Lara Downes: FOR LENNY
with special guest
Rhiannon Giddens
Hosted by Adam Gopnik
Lara Downes: FOR LENNY
About the Show
Classical
Pianist Lara Downes celebrates the launch of her Sony Classical debut album FOR LENNY, a Leonard Bernstein centennial tribute that spans the landscape of American music from the past, present, and future. Downes, joined on stage by singer Rhiannon Giddens, presents a portrait of Bernstein the man, full of boundless curiosity and a fervent belief in the power of music to change our world for the better.
Downes’ most recent chart-topping release, America Again, was selected by NPR as “One of 10 Albums that Saved 2016.” Describing FOR LENNY, Downes said this: “Leonard Bernstein reminds me of what a musician can be. Of what music can do in this world – how it can reach and teach and make things happen. Just imagine what American music was before Lenny came along, everything he changed. I’m only here at all, I think, because of the rules he broke and the doors he knocked down. Imagine the thousands of other musicians who feel the same way.”
Artists
Lara Downes
An iconoclastic pianist whose artistry has been called “luscious, moody and dreamy” by the The New York Times and “ravishing” by Fanfare Magazine, Lara Downes takes inspiration where she finds it, to make music that is timeless and timely, starts conversations, and resonates with the world we live in.
Born in San Francisco and raised in Europe, Lara’s interest in connecting music to a wide and inclusive breadth of human experience mines her own mixed African American and Eastern European background and her peripatetic upbringing. As she has shed the stricture of genre in her view of music, the musical press has embraced her distinctive artistry: her playing has been called “ravishing” by Fanfare magazine, “luscious, moody and dreamy” by the The New York Times. Her 2015 release A Billie Holiday Songbook has been embraced by both jazz and classical critics and listeners, called “possibly the most intriguing Holiday tribute” of this centenary year by Jazz Weekly.
Lara’s most recent chart-topping release, America Again was selected by NPR as one of “10 Albums that Saved 2016”, and hailed as “a balm for a country riven by disunion” by the Boston Globe. In many ways the coming-of-age memoir of an artist who has found her own way and carved her own path through American music, the album expresses the diversity of American history and American dreams. In her own words: “ I’ve traveled all around this country and played for audiences in small towns and big cities. I’ve learned that my music is a bridge to unexpected friendships with people who come from very different versions of America than my own. There is no such thing as a typical American life, and there are millions of American stories. American music has a complicated history, full of contrasts and contradictions, just like my own, and I’ve learned that what is most beautiful about me comes down to my contradictions and contrasts.”
A trailblazer onstage and off, Lara is a laureate of the 2016 Sphinx Medal of Excellence award, recognized as a leader in expanding the reach of the arts as a performer, an entrepreneur, and a cultural visionary. She enjoys creative collaborations with artists including cellist Yo-Yo Ma, beatboxer Kevin “K.O.” Olusola, MacArthur Fellow Rhiannon Giddens, baritone Thomas Hampson and former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove, and her partnerships with prominent composers span genres and generations.
Her newest recording, FOR LENNY, a Sony Classical release, celebrates the American legacy of Leonard Bernstein on the 100th anniversary of his birth. More information can be found at LaraDownes.com.
Rhiannon Giddens
2017 MacArthur Fellow Rhiannon Giddens is a singer, instrumentalist, and songwriter enriching our understanding of American music by reclaiming African American contributions to folk and country genres and revealing affinities between a range of musical traditions, from gospel and Celtic to jazz and R&B.
In her recordings and live performances, Giddens has mined the history of the African American string band tradition, introducing new audiences to the black banjoists and fiddlers whose influences have been left out of popular narratives of the lineage of folk and country music. Giddens is a native of the Piedmont region of North Carolina, and she trained as an opera singer before returning to North Carolina to immerse herself in traditional American roots music through study of archival recordings and the mentorship of the octogenarian fiddler Joe Thompson. Having honed her skills on the fiddle and 5-string banjo, she co-founded with two other band mates the Carolina Chocolate Drops in order to share this tradition with a new generation of listeners.
With extraordinary vocal abilities and emotional range afforded by her classical training, Giddens is a powerful presence on stage, and her explanations of the historical and social contexts for the music she performs further demonstrate how discrete musical approaches can inform one another. Giddens’s drive to understand and convey the nuances, complexities, and interrelationships between musical traditions is enhancing our musical present with a wealth of sounds and textures from the past.
Her albums include the GRAMMY-award winning Genuine Negro Jig (2010), the GRAMMY-nominated Tomorrow is My Turn (2015) and Freedom Highway (2017). She has performed at national and international festivals and venues, including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the White House, the Spoleto Festival, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, and the Newport Folk and Jazz Festivals, among many others.
