it was for most of a summer,
and she thought, you know, I think you're ready. You
can get into one of these famous prep schools. So
I'm going to prep you to get into one of
these schools, and I think you're really going to do
something in music, So let me do this for you.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Yet, so I worked harder than I ever had, and
I would be there, you know, twice three times a week,
and she would just work with me, and she'd give
me these ultimate, ultimate coachings.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
And so we got me into one of these prep.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Schools for music, and I was just completely floored. And
we were not able to get me in the studio
that she had a friend who had this one studio.
In a studio, that's the students that you have, and
so you know, you'd have so many, you know, this student,
this student, this student, and so this is your studio.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Mm hmmm. So her studio was full. Okay, Well, so
then they sent me to this arrogant young man who
happened to be white, and he did not want me
to be in his studio. Oh my yes.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
And so between his See now as an adult, I
can look and say this is what was going on.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Sure, he was just not.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
At all impressed with this black child who was shy
and withdrawn and introverted. And a couple of weeks I
think it might have been a month m h slept
ing all the way up to Manhattan and sitting through
(14:48):
these different classes and then going to be in his
studio and taking lessons from him. And he told me
that I would never be in music, that I I had.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
No basically no no talent and basically I could chop
my fingers off it would not damage my plane. What. Yeah, see,
these are things that will scar Oh my gosh. And
so you know, I love telling this story, not because
I turned around everyone's thinking, oh, this is where you
(15:22):
just tell this jerk off, And no, that's just not
what happened, you know, Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
I was devastated, and you know, these are things that
these are gender things, these are race things, these are
biased behaviors. We can deal with now in society because
we're better equipped to deal with them. Sure, yeah, but
at that time that's just not where things were. And
(15:55):
so I was so impacted by what this man said.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
It triggered something.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
And so this is kind of my you know, do
you know those X Men movies where you know, you
see that the superpowers, the supernatural powers, we happened to
and to a young kid, someone who's in the teenage years.
Formula and something traumatizes them and they suddenly developed this
(16:24):
They finally get this power and it leads.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
So he unleashed it. Listen, he unleashed it. And I
hope you know his you know, you know where his
whereabouts is, so you can send him your New York
Times reviews. Thank him, because he got me to pay
attention to this music that was just exploding in my head. Yeah,
(16:47):
walked down to my school district where everyone is. You know,
I'm still the new girl in school, and people just
knew that I had some talent in music. And so
this guy tells me that I have no talent. I'm
wasting my time.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
So I go to the band director who was a
black man and used to be in he still is
a black man.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
You know, I gotcha, I gotcha. He used to play
in some of the pop groups in the eighties.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
You know, yeah, casualized. This girl is writing music. So
he told me how to write it down, and I
paid him for it. Not composition lessons, but they were
there were music theory lessons, and so he was then
that's you know, there's an art to writing down music,
and it's just like learning grammar, you.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Know, sure, Yeah, I would imagine, how do you write
this down? And how do you recognize the words?
Speaker 2 (17:50):
And so he teaching me that, and he told me
how to write out this composition. And I called it
Phase two because I had all always thought of myself
as a pianist, and oh, I thought, oh, this is
my requiem for my music career.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
So this is my next phase. Let's call it phase two.
So he gets me to enter.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
It into this competition and it's a local it's the
local branch of the NAACP, and the the competition is
called ACT, so it's kind of the I've forgotten what
that acronym is for, which is an awful type of thing.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
Let's see. It's the African American Cultural Technological Scientific Olympics. Wow, Yeah,
which I did not know existed.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Okay, yes, So this is for black high school students
all over the country, and you'd go through your local
branch and then from the local branch you would get
to the nationals or sometimes they would have regional branches.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
So he had me.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Enter this thing, and I kept telling him, but this
this this man, you know, this white man has told
me that I have no talent. And it wasn't it
wasn't like this white man. But you know, this man
knows everything because he's at hoity toity music school.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
Yes, of course, yeah, he's gonna have the influence at that. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
And so he just said, you know, why don't you
let them tell you, you know, at least enter this this thing.
So I said, well, let me do the piano and
i'll I'll enter this piece. But it's not gonna win.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
Mm hmm, Well girl, it won. It didn't just win
in the net in the in the net, in the
local branch, you know, and you know, and these were
just regular people. So I had to come out of
classical music world, which was my my little secret, you know,
(19:53):
it's my little I don't want to say secret, but
it's that place that I would explore and it's that
world that you know that as an introverted child, I
would escape into this world. I had to come out
of this world because the folks at the NAACP were
(20:15):
wonderful folks. They were very you know, into they wanted
to do concert they would go to concerts, but it
wasn't that wasn't their world. So I had to.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Invest this, you know, this thing that they had in
me all right, So apparently it worked. I get there
to the national competition that you have to see this.
There's thousands of black high school students and they're in
all the different disciplines, all the arts and sciences, and
(20:52):
they're they're representing their local their local branches, and so
this is something that probably every kid, every one, everyone
should see because this is black excellence and so you know,
music composition. It was the smallest of.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
These and they're all these guys, and they're all tall too.
This is the thing. They're all looking down at me.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
And they were remember the you know North Carolina, South Carolina,
they're always really and they were coming from the Governor's
School of the Arts, they whatever, the school of the Arts,
and I didn't have that, and they had all known
each other from all.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
These other years. And I've blown everybody over with a
feather when I won, my goodness, and it was on
my fourteenth birthday, so that was my presence. Oh wow, ah, yeah,
this is so incredible. You know, as you're telling your story,
(21:49):
I think about unsung heroes and people in the arts,
particularly African American female like Missy Copeland, Like I'm totally
seeing your life life as a movie in the making.
I mean, the story itself is just incredible, and there
are too few female African American composers that get to
(22:13):
the level where you are now. So I am just
sitting here. That's an amazing story and it really should
be on the big screen. I think if anyone's listening, well,
I know a disproportionately high number of black female composers.
There are not enough of us. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So
(22:37):
you went on to my goodness, So you went on
to of course, graduating from high school and all that
good stuff. So you attended Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Now,
my daughter attends a conservatory in New York and it's
very intense. But for those unfamiliar with the concept, can
you explain what a conservatory is and how it enhances
(22:59):
the occasion experience of an artist?
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Okay, well, a conservatory and you know there are I
think there's conservatories for dance and for a theater.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Conservatory of music. It is intense.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
You think of mit, you have the best and the brightest,
and they all know they're the best and the brightest,
and they're all under one roof. Yes, conservatory, and so
you have these tons of kids where all at the
top of our games.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
In music, we're under one roof.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
And you know at Oberlin they're in all Steinway school.
So there's an entire wing of practice rooms in the
main conservatory building and it's filled with grand pianos that
are all Steinland suns.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Yes, yes, and right.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
It's regardless of what your background is, you are there now.
This is the great leveling, you know, it's it's the
great it's it's the leveling what do you.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Call that, the leveling ground? Yeah, yeah, oh yeah, so
the leveling around and the proving ground. Absolutely. So we
are all competitive, competitive with each other.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
Yeah, yeah, we're intense. We're practicing all the time, you know,
four hours a day, six hour days, and you're waiting
to get into that practice room.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Mm hmmm, yes, yeah. You know, my daughter she calls
me all the time from New York and she's often leaving, uh,
the theater room at eleven at night. All of them
are you know, you know so, I mean it's it's
(24:47):
like you said, it is a leveling ground, it's a
proving ground all at the same time, it's extremely competitive, yes,
but in a healthy way because it challenges you in
your field. In the art of your genre. So yeah,
it is incredible. Now you went on, So after that
intense experience of being at a conservatory, you went on
(25:10):
to get your doctorate in music theory and composition at
Rutgers University, and there you wrote and conducted a composition
entitled The Creation, where the critically acclaimed actor Danny Glover
narrated parts of your work. What was that like for you?
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Oh gosh, you are taking me back. You know, the
conservatory is competitive, but it also you make friendships.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
You meet men what not.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
At the At most conservatories there's a very small number
of African Americans and even a smaller number of African
American professors.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
And so.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
I didn't have one, didn't have a mentor mentor when
I was at Oberlin, but I found one someone my
mother's stepmother was in a reading group with a black
composer and his name was Noel la Costa. Okay, So
the day I met him, he decided I was going
(26:19):
to be his last student.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
And he had been through Rutgers for twenty five years
at that point and it never had one black student
to get wow, and so he said he just that's
he just picked me. Wow. Okay, Okay, well this relates
because that's how I ended up at Rutgers. And in
(26:44):
terms of being competitive, we're all competing for in the
composition program, there's one spot once a year where one
student would have their composition performed by the orchestra. Yis right. Now,
we had a famous composer on campus and it was
(27:07):
my teacher who had chosen you as their lesson. But he,
you know, it was always his student. So yeah, my
teacher calls me my second year and says, oh, congratulations,
not the wait what and so it was going to
be my piece that was done and incredible. So this
(27:31):
is a piece called the Genesis.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
So if you're if you're keeping track, there's the Genesis
and then there's the creation. It was a bit of
my upfring age, you know. And so all this to
say that it put a rather sizable target on my
head when you're when you are a person who is
not you know, you're not amongst that chosen group. Also,
(27:55):
I'm not white, I'm not male, and somehow they chose
my piece. So perhaps out of retaliation, and perhaps because
there's this whole invisible, invisible quality of being a woman
and being black, you know, they got together and and
(28:15):
they probably were all doing this anyway, but they had
a a they had a concert and they called it
the Composers of Rutgers University and it was at Carnegie
Hall because one of them had an internship there. M
In like me to be in the concert though I
(28:36):
had just won this competition, and I go.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Oh, my goodness, so I have saw that I'm just
not going to do anything in music because they're never
going to let me in. M Ah. So we had
a uh, this Haitian woman and she was a one
of the I think she was the she was the
black woman on faculty, and she was a pianist. And
(28:59):
she said in KIU, we will not do that.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
If you you're going to make your own opportunities and
if they will not invite you to come in, you
will do your own thing.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
So we're going to do a Black History Month concert.
Wow right, okay, you know, so we did that first,
and you know, the first was and they gave us.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
They gave me money too, they gave me grant funding
and whatever, and they gave me a date on the
calendar for my second concert, and they said that it
needed to be better. Okay, and being competitive with yourself
is sometimes the best competition that you that you can have,
because you're right right, that's right. We need something that's going.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
To be so spectacular it's going to leave a mark. Yeah,
and no quessure though, right.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
Right, because we're all waiting for you, we're watching you.
And also may also, what did they do? They set
up another competing concert that afternoon, like earlier in the day.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
Mm hmmm. See that's the type of thing that would
just tick you off. Yeah, for sure, for sure. Yeah.
So I said, all right, so we had to do
something that is really spectacular. So called in yet a
third black woman to be on our committee. And she
was a faculty member, and I said, well, we're gonna
have to find a celebrity. Okay, that's so fine. One.
(30:32):
So we're talking this over and she said, will Danny
Glover do? I was thinking, yeah, I think he'll do. Yeah, yeah,
I think so. And she says, Danny, this thing is Busia.
(30:54):
Her sister, also a BA was Nettie in the color purple. Ah,
So they actually just called Danny Glover up right. Yeah right,
So that is how that happened. And I don't know what.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
It was that she said, But he agreed to come
out and participate in this program, and you know, he
didn't charge anything for it. We obviously had to raise
the money to get him there.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Sure, but yeah, yeah, it was amazing.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
And I just remember, you know, I'm writing this music
and I'm producing the concerts, and I thought, wow, I
need to never ever do the writing and producing again,
which is these are things that you should never say
that you're never going to do something, because you actually
don't know what is in store for right, But this
(32:00):
was one of the most amazing experiences that I had
ever had at that point. And I can still think
of him just standing at you know, his presence.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
And there was a picture in the paper. It was
the next day or the day after that, and you know,
here's my career and you're looking at it and it
was looking really, really amazing. So I'm just very thankful. Yeah,
I tell you, I am sitting here with you know,
(32:34):
glazed over eyes because you know, again, I've had the
pleasure of knowing you for years and when I see
the evolution of who you are as a person, who
you are as a composer, and I'm glad the rest
of the world is hearing your story because you are
(32:54):
literally a piece of living history. And I'm seeing this
on the big screen, Doctor ol Koye, I really am okay,
and you're literally a piece of living history and sad.
There's a children's coloring book of black composers and you're
in it. Actually, it's it's funny. I'm actually on the
(33:16):
cover of it. Yes, you're on the cover of it.
I mean, this is this is really, you know, extraordinary.
Would you consider yourself or I want to know what
do you because I want to dive into to some
of your work What would you consider? And I have
special pieces that I want to talk about, But what
would you consider your breakthrough piece that puts you on
(33:38):
the map with the likes of Florence Price and Margaret
Bonds and Julia Perry just the name of you.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
And we're going to add Tanya Leone to that because
Leone just got the Kennedy Center Honors. Yes, yeah, yeah,
one day you may be there too. Yes to God's Ears,
doctor Martin, Yes, yes, yes, So I'm going to say
there were there were two different pieces. The first piece
(34:07):
was called Voices Shouting Out and this is an orchestra
piece that I wrote in two thousand and two. It
was inspired by.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
Nine to eleven.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
I was down in Norfolk, Virginia, and the orchestra's the
Virginia Symphony. They had someone come out and meet me,
and I was teaching down at Norfolk State and they thought, Okay,
let's have the new composer. Let's give her a chance,
and let's put her on this Black History Month program
(34:43):
that they do. And then eleven happened and I thought, huh, well,
I'm really like really depressed. I mean, I'm you know,
I was just really especially as a native New Yorker,
this just impacted me in so many ways. And also
this is the time that I realized I'm the adult
(35:04):
in the room there.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
I am.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
You know, we're in Norfolk, we're in I think that
is the largest UH naval base on the Eastern seaboard,
and so we're all none of them going on and
I and you know, we could be bombed at any moment,
and I'm thinking.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
Wow, there needs to be some adult that tells us
what to do. And it occurred to me I am
that adult, and yeah, yeah, yeah, the very sob very
moment and for all of us and for all of
these these people who were losing their lives and the
heroes that that we had in you know, in the
(35:42):
in the aftermath and the fallout. And so.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
This piece that was my first, I think it was
my first orchestra commission. Should have been such a joyous thing,
and now suddenly it's become a night nine to eleven thing.
And I really thought about that, and I started writing
these kind of somber things and then I said, you know,
(36:09):
let me not write that terrorism into my music. And
so when you hear the piece, it sounds so it's defiant,
it's strong.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
It's.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
There's joy in this piece, and there's this middle section
where it goes into it sounds a little bit like
contemporary gospel music. And so this was this piece that
put me on the map. People said, oh, voice is
shouting out.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
Okay. So there was this conductor who loves his piece
and he programmed it with all of.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
These different orchestras. So yeah, so that was my first
piece to really take off. My next big piece.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Was about Arriet.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
Tubman and you and I had just met, yeah, just met,
and I started doing this thing on Harriet Tubman, and
you know, it ended up being an opera through this long,
long story. But in operas there are arias. There's these
(37:18):
songs that you're heroin, your hero, your secondary figure, you know,
they sing these these show stopping numbers, and so I
put four of them together and it's called a song cycle.
And so it's called the Songs of Harriet Tubman. And
people sing those songs. And there was a soprano named
(37:43):
Louise Tappin who made a recording of these arias and
people would just sing them. I remember there was a recording.
There was this one woman at a conference and I,
I don't know, I'd stumbled upon this thing and I
saw a woman singing my music a cappella.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
Friends, freaking wow. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
And people will call me up and they'll contact me
through my website, and they want to know about Harriet Tubman,
about my Harriet Tubman.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
You know, what's your path to it?
Speaker 2 (38:25):
I've got people writing there's a young woman right now
who is doing her master's degree and she's doing her
master's recital on the songs of Harriet Tubman.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
Just wow, Okay, so now you're part of the research books. Now, Yeah,
this is my formative piece. And it told people that
I'm an opera composer and that was my first opera.
So yeah, well you have an extraordinary repertoire, and I
(38:59):
I want to focus on one of your pieces that
was so moving. I have never seen anything like this
or heard anything like this. And it's called an Invitation
to Die or Invitation to Die, and it really is
sort of a tribute if you will, or focuses on
(39:20):
community dialogue and police shooting, a tribute to Trayvon Martin.
And when I saw the piece performed, I mean, this
is not your mama's orchestra, okay, and they say not
your mama's chicken soup, and this I have never seen
anything like this, where the librett is the was African
(39:44):
American male who was in locks. He wore hoodie. The
entire orchestra wore black hoodies. There were you know, highs
and lows. I mean, but there was a real story
being told in this piece. I mean, tell me, how
how did you how did you put this together? I mean,
(40:04):
it really is extraordinary and I want to encourage all
of the listeners, So please go to your website in
kiu Okoye dot com and it will also be in
the written piece of the of the narrative for those
who are listening and through iHeart and Spotify and all
(40:25):
the other platforms, because it is something like you've never
seen before and everyone needs to experience it. So tell
me a little bit about how you put this together.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
You know, Invitation to a guy in came from a
very very dark place in my life.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
I'd had a particularly egregious racial trauma that happened to me,
and I thought, you know, there are all these degrees
that I have, and in the end, the one thing
that they saw is black. Okay, So I'm going to
(41:12):
take this and.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
Yes, yes we all have.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
We all have, you know, And I took all of
this angst and all of this anger, and I had
this concept for this piece and I thought, okay, I'm
going to call this invitation to a die in, and
it's going to be there's the the the the idea
(41:41):
behind it was going to be.
Speaker 1 (41:44):
I'm sorry, I need to start again. You're fine, You're fine,
because I'm totally intrigued, all.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
Right with invitation to a die in. This was something
that came out of a trump that happened to me,
and it was an egregious racial incident that happened, And
the bottom line is that after all these degrees, after
(42:14):
all this these things, what the people saw is black
and these are experiences that is a black woman as
a human being. It changes your perspective. So I took
all of that and thought, okay, I'm going to emote
(42:35):
into the music.
Speaker 1 (42:37):
And so I had this So, you know, I had
this idea for this piece, and it was going to
be dedicated to there were they were at the time,
there were all of these police shootings of unarmed black men,
and I thought, okay, okay, I'm going to do this piece.
And the idea behind it is that at the end
(43:01):
of the piece, everyone in the orchestra there's going to
be sections of them and this section uh that they're
they're just gonna lay down as if they're dead. And
then this section of the piece they're also laid down
as if they're dead, and the only person left standing
would be the vocalist, and that person would also then
(43:21):
lay down as if dead. And so it's it's it's
a statement, it's it's theater, it's it is it is
it's extraordinary that in there too. Yeah, So.
Speaker 2 (43:36):
You know, there's a piece it's called Heiden's Farewell Symphony
and then the Farewell Symphony, which is much more cheerful.
There's a much more cheerful theme, you know, that has
the same thing. The instructions in the score are not
to lay down as if dead. But the point was
that the sections would go out and then you'd only
(43:59):
have one person left playing.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
With a takeoff on that.
Speaker 2 (44:07):
And I had a labrettist, and a librettist is a
person who writes the text to a piece of music.
And you know we had worked together on was that
that our first second? I think that we had done
one or two.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
We've done it.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
I think we had that. Thinks it was maybe our
second or third collaboration. And we talked about it because
one of us was a black man, though his being
white and my being female is over, you know, him
being male and my being female and black. So we
talked about it, and so we had a text. And
(44:46):
I then thought, okay, there's a spiritual, the spiritual who
will be a witness for my Lord. And it starts
off with that, and it really ruined that spiritual for
me for a long time.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
Oh, the piece is haunted, but I think of all
the pieces that I have but this is you know,
this is not a happy piece. You know, it ends
up you know with this theme, you know the title,
it is not going to end well yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:23):
And then on top of that, uh, the singer who
ended up performing it is he was my John Tupman
and Harriet Tubman and we've known each other for I
think at that point eight years, and so where friends
were collaborators and it became personal. Yeah, yeah, And so
(45:45):
I was writing this piece that is ending with his death.
Just it really it really I went through changes on
this piece.
Speaker 1 (45:54):
There's this piece.
Speaker 2 (45:56):
It's a it's a there's a movie. It's called what
is it that it's it's Queen Latifah and Emma Thompson
and Will Ferrell. It's called Stranger Than Fiction. And yes, okay,
it's a dilemma. So I ended up calling my friend
Damien the Damien in order to finish.
Speaker 4 (46:16):
This, Pete, I have to write this scene and we
had to talk me through this and so you know,
it's funny now, but at the time it was so incredibly.
Speaker 1 (46:30):
Painful, and it made me think of what it is
like to be vulnerable in this way as we are
as black women, and we don't know who's going to
be who's going to come home?
Speaker 3 (46:46):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (46:47):
Right, such an appropriate conversation even now with the tyree. Yeah,
the situation, I mean, and that's what i'd like. You know,
what I've learned is that you know, in our let
me see if I can articulate this and our culture,
music has been such a centering piece right in terms
(47:12):
of throughout generation to generation, there have been songs that
have been passed down, but we are known to be
moved by music and to move others by music. And
what I love about what you're doing is that you
really are blazing a trail in sort of an untapped genre,
(47:37):
if you will, for many of general African Americans. And
what you've done is that you've brought orchestra to life
in a way that's relevant to today's times and conversations.
And I just I really hope that everyone gets a
chance to experience some of your pieces, because it really
(48:00):
is it. You know, a lot of people don't go
to the orchestra. They think it's boring, they think it's
siff and they have they don't know, like there's a
whole movement just happening through your work that they've never
seen or experienced before. And you were talking about the
pieces that you wrote being able to emote through them.
What is your writing process? How do you bring a
(48:22):
piece together? For example, do you begin with a particular
instrument and wrap the notes around it or is it
conceived inwardly and you know the piece is sort of
completed in your head and then you layer it out
on paper. What is your writing process?
Speaker 2 (48:38):
Well, I think that's a good question. Let me go
back though, and you know, there are black composers and
I'm going to know more of them than most people
because well they're my ancestors and my colleagues. And knowing
(48:58):
about them changed my life and changed what it was
that I was seeing, you know, when I would go
out to concerts and I'm so incredibly excited that there
are more of us, yeah, and that we are welcome
in these spaces. And a lot of times I will
be that person who I'm that ambassador.
Speaker 1 (49:21):
You know.
Speaker 2 (49:22):
People will say, well, I don't like orchestra music, and
I remember with Harriet Tubman, which is an opera, It's like, I, oh,
really that's a hard That's that's.
Speaker 1 (49:30):
A harder soup. You know, this is just something on
airy on Harriet Tubman, you know, just come out, You'll
love it, and so they would just come out. But
what I knew was Porgy and Bess. I didn't even
know anything, you know, parts of meeting you, I would
have I would have not known some of these pieces.
(49:51):
So I am not the only one. But I do
thank you for that.
Speaker 2 (49:57):
But I just wanted to, you know, just to to
say that. But in terms of how I come up
with ideas, it's changed a bit now that I am well,
this is just what I do. So most pieces start
off with someone will call me up or contact my
(50:19):
website and say, okay, I want you to write a
piece about X, Y and z. And most of the
times it's for a specific performer or a group of
performer or some kind of ensemblele So the idea BEN
is already kind of preset.
Speaker 1 (50:38):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (50:39):
Now I do have some pieces like with Invitation to
a die In or Briar Patch, which is a telling
of bra Rabbit and the Brier Patch.
Speaker 1 (50:50):
Yeah, that is delightfully whimsical. I love it. It is
so much fun. We had, Yes, we had a lot
of fun with that piece. I'll see. That was one
of these things where I have this this little I
have a little folder. I call it my idea garden.
Speaker 2 (51:07):
Okay, someone asks, if someone asks, you know, I want
you to write something, but what is it that you
want me to you know, what is it something that
you want to work on? I'll say, well, I have
this little idea garden.
Speaker 1 (51:24):
Let me throw this idea at you. So sometimes that happens,
but far more often, you know, I just had a pianist,
Actually this piece premiered just earlier today. Here's a pianist
who called me and she she contacted my website and
she said, Okay, I have this idea for a piano requiem,
(51:46):
and I want you to write one movement of it.
I said, okay, all right, And so we would talk
about this and so I said, you know, what's the ideas?
What do you have?
Speaker 2 (51:57):
And then I do a second intro, and this is specific.
I want to know more about the person. If it's
a singer, I will I want to know more about
that person's voice. Okay, And as we tease out that idea,
I'll get some you know, that person will sound happier, sadder,
(52:18):
and more excited just through their vocal inflections. So I'll
pick up on some of that. In the case of
this pianist, uh, a requiem is basically a mass dead.
And you know, we've dealt with this pandemic.
Speaker 1 (52:35):
Again about what a requiem is. A requiem is a
mass for the dead, gotcha, okay, Right, So throughout history
there are masses, and this is just the mass for
the dead, okay, And which is.
Speaker 2 (52:54):
Not an uplifting topic. And we don't always have to
have uplifting topics. But I thought, I know, let's give
let's give people something to root for. So it just
talked about as an idea. And so as we were
talking later on, she liked the idea of giving people
something for and so you know, through that, I then
(53:17):
came up with a couple of things. I asked her
about some favorite things that she had, and so I
came up with something that she really, really really liked.
And you know, it's a lot of it's just negotiating,
you know, talking to people and saying, hey, my idea.
You know, you've come to me with this idea. So
(53:38):
that's a bit of a day I had this.
Speaker 1 (53:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (53:41):
Yeah, there was another piece with the Detroit Symphony. It
was called black Bottom, you know, so that was a
good one.
Speaker 1 (53:51):
Lots of unspoken messages there, attributes to black churches, civil
rights and KOFA. So yeah, yeah, yeah, go ahead, go ahead,
gay yeah.
Speaker 2 (54:02):
Well, you know again, it starts off. I get this
message either on my email or you know, through the website,
and it says in KIU, we want to talk to you.
It is the Detroit Symphony.
Speaker 1 (54:12):
So I'm very motivated to get back in touch with them, exactly. Yeah.
So you know, they're having their the centennial of.
Speaker 2 (54:25):
Symphony Hall, and I was one of the composers that
they're choosing to take part of celebrations. So they were
going to commission me to write something and their only
stipulation was that if they wanted to know if I
could find a way to tie it to Detroit.
Speaker 1 (54:43):
Ah, okay, right, And.
Speaker 2 (54:46):
So do you remember that piece that I mentioned, voices
shouting out, There was a conductor okay, that was the symphony,
that was the professional symphony that gave me a professional reading.
Speaker 1 (54:59):
Of that piece. And it was that insructor who.
Speaker 2 (55:02):
Was man named Thomas Wilkins, who just decided I like
this piece. So twenty years later they're calling me and saying, hey.
Speaker 1 (55:11):
Wow, I want you to do this, I was very
very thankful, and I was humbled and I was motivated.
So I worked with them and said, okay, what ideas
do you have. Here's my idea, here's yours. And I
started reading about Detroit. And as I was reading about
historic Detroit and obviously black historic Detroit, I came up
(55:31):
on this story of Black Bottom, which was a neighborhood
and the neighborhood was destroyed deliberately due to gentrification. And
once I read about it, I said, that's it, that's
the story. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (55:47):
And once I knew that, I then said, okay, I
need to go there. And so the folks at the
orchestra's they did. We did a little reside.
Speaker 1 (55:56):
And I came in and I spoke to people who
were in the neighborhood. We went on a tour yeah, yeah,
the ground wark Yeah.
Speaker 2 (56:05):
And so meeting all of these different people, and I
set up an interview process and each of them I
asked I think it was five or six questions, and
most of the people were African American, and of course
most of the you know, most people don't go to
the orchestra concerts. And so by doing this, they all
(56:25):
then were motivated to come to the concert and to
tell friends because I'm a composer and I'm writing about them.
Speaker 1 (56:34):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (56:36):
So you know, there were nine sections or nine movements
we would call them, you know, in this piece, and
each of them was a different vignette of a different
neighborhood that was in there.
Speaker 1 (56:48):
And I remember one of them.
Speaker 2 (56:49):
Was a record record shop. It's a movement called Shops
on Hastings. And I spoke to this one woman is
an oral historian and her father owned a record shop
and she said, you know, and I was interviewing her,
she said, and they would answer the phone Joe's Record Shop.
(57:11):
And so that movement goes.
Speaker 1 (57:13):
Bomb but the dump bomb. But I'm sorry under at Rasby, No,
You're fine. That Joe's Record Shop.
Speaker 2 (57:21):
And you hear it going back and forth echoing in
the orchestra, you know. So those type of things will
give me ideas I also had. This was one of
these pieces that had all these different ideas, and so
they were formed in different type of ways. There was
another one with let's see, okay, there was a clubhouse
(57:47):
and there was a fantastic story about this clubhouse and
during the time of segregation, uh, and I remember the
tour guy that we had told us. He stopped in
front of this amazing, huge, huge house and said, okay,
so this is the story this clubhouse. This is the
daughters of let's see the DAWC, the Detroit Association of
(58:11):
Women's Clubs. And the story of this clubhouse was that
the woman had bought the property and her neighbors said,
we don't want Black people are not allowed to live
on this street. Okay, yeah, during the time of segregation.
But you know, very wealthy and very well she it
(58:35):
was a corner lot that this house was on. So
she boarded up the entrance and she opened the one
on the street where black people were.
Speaker 1 (58:44):
Allowed to live. I love it.
Speaker 2 (58:47):
I love this story. And her name was doctor Roses
Laide Bag And when I spoke to the president of
the clubhouse was emphatic. She was like, and people don't
know her name, and you need to know there's another Rosa.
It's not just Rosa Parks. You have to know about
doctor Roses Lade Greg.
Speaker 1 (59:06):
And so you.
Speaker 2 (59:09):
Hear doctor Rosa Slade Greg And I don't remember how
many times this these vocalists say it.
Speaker 1 (59:15):
But people they know her name. Now, yeah, we don't
know her name. Now there's another Rosa. Yeah, yeah, you know,
so it's and this woman was amazing, amazing the things
that she did for black women, for black people at
that time. The stories just needed to be told.
Speaker 2 (59:38):
So you know, just what a great tribute to her,
to her efforts and to all the different people the
way that they lived, you know. And this is another
thing that you know, people, our organizations are looking to
tribute black people, but a lot of the time it's
(59:59):
so much which is so much emphasis is spent on
our struggle. Yes, and what is that has happened to us?
And it victimizes us and it either has perpetual victims
or perpetually angry. Yes, yes, in need of social justice
(01:00:22):
because they say it social justice, but it really makes
us people in need of social justice. And regardless of
your thoughts on it one way or the other, I
never want to be a situation where people are thinking
of all of us and stigmatizing us in that way.
Speaker 1 (01:00:46):
And so I want to.
Speaker 2 (01:00:46):
Talk about the way that we lived because people need
to know that there's more to us than this struggle. Yes, yes,
but oh my goodness, we live, we have rich lives.
So black bottom was really about the way that people
lived in this neighborhood, the tales from the Briar Patch.
(01:01:10):
A lot of people said, well, you can't do something
on Braar Rabbit. Of course you can. It's from our culture. Yeah,
we can laugh.
Speaker 1 (01:01:19):
And if you know, you.
Speaker 2 (01:01:20):
Watch this video, you see this is just these are
the roots of American musical theater. It's the roots of
American music period. And you know, we have these three
birds and they're women and their church ladies, and they're
looking at the antics of Brair Fox from Braar Rabbit,
(01:01:42):
and it is hilarious and done in stylized speech, but
it's not a speech that is slave dialect.
Speaker 1 (01:01:57):
It's not.
Speaker 2 (01:01:58):
I'm celebrating our culture. Another another concept that I have, Uh,
there was a group of Harlem chamber.
Speaker 1 (01:02:07):
Players mm hmm. Worked with them a.
Speaker 2 (01:02:11):
Long long time ago, and they came up and said
they wanted to commission meet for something.
Speaker 1 (01:02:16):
And I said, okay, and I what I ended up
doing is something about a black woman going to the symphony.
Speaker 2 (01:02:30):
Because you don't believe this, So here's this black woman
and it's called we met at the Symphony, right right,
it's all black women. Because there's so much emphasis on
our men, and I love our men, but we have
stories too, we have experiences too.
Speaker 1 (01:02:51):
So I'm just like, yes, so I wanted to champion
book love. So that's okay.
Speaker 2 (01:02:58):
So we met at the symphony, and so, you know,
here's this this woman and she never identifies herself as
being African American. Now she does use jazz as her
the music that you associate with her. And so she's
telling her story and it's in three different songs, and
(01:03:18):
she goes through this romance that she has and so
you know with this black man that she meets at
the symphony. So you know, so there's different ideas and
as I'm hearing them, as I'm talking through the ideas,
I will hear music.
Speaker 1 (01:03:36):
Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, it's it's an interesting process. Yeah, yeah,
that's amazing. I mean I feel like I'm sitting in
a massa class right now. Okay. And for whoever's listening,
there may be more people going to the symphony to
hook up. Okay. You never know who you're gonna meet it. Listen,
(01:04:01):
that's where you get the quality in the caliber you're
looking for. Ladies, gentlemen and gentlemen go to the symphony
and find your lady. Oh my gosh, this is this
is so amazing. Now, I know we're running and I
know we're running out of time, but I have to
touch on this. You are one of the few select
(01:04:22):
composers commissioned at Juilliard that in itself is amazing. Tell
us about the work you're doing. What's up next for you?
Tell me what's happening at Juilliard. This is just so amazing. Boo,
you know it's Juilliard thing.
Speaker 2 (01:04:43):
Just to just to clarify Juilliard the this is the
most famous conservatory.
Speaker 1 (01:04:53):
Gosh, probably in the world, certainly in the Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:05:00):
They decided it's time to diversify the record repertoire mm hmm. Right,
So they picked about forty composers out of all these composers,
and they're just non white composers. They said, okay, so
each of you, you know, So they they picked they said,
(01:05:23):
we want you to write audition materials so that our
students will have this and learn it and it will
be there for the next generation and it's going to
be on their permanent curriculum.
Speaker 1 (01:05:36):
So yes, and so you could have blown me over
with a feather.
Speaker 2 (01:05:41):
Yeah, it's this email and it is a commission from
Juilliard and they wanted me to write songs.
Speaker 1 (01:05:49):
And I thought, wow, okay, yeah, died and gone to
heaven for sure, heaven on earth.
Speaker 2 (01:05:57):
So for these students, it needed to be something that
everyone could sing. And you know, for physical reasons but
also asthetic reasons, you really don't want to. You can't
have white singer singing. I am Harriet Tubman. Also, the
music is gospel music, and it uses a couple of
(01:06:20):
things that are endemic to African American female singers.
Speaker 1 (01:06:25):
That wouldn't necessarily singing physically with other singers, and not
everyone would be comfortable with that. So I wanted to
choose something that would be more universal, and they wanted
they wanted three songs, and one would be for a soprano,
which is the highest voice, and the next would be
(01:06:47):
for a metso or or an alto and that is
your second voice. And then the third would be for
a male voice. And they couldn't side. I think it
was just a matter of what to be the tenor
or the baritone. And so I wrote two versions of
each song, and I thought, let's go to the classics,
(01:07:09):
let's do that.
Speaker 2 (01:07:10):
So yeah, so This song cycle is called Love and Longing,
and there are some monologues inspired by classic literature.
Speaker 1 (01:07:22):
Okay, I love that, Yeah, I love that. See I
love me some classic literature. Yeah I have. I have
a degree. So you had me at classic literature. Well
people don't wouldn't you know, people wouldn't necessarily associate me
with that. So I thought, Wow, this is this great opportunity,
(01:07:43):
you know.
Speaker 2 (01:07:44):
And so we're having this conference call it's you know this,
I guess it was a zoom meeting, and you know,
the the voice teacher you could see the surprise in
her face when I started quoting messages from the classics.
I was like, okay, so you know this this It
just surprised her.
Speaker 1 (01:08:05):
And good. Absolutely, yes, they are.
Speaker 2 (01:08:10):
Doing a great job with it. And it wasn't that
I was literate. It was that I loved these passages
so much that I was able to quote them.
Speaker 1 (01:08:21):
Yes, because that makes them classic. I mean they they
actually live with their lifetime. Once you've read some of
these famous authors prose and poetry writers. Yeah, yes, but
also there's all these movies about them. And I will
sit down and you know, I have my my first days,
(01:08:42):
my colin Firth, Yes, prejudice, Oh my god, get the
box of tissue.
Speaker 2 (01:08:53):
So anyway, so with love and longing, there's Catherine's monologue
where she is talking about her love for Heathcliff and
she's talking about whatever our souls are made.
Speaker 1 (01:09:04):
Of, another belongs with mine. So this is the day that.
Speaker 2 (01:09:11):
The other, the other one in her life proposes to her,
and so she's bemoaning this. And then we have Jane
Eyre's aria where she tells off Rochester mm hmm, and
she's like, do you think I'm a machine? Do you
think I can.
Speaker 1 (01:09:26):
Have my glass of water snatched from my lips? I mean,
this is dramatic. Yeah, So and the Darcy's proposal where
he's telling Elizabeth that he he loves her but that
it's against his own will.
Speaker 2 (01:09:41):
Yeah, I mean, so what I love about these saw this,
What I love about.
Speaker 1 (01:09:47):
These moments is that they're universal. Everyone has love, everyone
longs for something, and you know this the students, I'm
just I'm just really jazzed about this because I just
was doing a masterclass with the students just yesterday. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:10:05):
I remember telling one of the girls who was singing,
whatever our souls are made of and It's like, what
would Tiller Swift do with this? And you know she
has that just just say Yes song with Romeo and Juliet.
Speaker 1 (01:10:17):
Uh huh right, so she began thinking about that. You know.
Speaker 2 (01:10:21):
It just makes you think, you know, And with Jane
Eyre's Aria, well you know what did Beyonce? You know
what was she channeling when.
Speaker 1 (01:10:28):
She's talking about to the left, to the left everything,
you you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, well that's what Jane Air.
You know, here she is and she's saying, Okay, I'm
done with you. You know you fell on them off. Yeah,
make your relevant. I'm telling you, make the connection.
Speaker 2 (01:10:44):
We are surprisingly modern in their language. And anyway, this
so Love and Longing will premiere actualiard On. You know
I should know this. It's February eleventh, and it is
free and they're gonna live stream it.
Speaker 1 (01:11:05):
Yeah yeah, okay, we're gonna have to put it out
there when it's time, so maybe folks can connect through
Facebook or or zoom or something. I mean, yeah, you know,
and I want to say to thank you because I
can't remember you have to forgive me. I can't remember
what company you were uh composing for at the time.
(01:11:27):
But my daughter and I actually listened to some of
your pieces along with others for a free live streamed
perform uh free live stream performances during COVID, and we
actually went to the cheesecake factory and set up our
little phone and we were sitting there listening uh to
(01:11:50):
the pieces. It was just amazing. I mean, yeah, so
I just want to say thank you for that. Oh gosh,
I think that was with American Opera Project. Yeah, I
can't remember, Yeah, it was. It was just great to
have that. Yeah. Yeah, Now, I'm sorry. I know we've
were out of time, but before we go, what's one
(01:12:14):
thing you wish people knew about composers? Hmmm? I know,
right well, Composing music.
Speaker 2 (01:12:35):
Is just like being an architect, being an artist, being
a lawyer, being a doctor. If this is something that
you gravitate to, this is something that you are skilled in,
(01:12:56):
then you take the coursework and you do it.
Speaker 1 (01:13:01):
Yes, yeah, yeah, And you are making the path for
all those who have a dream to be in classical music,
to compose, to have their work heard, their voices heard
and unique and extraordinary ways. And I want to thank
(01:13:24):
you for that. I want to thank you for joining
me tonight and of course, you know we'll have you
back and I will definitely look out for the piece
and Julliard so that we all can enjoy it in
the comforts of our own home and just really make
a night of it. So thank you so much for
joining me wonderful, Thank you everyone for listening, and as always,
(01:13:51):
thank you for being a team player. B
Good evening. Welcome to Team Leadership Radio. That's T E
E M. Train, equip, Empower and Mobilized Leadership. I'm your hosts,
doctor Cecilia Martin, and we are kicking off season two, y'all.
I'm so excited because it's going to be just as
(00:50):
amazing as season one. In fact, I have with me tonight.
Doctor Kiru Okoye who is an American composer born in
New York City, New York and raised on Long Island.
After studying composition, music theory, piano, conducting, and Africana studies
(01:11):
at Oberlin Conservatory, she pursued graduate studies at Rutgers University
and became one of the leading African American women composers.
An activist through the arts, doctor o'koyer creates a body
of work that welcomes and affirms both traditional and new audiences.
Held as gripping and evocative by the New York Times,
(01:35):
her works have been commissioned, performed, and presented by Detroit Symphony,
Philadelphia Orchestra, Baltimore's Symphony Opera, North UK, Juilliard School, Houston,
Grand Old Opera. And it goes on and on and
on from Boston to Chicago to Charlotte to Tulsa, the
(01:56):
Moscow Symphony. I give to you no other than the
extraordinary doctor and Kivu o Koye. Welcome, doctor oh Koye.
Thank you so much for joining me tonight. Thank you,
thank you, thank you. CC.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
I'm so delighted to be here, and I am just
I just have to tell your audience that, you know,
I just love you so much.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
You are my sister, you are my friend. And I remember.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
When we were both in Baltimore and you were just
starting Team Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
I'm just so you know, I was just looking at it.
I was like, wait a minute, Team t E a M.
And you said no. I was just thinking wow. And
so I am teeming with pride for you Team Oh.
I love it. Thank you so much, and you know
(02:53):
the feeling is mutual. And you know, I am so
grateful to have been on part of your journey with you,
like you said, since oh gosh, way back when in Baltimore,
just to see the incredible work that you've done. I mean,
you were brilliant then and now the world knows it.
The world is beginning to know it now. Your mother
is African American and your father Nigerian. What is the
(03:16):
meaning of your name exactly?
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Well, my name is from the it's a it's Nigerian culture.
It's Ebo, my father was, and my name means the
future is great or also the future is greater.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Than the past. So I love my name. Every time
people say it, they are prophesying over me. So I
love it. I love it. I love it. Oh my gosh.
I mean that is really powerful. I mean, and it's
so true because your future is so much brighter than
your past, and it goes on and on and on.
(03:59):
They you adequately, I can tell you that much. I mean,
just I can't wait to dive into the work that
you've done. You're such an incredible individual. You're actually a
part of living history as we know it now. You
were introduced to music as a child, and I just
want to know what ignited the passion or interest, particularly
(04:20):
in classical music. Well, you know this kind of.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
It's really a two part question, you know, because the
first thing is that we had a little organ in
my house, and apparently I was just one of these
kids who would just you know, I would just go
over to the organ and I would just put my
fingers on it. And I wasn't from one of these
musical families. Like you know, my father was an electrical
(04:50):
engineer and my mother is she's retired now, but an
occupational therapist. So these are two people who are aliences.
And at one point my mother had been Actually when
she enrolled in college at Ithaca, her original thought was
to be a music education major because she really enjoyed
(05:14):
the chorus when she was in high school, and her
first semester she realized that was just not to be.
So we still had this little organ in the house,
but nobody played it. So I would just go over
and I would just you know, I didn't have to play,
and not no one that came to teach me how
(05:34):
to read music, you know, but I was just huh,
just like the way this soulf.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
So, you know, so it just came to me naturally,
is is my point? Now? The reason I said it's
a it's a it's a it's a two part question
is that you know, my mother would not generally, we
would not play secular music in her house. Wow. So yeah,
(06:02):
so I grew up you know, very i'll say, a
very strict fundamentalist background. I suppose that's redundant, strict and fundamentalist.
I get it, I get it right, get the redundancy, honey,
because my mother was stricted.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
So yes, So you know, obviously you would have other
music coming in because we weren't in and in you know,
one of these enclosed societies, you know. But I would
hear she We would play WQXR, you know, and that
was in New York. That's the classical music radio station.
(06:44):
So we would hear that, and we would hear the
Christian radio station, and we would hear the news, and.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
That's what we would hear on the radio. So that
was the music that I knew.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
I knew that, and I knew some of the him
from our fairly it's a white Southern Baptist church that
we started out going to, and so you know, we
would hear that and you know, some of the different
types of things. But that was the music that I knew.
So that's how I gravitated towards classical music. It wasn't
(07:19):
classical music. That was just the music that I knew.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Yeah, I get it, I totally get it. That's that's
that's amazing. So you have an organ in your house,
you know how old were you when you started playing?
And do you play any other instruments, because I know
you played piano as well. Right, well, actually I don't
play the organ really, So the organ was there, well,
(07:46):
we had it, and because I really wanted to play it,
someone gave us a piano. Latcha okay, so I you know,
I just and we didn't go to one of these
one of the churches where you're.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Having gospel music being played, so it's not like I
would pick it up from you know, by ear.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
And so yeah. So and also you know, my mother
had worked in missions. She worked on a mission in
Dutchess County, New York, which is in Lower New York state,
but for New Yorker's proper they would call it upstate.
But it's not upstate. It's you know, just about an
(08:29):
hour north of Manhattan.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
So you know, with this type of background, that's why
someone had given us a piano, and so I had it.
And about you know, about seven, you know, about seven
years old, I had my first music lessons and I
learned how to read music, and you know that was it.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Now yeah, well, okay, so we have the piano, right,
and you are are honestly excelling because you started composing
at age thirteen. I did. But you know, let me
go back because you asked if I played other.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
Instruments, and it's kind of a compound.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
They kind of go hand in hand. Okay. I was
in the school band and orchestra, and you know, with
the piano, because of the layout, the obvious thing to
do is to play the Glockenspiel.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
So I would play the Glockenspiel. But the glockenspiel are
those are those bells that work orchestral bells.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
I played the heay, gotcha? Yeah, okay, and then I
also played the obo and the well, there's no real
good way to describe the obo because if I describe
it as a double wind, it's like that just doesn't help. No,
it doesn't, but it's it kind of looks like a clarinet.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
It's a bit skinnier than a clarinetka and people say
the sound is a little bit duck.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Like gotcha, okay, I'm all it right. So that has
the same fingering as the alto sax. And when I
say fingering, I just mean when you put your fingers
on in a certain formation, it's going to have it's
going to come, it's going to you're gonna hear a note.
And it's got basically the same fingerings as the alto
(10:20):
sax and as the flute and some of these other instruments.
And so when I got to junior high school, the
band director said, you know, you can't play an obo.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
There's just no such thing as I don't think such
thing as obo's for the marching band. So he got
me on the alto sax. And so that's that's how
that happened.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Wow, yeah, yeah, okay, all right, so let's go back,
because you had also asked about my writing music at thirteen. Yes, okay,
when you really really think about it, I had always
been writing music. I wrote down my first composition at thirteen.
(11:05):
So let me just clarify because clarification helps.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
You know, I would make up these songs in my head,
and I hadn't really thought that it was anything special.
So I just remember, you know, we read a lot
in the house, and I remember publically there were these
Beatrix Potter books. And I remember Beatrix Potter not just
because she's amazing children's author, but I just remember reading
(11:35):
that about Peter Rabbit, and so he remember reading that
he opened the window or maybe he opened the door,
and he would sing his morning and so you know,
there's a little poem in there, and so.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
You know, I of course sang the song because I
thought everybody took back. And it was years later and
I was thinking, ah, you didn't. Also, you know, no,
we did not.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
So yeah, so how we discovered that I was a
composer is different. And I was advancing through the music
program and I had outgrown the neighborhood piano teacher. So
we had gotten me a professional teacher through a number
(12:32):
of things. And ironically, she played for the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra,
so she would play the chillesta.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
And the chillesta sounds like little bells, and so when
you hear the the Nutcracker during Christmas time, that's stump
bump bump bump bum bum bum bumpum, that little chiny thing,
that's the chileesta. Yeah, okay, right, So I.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Would I would go down and I would have those
lessons from her, and it was for most of a summer,
and she thought, you know, I think you're ready. You
can get into one of these famous prep schools. So
I'm going to prep you to get into one of
these schools, and I think you're really going to do
something in music, So let me do this for you.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Yet, so I worked harder than I ever had, and
I would be there, you know, twice three times a week,
and she would just work with me, and she'd give
me these ultimate, ultimate coachings.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
And so we got me into one of these prep.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Schools for music, and I was just completely floored. And
we were not able to get me in the studio
that she had a friend who had this one studio.
In a studio, that's the students that you have, and
so you know, you'd have so many, you know, this student,
this student, this student, and so this is your studio.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Mm hmmm. So her studio was full. Okay, Well, so
then they sent me to this arrogant young man who
happened to be white, and he did not want me
to be in his studio. Oh my yes.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
And so between his See now as an adult, I
can look and say this is what was going on.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Sure, he was just not.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
At all impressed with this black child who was shy
and withdrawn and introverted. And a couple of weeks I
think it might have been a month m h slept
ing all the way up to Manhattan and sitting through
(14:48):
these different classes and then going to be in his
studio and taking lessons from him. And he told me
that I would never be in music, that I I had.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
No basically no no talent and basically I could chop
my fingers off it would not damage my plane. What. Yeah, see,
these are things that will scar Oh my gosh. And
so you know, I love telling this story, not because
I turned around everyone's thinking, oh, this is where you
(15:22):
just tell this jerk off, And no, that's just not
what happened, you know, Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
I was devastated, and you know, these are things that
these are gender things, these are race things, these are
biased behaviors. We can deal with now in society because
we're better equipped to deal with them. Sure, yeah, but
at that time that's just not where things were. And
(15:55):
so I was so impacted by what this man said.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
It triggered something.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
And so this is kind of my you know, do
you know those X Men movies where you know, you
see that the superpowers, the supernatural powers, we happened to
and to a young kid, someone who's in the teenage years.
Formula and something traumatizes them and they suddenly developed this
(16:24):
They finally get this power and it leads.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
So he unleashed it. Listen, he unleashed it. And I
hope you know his you know, you know where his
whereabouts is, so you can send him your New York
Times reviews. Thank him, because he got me to pay
attention to this music that was just exploding in my head. Yeah,
(16:47):
walked down to my school district where everyone is. You know,
I'm still the new girl in school, and people just
knew that I had some talent in music. And so
this guy tells me that I have no talent. I'm
wasting my time.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
So I go to the band director who was a
black man and used to be in he still is
a black man.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
You know, I gotcha, I gotcha. He used to play
in some of the pop groups in the eighties.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
You know, yeah, casualized. This girl is writing music. So
he told me how to write it down, and I
paid him for it. Not composition lessons, but they were
there were music theory lessons, and so he was then
that's you know, there's an art to writing down music,
and it's just like learning grammar, you.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Know, sure, Yeah, I would imagine, how do you write
this down? And how do you recognize the words?
Speaker 2 (17:50):
And so he teaching me that, and he told me
how to write out this composition. And I called it
Phase two because I had all always thought of myself
as a pianist, and oh, I thought, oh, this is
my requiem for my music career.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
So this is my next phase. Let's call it phase two.
So he gets me to enter.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
It into this competition and it's a local it's the
local branch of the NAACP, and the the competition is
called ACT, so it's kind of the I've forgotten what
that acronym is for, which is an awful type of thing.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
Let's see. It's the African American Cultural Technological Scientific Olympics. Wow, Yeah,
which I did not know existed.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Okay, yes, So this is for black high school students
all over the country, and you'd go through your local
branch and then from the local branch you would get
to the nationals or sometimes they would have regional branches.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
So he had me.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Enter this thing, and I kept telling him, but this
this this man, you know, this white man has told
me that I have no talent. And it wasn't it
wasn't like this white man. But you know, this man
knows everything because he's at hoity toity music school.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
Yes, of course, yeah, he's gonna have the influence at that. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
And so he just said, you know, why don't you
let them tell you, you know, at least enter this this thing.
So I said, well, let me do the piano and
i'll I'll enter this piece. But it's not gonna win.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
Mm hmm, Well girl, it won. It didn't just win
in the net in the in the net, in the
local branch, you know, and you know, and these were
just regular people. So I had to come out of
classical music world, which was my my little secret, you know,
(19:53):
it's my little I don't want to say secret, but
it's that place that I would explore and it's that
world that you know that as an introverted child, I
would escape into this world. I had to come out
of this world because the folks at the NAACP were
(20:15):
wonderful folks. They were very you know, into they wanted
to do concert they would go to concerts, but it
wasn't that wasn't their world. So I had to.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Invest this, you know, this thing that they had in
me all right, So apparently it worked. I get there
to the national competition that you have to see this.
There's thousands of black high school students and they're in
all the different disciplines, all the arts and sciences, and
(20:52):
they're they're representing their local their local branches, and so
this is something that probably every kid, every one, everyone
should see because this is black excellence and so you know,
music composition. It was the smallest of.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
These and they're all these guys, and they're all tall too.
This is the thing. They're all looking down at me.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
And they were remember the you know North Carolina, South Carolina,
they're always really and they were coming from the Governor's
School of the Arts, they whatever, the school of the Arts,
and I didn't have that, and they had all known
each other from all.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
These other years. And I've blown everybody over with a
feather when I won, my goodness, and it was on
my fourteenth birthday, so that was my presence. Oh wow, ah, yeah,
this is so incredible. You know, as you're telling your story,
(21:49):
I think about unsung heroes and people in the arts,
particularly African American female like Missy Copeland, Like I'm totally
seeing your life life as a movie in the making.
I mean, the story itself is just incredible, and there
are too few female African American composers that get to
(22:13):
the level where you are now. So I am just
sitting here. That's an amazing story and it really should
be on the big screen. I think if anyone's listening, well,
I know a disproportionately high number of black female composers.
There are not enough of us. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So
(22:37):
you went on to my goodness, So you went on
to of course, graduating from high school and all that
good stuff. So you attended Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Now,
my daughter attends a conservatory in New York and it's
very intense. But for those unfamiliar with the concept, can
you explain what a conservatory is and how it enhances
(22:59):
the occasion experience of an artist?
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Okay, well, a conservatory and you know there are I
think there's conservatories for dance and for a theater.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Conservatory of music. It is intense.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
You think of mit, you have the best and the brightest,
and they all know they're the best and the brightest,
and they're all under one roof. Yes, conservatory, and so
you have these tons of kids where all at the
top of our games.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
In music, we're under one roof.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
And you know at Oberlin they're in all Steinway school.
So there's an entire wing of practice rooms in the
main conservatory building and it's filled with grand pianos that
are all Steinland suns.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Yes, yes, and right.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
It's regardless of what your background is, you are there now.
This is the great leveling, you know, it's it's the
great it's it's the leveling what do you.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Call that, the leveling ground? Yeah, yeah, oh yeah, so
the leveling around and the proving ground. Absolutely. So we
are all competitive, competitive with each other.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
Yeah, yeah, we're intense. We're practicing all the time, you know,
four hours a day, six hour days, and you're waiting
to get into that practice room.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Mm hmmm, yes, yeah. You know, my daughter she calls
me all the time from New York and she's often leaving, uh,
the theater room at eleven at night. All of them
are you know, you know so, I mean it's it's
(24:47):
like you said, it is a leveling ground, it's a
proving ground all at the same time, it's extremely competitive, yes,
but in a healthy way because it challenges you in
your field. In the art of your genre. So yeah,
it is incredible. Now you went on, So after that
intense experience of being at a conservatory, you went on
(25:10):
to get your doctorate in music theory and composition at
Rutgers University, and there you wrote and conducted a composition
entitled The Creation, where the critically acclaimed actor Danny Glover
narrated parts of your work. What was that like for you?
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Oh gosh, you are taking me back. You know, the
conservatory is competitive, but it also you make friendships.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
You meet men what not.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
At the At most conservatories there's a very small number
of African Americans and even a smaller number of African
American professors.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
And so.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
I didn't have one, didn't have a mentor mentor when
I was at Oberlin, but I found one someone my
mother's stepmother was in a reading group with a black
composer and his name was Noel la Costa. Okay, So
the day I met him, he decided I was going
(26:19):
to be his last student.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
And he had been through Rutgers for twenty five years
at that point and it never had one black student
to get wow, and so he said he just that's
he just picked me. Wow. Okay, Okay, well this relates
because that's how I ended up at Rutgers. And in
(26:44):
terms of being competitive, we're all competing for in the
composition program, there's one spot once a year where one
student would have their composition performed by the orchestra. Yis right. Now,
we had a famous composer on campus and it was
(27:07):
my teacher who had chosen you as their lesson. But he,
you know, it was always his student. So yeah, my
teacher calls me my second year and says, oh, congratulations,
not the wait what and so it was going to
be my piece that was done and incredible. So this
(27:31):
is a piece called the Genesis.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
So if you're if you're keeping track, there's the Genesis
and then there's the creation. It was a bit of
my upfring age, you know. And so all this to
say that it put a rather sizable target on my
head when you're when you are a person who is
not you know, you're not amongst that chosen group. Also,
(27:55):
I'm not white, I'm not male, and somehow they chose
my piece. So perhaps out of retaliation, and perhaps because
there's this whole invisible, invisible quality of being a woman
and being black, you know, they got together and and
(28:15):
they probably were all doing this anyway, but they had
a a they had a concert and they called it
the Composers of Rutgers University and it was at Carnegie
Hall because one of them had an internship there. M
In like me to be in the concert though I
(28:36):
had just won this competition, and I go.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Oh, my goodness, so I have saw that I'm just
not going to do anything in music because they're never
going to let me in. M Ah. So we had
a uh, this Haitian woman and she was a one
of the I think she was the she was the
black woman on faculty, and she was a pianist. And
(28:59):
she said in KIU, we will not do that.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
If you you're going to make your own opportunities and
if they will not invite you to come in, you
will do your own thing.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
So we're going to do a Black History Month concert.
Wow right, okay, you know, so we did that first,
and you know, the first was and they gave us.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
They gave me money too, they gave me grant funding
and whatever, and they gave me a date on the
calendar for my second concert, and they said that it
needed to be better. Okay, and being competitive with yourself
is sometimes the best competition that you that you can have,
because you're right right, that's right. We need something that's going.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
To be so spectacular it's going to leave a mark. Yeah,
and no quessure though, right.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
Right, because we're all waiting for you, we're watching you.
And also may also, what did they do? They set
up another competing concert that afternoon, like earlier in the day.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
Mm hmmm. See that's the type of thing that would
just tick you off. Yeah, for sure, for sure. Yeah.
So I said, all right, so we had to do
something that is really spectacular. So called in yet a
third black woman to be on our committee. And she
was a faculty member, and I said, well, we're gonna
have to find a celebrity. Okay, that's so fine. One.
(30:32):
So we're talking this over and she said, will Danny
Glover do? I was thinking, yeah, I think he'll do. Yeah, yeah,
I think so. And she says, Danny, this thing is Busia.
(30:54):
Her sister, also a BA was Nettie in the color purple. Ah,
So they actually just called Danny Glover up right. Yeah right,
So that is how that happened. And I don't know what.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
It was that she said, But he agreed to come
out and participate in this program, and you know, he
didn't charge anything for it. We obviously had to raise
the money to get him there.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Sure, but yeah, yeah, it was amazing.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
And I just remember, you know, I'm writing this music
and I'm producing the concerts, and I thought, wow, I
need to never ever do the writing and producing again,
which is these are things that you should never say
that you're never going to do something, because you actually
don't know what is in store for right, But this
(32:00):
was one of the most amazing experiences that I had
ever had at that point. And I can still think
of him just standing at you know, his presence.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
And there was a picture in the paper. It was
the next day or the day after that, and you know,
here's my career and you're looking at it and it
was looking really, really amazing. So I'm just very thankful. Yeah,
I tell you, I am sitting here with you know,
(32:34):
glazed over eyes because you know, again, I've had the
pleasure of knowing you for years and when I see
the evolution of who you are as a person, who
you are as a composer, and I'm glad the rest
of the world is hearing your story because you are
(32:54):
literally a piece of living history. And I'm seeing this
on the big screen, Doctor ol Koye, I really am okay,
and you're literally a piece of living history and sad.
There's a children's coloring book of black composers and you're
in it. Actually, it's it's funny. I'm actually on the
(33:16):
cover of it. Yes, you're on the cover of it.
I mean, this is this is really, you know, extraordinary.
Would you consider yourself or I want to know what
do you because I want to dive into to some
of your work What would you consider? And I have
special pieces that I want to talk about, But what
would you consider your breakthrough piece that puts you on
(33:38):
the map with the likes of Florence Price and Margaret
Bonds and Julia Perry just the name of you.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
And we're going to add Tanya Leone to that because
Leone just got the Kennedy Center Honors. Yes, yeah, yeah,
one day you may be there too. Yes to God's Ears,
doctor Martin, Yes, yes, yes, So I'm going to say
there were there were two different pieces. The first piece
(34:07):
was called Voices Shouting Out and this is an orchestra
piece that I wrote in two thousand and two. It
was inspired by.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
Nine to eleven.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
I was down in Norfolk, Virginia, and the orchestra's the
Virginia Symphony. They had someone come out and meet me,
and I was teaching down at Norfolk State and they thought, Okay,
let's have the new composer. Let's give her a chance,
and let's put her on this Black History Month program
(34:43):
that they do. And then eleven happened and I thought, huh, well,
I'm really like really depressed. I mean, I'm you know,
I was just really especially as a native New Yorker,
this just impacted me in so many ways. And also
this is the time that I realized I'm the adult
(35:04):
in the room there.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
I am.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
You know, we're in Norfolk, we're in I think that
is the largest UH naval base on the Eastern seaboard,
and so we're all none of them going on and
I and you know, we could be bombed at any moment,
and I'm thinking.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
Wow, there needs to be some adult that tells us
what to do. And it occurred to me I am
that adult, and yeah, yeah, yeah, the very sob very
moment and for all of us and for all of
these these people who were losing their lives and the
heroes that that we had in you know, in the
(35:42):
in the aftermath and the fallout. And so.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
This piece that was my first, I think it was
my first orchestra commission. Should have been such a joyous thing,
and now suddenly it's become a night nine to eleven thing.
And I really thought about that, and I started writing
these kind of somber things and then I said, you know,
(36:09):
let me not write that terrorism into my music. And
so when you hear the piece, it sounds so it's defiant,
it's strong.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
It's.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
There's joy in this piece, and there's this middle section
where it goes into it sounds a little bit like
contemporary gospel music. And so this was this piece that
put me on the map. People said, oh, voice is
shouting out.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
Okay. So there was this conductor who loves his piece
and he programmed it with all of.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
These different orchestras. So yeah, so that was my first
piece to really take off. My next big piece.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Was about Arriet.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
Tubman and you and I had just met, yeah, just met,
and I started doing this thing on Harriet Tubman, and
you know, it ended up being an opera through this long,
long story. But in operas there are arias. There's these
(37:18):
songs that you're heroin, your hero, your secondary figure, you know,
they sing these these show stopping numbers, and so I
put four of them together and it's called a song cycle.
And so it's called the Songs of Harriet Tubman. And
people sing those songs. And there was a soprano named
(37:43):
Louise Tappin who made a recording of these arias and
people would just sing them. I remember there was a recording.
There was this one woman at a conference and I,
I don't know, I'd stumbled upon this thing and I
saw a woman singing my music a cappella.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
Friends, freaking wow. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
And people will call me up and they'll contact me
through my website, and they want to know about Harriet Tubman,
about my Harriet Tubman.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
You know, what's your path to it?
Speaker 2 (38:25):
I've got people writing there's a young woman right now
who is doing her master's degree and she's doing her
master's recital on the songs of Harriet Tubman.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
Just wow, Okay, so now you're part of the research books. Now, Yeah,
this is my formative piece. And it told people that
I'm an opera composer and that was my first opera.
So yeah, well you have an extraordinary repertoire, and I
(38:59):
I want to focus on one of your pieces that
was so moving. I have never seen anything like this
or heard anything like this. And it's called an Invitation
to Die or Invitation to Die, and it really is
sort of a tribute if you will, or focuses on
(39:20):
community dialogue and police shooting, a tribute to Trayvon Martin.
And when I saw the piece performed, I mean, this
is not your mama's orchestra, okay, and they say not
your mama's chicken soup, and this I have never seen
anything like this, where the librett is the was African
(39:44):
American male who was in locks. He wore hoodie. The
entire orchestra wore black hoodies. There were you know, highs
and lows. I mean, but there was a real story
being told in this piece. I mean, tell me, how
how did you how did you put this together? I mean,
(40:04):
it really is extraordinary and I want to encourage all
of the listeners, So please go to your website in
kiu Okoye dot com and it will also be in
the written piece of the of the narrative for those
who are listening and through iHeart and Spotify and all
(40:25):
the other platforms, because it is something like you've never
seen before and everyone needs to experience it. So tell
me a little bit about how you put this together.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
You know, Invitation to a guy in came from a
very very dark place in my life.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
I'd had a particularly egregious racial trauma that happened to me,
and I thought, you know, there are all these degrees
that I have, and in the end, the one thing
that they saw is black. Okay, So I'm going to
(41:12):
take this and.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
Yes, yes we all have.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
We all have, you know, And I took all of
this angst and all of this anger, and I had
this concept for this piece and I thought, okay, I'm
going to call this invitation to a die in, and
it's going to be there's the the the the idea
(41:41):
behind it was going to be.
Speaker 1 (41:44):
I'm sorry, I need to start again. You're fine, You're fine,
because I'm totally intrigued, all.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
Right with invitation to a die in. This was something
that came out of a trump that happened to me,
and it was an egregious racial incident that happened, And
the bottom line is that after all these degrees, after
(42:14):
all this these things, what the people saw is black
and these are experiences that is a black woman as
a human being. It changes your perspective. So I took
all of that and thought, okay, I'm going to emote
(42:35):
into the music.
Speaker 1 (42:37):
And so I had this So, you know, I had
this idea for this piece, and it was going to
be dedicated to there were they were at the time,
there were all of these police shootings of unarmed black men,
and I thought, okay, okay, I'm going to do this piece.
And the idea behind it is that at the end
(43:01):
of the piece, everyone in the orchestra there's going to
be sections of them and this section uh that they're
they're just gonna lay down as if they're dead. And
then this section of the piece they're also laid down
as if they're dead, and the only person left standing
would be the vocalist, and that person would also then
(43:21):
lay down as if dead. And so it's it's it's
a statement, it's it's theater, it's it is it is
it's extraordinary that in there too. Yeah, So.
Speaker 2 (43:36):
You know, there's a piece it's called Heiden's Farewell Symphony
and then the Farewell Symphony, which is much more cheerful.
There's a much more cheerful theme, you know, that has
the same thing. The instructions in the score are not
to lay down as if dead. But the point was
that the sections would go out and then you'd only
(43:59):
have one person left playing.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
With a takeoff on that.
Speaker 2 (44:07):
And I had a labrettist, and a librettist is a
person who writes the text to a piece of music.
And you know we had worked together on was that
that our first second? I think that we had done
one or two.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
We've done it.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
I think we had that. Thinks it was maybe our
second or third collaboration. And we talked about it because
one of us was a black man, though his being
white and my being female is over, you know, him
being male and my being female and black. So we
talked about it, and so we had a text. And
(44:46):
I then thought, okay, there's a spiritual, the spiritual who
will be a witness for my Lord. And it starts
off with that, and it really ruined that spiritual for
me for a long time.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
Oh, the piece is haunted, but I think of all
the pieces that I have but this is you know,
this is not a happy piece. You know, it ends
up you know with this theme, you know the title,
it is not going to end well yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:23):
And then on top of that, uh, the singer who
ended up performing it is he was my John Tupman
and Harriet Tubman and we've known each other for I
think at that point eight years, and so where friends
were collaborators and it became personal. Yeah, yeah, And so
(45:45):
I was writing this piece that is ending with his death.
Just it really it really I went through changes on
this piece.
Speaker 1 (45:54):
There's this piece.
Speaker 2 (45:56):
It's a it's a there's a movie. It's called what
is it that it's it's Queen Latifah and Emma Thompson
and Will Ferrell. It's called Stranger Than Fiction. And yes, okay,
it's a dilemma. So I ended up calling my friend
Damien the Damien in order to finish.
Speaker 4 (46:16):
This, Pete, I have to write this scene and we
had to talk me through this and so you know,
it's funny now, but at the time it was so incredibly.
Speaker 1 (46:30):
Painful, and it made me think of what it is
like to be vulnerable in this way as we are
as black women, and we don't know who's going to
be who's going to come home?
Speaker 3 (46:46):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (46:47):
Right, such an appropriate conversation even now with the tyree. Yeah,
the situation, I mean, and that's what i'd like. You know,
what I've learned is that you know, in our let
me see if I can articulate this and our culture,
music has been such a centering piece right in terms
(47:12):
of throughout generation to generation, there have been songs that
have been passed down, but we are known to be
moved by music and to move others by music. And
what I love about what you're doing is that you
really are blazing a trail in sort of an untapped genre,
(47:37):
if you will, for many of general African Americans. And
what you've done is that you've brought orchestra to life
in a way that's relevant to today's times and conversations.
And I just I really hope that everyone gets a
chance to experience some of your pieces, because it really
(48:00):
is it. You know, a lot of people don't go
to the orchestra. They think it's boring, they think it's
siff and they have they don't know, like there's a
whole movement just happening through your work that they've never
seen or experienced before. And you were talking about the
pieces that you wrote being able to emote through them.
What is your writing process? How do you bring a
(48:22):
piece together? For example, do you begin with a particular
instrument and wrap the notes around it or is it
conceived inwardly and you know the piece is sort of
completed in your head and then you layer it out
on paper. What is your writing process?
Speaker 2 (48:38):
Well, I think that's a good question. Let me go
back though, and you know, there are black composers and
I'm going to know more of them than most people
because well they're my ancestors and my colleagues. And knowing
(48:58):
about them changed my life and changed what it was
that I was seeing, you know, when I would go
out to concerts and I'm so incredibly excited that there
are more of us, yeah, and that we are welcome
in these spaces. And a lot of times I will
be that person who I'm that ambassador.
Speaker 1 (49:21):
You know.
Speaker 2 (49:22):
People will say, well, I don't like orchestra music, and
I remember with Harriet Tubman, which is an opera, It's like, I, oh,
really that's a hard That's that's.
Speaker 1 (49:30):
A harder soup. You know, this is just something on
airy on Harriet Tubman, you know, just come out, You'll
love it, and so they would just come out. But
what I knew was Porgy and Bess. I didn't even
know anything, you know, parts of meeting you, I would
have I would have not known some of these pieces.
(49:51):
So I am not the only one. But I do
thank you for that.
Speaker 2 (49:57):
But I just wanted to, you know, just to to
say that. But in terms of how I come up
with ideas, it's changed a bit now that I am well,
this is just what I do. So most pieces start
off with someone will call me up or contact my
(50:19):
website and say, okay, I want you to write a
piece about X, Y and z. And most of the
times it's for a specific performer or a group of
performer or some kind of ensemblele So the idea BEN
is already kind of preset.
Speaker 1 (50:38):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (50:39):
Now I do have some pieces like with Invitation to
a die In or Briar Patch, which is a telling
of bra Rabbit and the Brier Patch.
Speaker 1 (50:50):
Yeah, that is delightfully whimsical. I love it. It is
so much fun. We had, Yes, we had a lot
of fun with that piece. I'll see. That was one
of these things where I have this this little I
have a little folder. I call it my idea garden.
Speaker 2 (51:07):
Okay, someone asks, if someone asks, you know, I want
you to write something, but what is it that you
want me to you know, what is it something that
you want to work on? I'll say, well, I have
this little idea garden.
Speaker 1 (51:24):
Let me throw this idea at you. So sometimes that happens,
but far more often, you know, I just had a pianist,
Actually this piece premiered just earlier today. Here's a pianist
who called me and she she contacted my website and
she said, Okay, I have this idea for a piano requiem,
(51:46):
and I want you to write one movement of it.
I said, okay, all right, And so we would talk
about this and so I said, you know, what's the ideas?
What do you have?
Speaker 2 (51:57):
And then I do a second intro, and this is specific.
I want to know more about the person. If it's
a singer, I will I want to know more about
that person's voice. Okay, And as we tease out that idea,
I'll get some you know, that person will sound happier, sadder,
(52:18):
and more excited just through their vocal inflections. So I'll
pick up on some of that. In the case of
this pianist, uh, a requiem is basically a mass dead.
And you know, we've dealt with this pandemic.
Speaker 1 (52:35):
Again about what a requiem is. A requiem is a
mass for the dead, gotcha, okay, Right, So throughout history
there are masses, and this is just the mass for
the dead, okay, And which is.
Speaker 2 (52:54):
Not an uplifting topic. And we don't always have to
have uplifting topics. But I thought, I know, let's give
let's give people something to root for. So it just
talked about as an idea. And so as we were
talking later on, she liked the idea of giving people
something for and so you know, through that, I then
(53:17):
came up with a couple of things. I asked her
about some favorite things that she had, and so I
came up with something that she really, really really liked.
And you know, it's a lot of it's just negotiating,
you know, talking to people and saying, hey, my idea.
You know, you've come to me with this idea. So
(53:38):
that's a bit of a day I had this.
Speaker 1 (53:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (53:41):
Yeah, there was another piece with the Detroit Symphony. It
was called black Bottom, you know, so that was a
good one.
Speaker 1 (53:51):
Lots of unspoken messages there, attributes to black churches, civil
rights and KOFA. So yeah, yeah, yeah, go ahead, go ahead,
gay yeah.
Speaker 2 (54:02):
Well, you know again, it starts off. I get this
message either on my email or you know, through the website,
and it says in KIU, we want to talk to you.
It is the Detroit Symphony.
Speaker 1 (54:12):
So I'm very motivated to get back in touch with them, exactly. Yeah.
So you know, they're having their the centennial of.
Speaker 2 (54:25):
Symphony Hall, and I was one of the composers that
they're choosing to take part of celebrations. So they were
going to commission me to write something and their only
stipulation was that if they wanted to know if I
could find a way to tie it to Detroit.
Speaker 1 (54:43):
Ah, okay, right, And.
Speaker 2 (54:46):
So do you remember that piece that I mentioned, voices
shouting out, There was a conductor okay, that was the symphony,
that was the professional symphony that gave me a professional reading.
Speaker 1 (54:59):
Of that piece. And it was that insructor who.
Speaker 2 (55:02):
Was man named Thomas Wilkins, who just decided I like
this piece. So twenty years later they're calling me and saying, hey.
Speaker 1 (55:11):
Wow, I want you to do this, I was very
very thankful, and I was humbled and I was motivated.
So I worked with them and said, okay, what ideas
do you have. Here's my idea, here's yours. And I
started reading about Detroit. And as I was reading about
historic Detroit and obviously black historic Detroit, I came up
(55:31):
on this story of Black Bottom, which was a neighborhood
and the neighborhood was destroyed deliberately due to gentrification. And
once I read about it, I said, that's it, that's
the story. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (55:47):
And once I knew that, I then said, okay, I
need to go there. And so the folks at the
orchestra's they did. We did a little reside.
Speaker 1 (55:56):
And I came in and I spoke to people who
were in the neighborhood. We went on a tour yeah, yeah,
the ground wark Yeah.
Speaker 2 (56:05):
And so meeting all of these different people, and I
set up an interview process and each of them I
asked I think it was five or six questions, and
most of the people were African American, and of course
most of the you know, most people don't go to
the orchestra concerts. And so by doing this, they all
(56:25):
then were motivated to come to the concert and to
tell friends because I'm a composer and I'm writing about them.
Speaker 1 (56:34):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (56:36):
So you know, there were nine sections or nine movements
we would call them, you know, in this piece, and
each of them was a different vignette of a different
neighborhood that was in there.
Speaker 1 (56:48):
And I remember one of them.
Speaker 2 (56:49):
Was a record record shop. It's a movement called Shops
on Hastings. And I spoke to this one woman is
an oral historian and her father owned a record shop
and she said, you know, and I was interviewing her,
she said, and they would answer the phone Joe's Record Shop.
(57:11):
And so that movement goes.
Speaker 1 (57:13):
Bomb but the dump bomb. But I'm sorry under at Rasby, No,
You're fine. That Joe's Record Shop.
Speaker 2 (57:21):
And you hear it going back and forth echoing in
the orchestra, you know. So those type of things will
give me ideas I also had. This was one of
these pieces that had all these different ideas, and so
they were formed in different type of ways. There was
another one with let's see, okay, there was a clubhouse
(57:47):
and there was a fantastic story about this clubhouse and
during the time of segregation, uh, and I remember the
tour guy that we had told us. He stopped in
front of this amazing, huge, huge house and said, okay,
so this is the story this clubhouse. This is the
daughters of let's see the DAWC, the Detroit Association of
(58:11):
Women's Clubs. And the story of this clubhouse was that
the woman had bought the property and her neighbors said,
we don't want Black people are not allowed to live
on this street. Okay, yeah, during the time of segregation.
But you know, very wealthy and very well she it
(58:35):
was a corner lot that this house was on. So
she boarded up the entrance and she opened the one
on the street where black people were.
Speaker 1 (58:44):
Allowed to live. I love it.
Speaker 2 (58:47):
I love this story. And her name was doctor Roses
Laide Bag And when I spoke to the president of
the clubhouse was emphatic. She was like, and people don't
know her name, and you need to know there's another Rosa.
It's not just Rosa Parks. You have to know about
doctor Roses Lade Greg.
Speaker 1 (59:06):
And so you.
Speaker 2 (59:09):
Hear doctor Rosa Slade Greg And I don't remember how
many times this these vocalists say it.
Speaker 1 (59:15):
But people they know her name. Now, yeah, we don't
know her name. Now there's another Rosa. Yeah, yeah, you know,
so it's and this woman was amazing, amazing the things
that she did for black women, for black people at
that time. The stories just needed to be told.
Speaker 2 (59:38):
So you know, just what a great tribute to her,
to her efforts and to all the different people the
way that they lived, you know. And this is another
thing that you know, people, our organizations are looking to
tribute black people, but a lot of the time it's
(59:59):
so much which is so much emphasis is spent on
our struggle. Yes, and what is that has happened to us?
And it victimizes us and it either has perpetual victims
or perpetually angry. Yes, yes, in need of social justice
(01:00:22):
because they say it social justice, but it really makes
us people in need of social justice. And regardless of
your thoughts on it one way or the other, I
never want to be a situation where people are thinking
of all of us and stigmatizing us in that way.
Speaker 1 (01:00:46):
And so I want to.
Speaker 2 (01:00:46):
Talk about the way that we lived because people need
to know that there's more to us than this struggle. Yes, yes,
but oh my goodness, we live, we have rich lives.
So black bottom was really about the way that people
lived in this neighborhood, the tales from the Briar Patch.
(01:01:10):
A lot of people said, well, you can't do something
on Braar Rabbit. Of course you can. It's from our culture. Yeah,
we can laugh.
Speaker 1 (01:01:19):
And if you know, you.
Speaker 2 (01:01:20):
Watch this video, you see this is just these are
the roots of American musical theater. It's the roots of
American music period. And you know, we have these three
birds and they're women and their church ladies, and they're
looking at the antics of Brair Fox from Braar Rabbit,
(01:01:42):
and it is hilarious and done in stylized speech, but
it's not a speech that is slave dialect.
Speaker 1 (01:01:57):
It's not.
Speaker 2 (01:01:58):
I'm celebrating our culture. Another another concept that I have, Uh,
there was a group of Harlem chamber.
Speaker 1 (01:02:07):
Players mm hmm. Worked with them a.
Speaker 2 (01:02:11):
Long long time ago, and they came up and said
they wanted to commission meet for something.
Speaker 1 (01:02:16):
And I said, okay, and I what I ended up
doing is something about a black woman going to the symphony.
Speaker 2 (01:02:30):
Because you don't believe this, So here's this black woman
and it's called we met at the Symphony, right right,
it's all black women. Because there's so much emphasis on
our men, and I love our men, but we have
stories too, we have experiences too.
Speaker 1 (01:02:51):
So I'm just like, yes, so I wanted to champion
book love. So that's okay.
Speaker 2 (01:02:58):
So we met at the symphony, and so, you know,
here's this this woman and she never identifies herself as
being African American. Now she does use jazz as her
the music that you associate with her. And so she's
telling her story and it's in three different songs, and
(01:03:18):
she goes through this romance that she has and so
you know with this black man that she meets at
the symphony. So you know, so there's different ideas and
as I'm hearing them, as I'm talking through the ideas,
I will hear music.
Speaker 1 (01:03:36):
Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, it's it's an interesting process. Yeah, yeah,
that's amazing. I mean I feel like I'm sitting in
a massa class right now. Okay. And for whoever's listening,
there may be more people going to the symphony to
hook up. Okay. You never know who you're gonna meet it. Listen,
(01:04:01):
that's where you get the quality in the caliber you're
looking for. Ladies, gentlemen and gentlemen go to the symphony
and find your lady. Oh my gosh, this is this
is so amazing. Now, I know we're running and I
know we're running out of time, but I have to
touch on this. You are one of the few select
(01:04:22):
composers commissioned at Juilliard that in itself is amazing. Tell
us about the work you're doing. What's up next for you?
Tell me what's happening at Juilliard. This is just so amazing. Boo,
you know it's Juilliard thing.
Speaker 2 (01:04:43):
Just to just to clarify Juilliard the this is the
most famous conservatory.
Speaker 1 (01:04:53):
Gosh, probably in the world, certainly in the Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:05:00):
They decided it's time to diversify the record repertoire mm hmm. Right,
So they picked about forty composers out of all these composers,
and they're just non white composers. They said, okay, so
each of you, you know, So they they picked they said,
(01:05:23):
we want you to write audition materials so that our
students will have this and learn it and it will
be there for the next generation and it's going to
be on their permanent curriculum.
Speaker 1 (01:05:36):
So yes, and so you could have blown me over
with a feather.
Speaker 2 (01:05:41):
Yeah, it's this email and it is a commission from
Juilliard and they wanted me to write songs.
Speaker 1 (01:05:49):
And I thought, wow, okay, yeah, died and gone to
heaven for sure, heaven on earth.
Speaker 2 (01:05:57):
So for these students, it needed to be something that
everyone could sing. And you know, for physical reasons but
also asthetic reasons, you really don't want to. You can't
have white singer singing. I am Harriet Tubman. Also, the
music is gospel music, and it uses a couple of
(01:06:20):
things that are endemic to African American female singers.
Speaker 1 (01:06:25):
That wouldn't necessarily singing physically with other singers, and not
everyone would be comfortable with that. So I wanted to
choose something that would be more universal, and they wanted
they wanted three songs, and one would be for a soprano,
which is the highest voice, and the next would be
(01:06:47):
for a metso or or an alto and that is
your second voice. And then the third would be for
a male voice. And they couldn't side. I think it
was just a matter of what to be the tenor
or the baritone. And so I wrote two versions of
each song, and I thought, let's go to the classics,
(01:07:09):
let's do that.
Speaker 2 (01:07:10):
So yeah, so This song cycle is called Love and Longing,
and there are some monologues inspired by classic literature.
Speaker 1 (01:07:22):
Okay, I love that, Yeah, I love that. See I
love me some classic literature. Yeah I have. I have
a degree. So you had me at classic literature. Well
people don't wouldn't you know, people wouldn't necessarily associate me
with that. So I thought, Wow, this is this great opportunity,
(01:07:43):
you know.
Speaker 2 (01:07:44):
And so we're having this conference call it's you know this,
I guess it was a zoom meeting, and you know,
the the voice teacher you could see the surprise in
her face when I started quoting messages from the classics.
I was like, okay, so you know this this It
just surprised her.
Speaker 1 (01:08:05):
And good. Absolutely, yes, they are.
Speaker 2 (01:08:10):
Doing a great job with it. And it wasn't that
I was literate. It was that I loved these passages
so much that I was able to quote them.
Speaker 1 (01:08:21):
Yes, because that makes them classic. I mean they they
actually live with their lifetime. Once you've read some of
these famous authors prose and poetry writers. Yeah, yes, but
also there's all these movies about them. And I will
sit down and you know, I have my my first days,
(01:08:42):
my colin Firth, Yes, prejudice, Oh my god, get the
box of tissue.
Speaker 2 (01:08:53):
So anyway, so with love and longing, there's Catherine's monologue
where she is talking about her love for Heathcliff and
she's talking about whatever our souls are made.
Speaker 1 (01:09:04):
Of, another belongs with mine. So this is the day that.
Speaker 2 (01:09:11):
The other, the other one in her life proposes to her,
and so she's bemoaning this. And then we have Jane
Eyre's aria where she tells off Rochester mm hmm, and
she's like, do you think I'm a machine? Do you
think I can.
Speaker 1 (01:09:26):
Have my glass of water snatched from my lips? I mean,
this is dramatic. Yeah, So and the Darcy's proposal where
he's telling Elizabeth that he he loves her but that
it's against his own will.
Speaker 2 (01:09:41):
Yeah, I mean, so what I love about these saw this,
What I love about.
Speaker 1 (01:09:47):
These moments is that they're universal. Everyone has love, everyone
longs for something, and you know this the students, I'm
just I'm just really jazzed about this because I just
was doing a masterclass with the students just yesterday. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:10:05):
I remember telling one of the girls who was singing,
whatever our souls are made of and It's like, what
would Tiller Swift do with this? And you know she
has that just just say Yes song with Romeo and Juliet.
Speaker 1 (01:10:17):
Uh huh right, so she began thinking about that. You know.
Speaker 2 (01:10:21):
It just makes you think, you know, And with Jane
Eyre's Aria, well you know what did Beyonce? You know
what was she channeling when.
Speaker 1 (01:10:28):
She's talking about to the left, to the left everything,
you you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, well that's what Jane Air.
You know, here she is and she's saying, Okay, I'm
done with you. You know you fell on them off. Yeah,
make your relevant. I'm telling you, make the connection.
Speaker 2 (01:10:44):
We are surprisingly modern in their language. And anyway, this
so Love and Longing will premiere actualiard On. You know
I should know this. It's February eleventh, and it is
free and they're gonna live stream it.
Speaker 1 (01:11:05):
Yeah yeah, okay, we're gonna have to put it out
there when it's time, so maybe folks can connect through
Facebook or or zoom or something. I mean, yeah, you know,
and I want to say to thank you because I
can't remember you have to forgive me. I can't remember
what company you were uh composing for at the time.
(01:11:27):
But my daughter and I actually listened to some of
your pieces along with others for a free live streamed
perform uh free live stream performances during COVID, and we
actually went to the cheesecake factory and set up our
little phone and we were sitting there listening uh to
(01:11:50):
the pieces. It was just amazing. I mean, yeah, so
I just want to say thank you for that. Oh gosh,
I think that was with American Opera Project. Yeah, I
can't remember, Yeah, it was. It was just great to
have that. Yeah. Yeah, Now, I'm sorry. I know we've
were out of time, but before we go, what's one
(01:12:14):
thing you wish people knew about composers? Hmmm? I know,
right well, Composing music.
Speaker 2 (01:12:35):
Is just like being an architect, being an artist, being
a lawyer, being a doctor. If this is something that
you gravitate to, this is something that you are skilled in,
(01:12:56):
then you take the coursework and you do it.
Speaker 1 (01:13:01):
Yes, yeah, yeah, And you are making the path for
all those who have a dream to be in classical music,
to compose, to have their work heard, their voices heard
and unique and extraordinary ways. And I want to thank
(01:13:24):
you for that. I want to thank you for joining
me tonight and of course, you know we'll have you
back and I will definitely look out for the piece
and Julliard so that we all can enjoy it in
the comforts of our own home and just really make
a night of it. So thank you so much for
joining me wonderful, Thank you everyone for listening, and as always,
(01:13:51):
thank you for being a team player. B
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