Interview, Jamie Barton and Jake Heggie on Unexpected Shadows

The American mezzo Jamie Barton has enjoyed a close working relationship and friendship with the composer Jake Heggie since her Young Artist days, and for her first album on Pentatone (released last Friday) he joins her for the world premiere recording of his song-cycle The Work At Hand (written for Barton in 2015) as well as Iconic Legacies, Statuesque, and Of Gods and Cats. The pair’s obvious rapport and mutual affection comes across every bit as strongly in conversation as it does in their music-making together, so it was a huge pleasure to speak to them via conference-call about how their partnership developed, Barton’s performances as Sister Helen Prejean in Dead Man Walking, and the strong women who’ve inspired them both throughout their careers.

How did your friendship and artistic partnership begin?

JB: When I was a Young Artist at Houston Grand Opera Studio I was singing Third Lady in Die Zauberflöte, and sharing a dressing-room with the Papagena, Alicia Gianni. After the performance we got a knock at the door, and opened it to find Jake and Frederica von Stade, so naturally we started screaming! That was my first encounter with Jake, although of course I’d known his compositions for years: his Faces of Love CD was some of my formative art-song listening back when I was younger, so meeting him was incredible. I was fortunate enough to spend some time around him during the rest of my spell at Houston, and then it kind of just fast-forwarded: Jake, I think really the first time we got to work together was on The Work at Hand?

JH: That was the first time we collaborated, yes. I should add that when we were greeted by a screaming Jamie and Alicia, Flicka and I started screaming right back! It was such a joyful moment, seeing these two young artists and the beautiful work they were doing: we couldn’t help but join in, and we haven’t stopped laughing together since. I liked Jamie immediately, and we recognised one another as kindred spirits right away. Over the next few years we got to know each other well and really wanted to do something new together; she’d been singing my set of songs Of Gods and Cats for quite a while. A few years ago she was booked for a concert at Carnegie Hall and they offered a commission as part of the recital, so she called me up – I was juggling three operas and four song-cycles, but of course I said yes! The Pittsburgh Symphony had just asked me to write something for their principal cellist, and I thought ‘How about we combine them?’. The result was a piece for mezzo and cello that could be done with piano or with full orchestra, and it ended up being a co-commission from Pittsburgh and Carnegie Hall.

Then it was a question of finding the right opportunity to record, and that presented itself last year when Jamie was in San Francisco singing Ježibaba in Rusalka, which was life-changing and epic! Everything Jamie does is kind of epic – she has great joy, but also one of the biggest hearts I’ve ever encountered in any person. Her infectious spirit and her generosity as a performer and person are inspirational, and that’s why I chose the poems that I did for The Work at Hand: the texts are by my friend Laura Morefield, who passed away from cancer way too young, and to go down that path with someone that I know and love and trust so much felt very comforting and comfortable. It’s just a wonderful partnership, so being able to record all of that music with her last summer was an incredible joy.

How much contact did you have while The Work at Hand was being written?

JH: We’re both laughing, because again it was a busy time for both of us…Jamie’s Carnegie Hall recital was on 17th February, and I gave her the score the first week of January – for this 20-minute piece! But we’d gone back and forth so I could check things with her, and once she started rehearsing she’d send me recordings because I couldn’t be there. When I work with a singer I get to know their personality, voice and range, how they tell a story and what things work really well for them, and then I send them what I think; Jamie would suggest certain things like holding this note longer, or taking this option rather than that. The idea is for me not to micromanage, so that the singer can make it their own: Jamie makes every single piece her own, and my goal is to leave room for her to be able to do that.

JB: That’s one of the magical things about Jake – everything I’ve received from him needs so few edits. He has such an incredible sense of how voices work on an individual basis, so when he sent me The Work at Hand the month before it honestly wasn’t a problem! Like he says, I made some little tweaks, but they really were minuscule: it’s just amazing to me that he can listen to a voice and understand exactly what it can do, how to highlight its qualities, and where in the tessitura he needs to put the text when the text needs to shine.

Have you performed together live much?

JH: We’re planning a recital tour next year, because I’m writing a new song-cycle for Jamie in early 2021, but we’re still figuring out details. It’s so fun to make music with Jamie: everyone falls in love with her the moment she steps on stage, and then when she sings they fall in love even more! She’s one of those artists where you really feel like she’s singing just for you, and the text is so important to her. She has a magnificent instrument that she’s trained to perfection, and I hear every word throughout her range: there are no breaks, it’s clean top-to-bottom, and she’ll do everything to make sure it’s expressive in every register. She’s willing to make an uglier sound as well as a radiant beautiful sound if it serves the story-telling and the text, and that’s really rare.

And I learn something about my works from Jamie whenever she performs them: it’s in her nature to dig deep, to go into corners that I might not even know exist when I put something on the page, and that’s a wonderful gift for a composer. Another magical moment was when she did Dead Man Walking in Atlanta: I know what a massive, difficult role that is, but it just fit her like a glove and I wanted to hear her do it all day.

Jamie, did you have any contact with Sister Helen Prejean, or indeed any of the other women who’ve inspired Jake’s music?

JB: Absolutely. Sister Helen is wonderful about being present whenever the opera’s being done, and that was certainly the case with that production - she came in quite early in the process just to meet us all, and the Atlanta Opera arranged a dinner for me, her, and Mike Mayes [who sang the role of Joseph De Rocher]. Getting to know her as a person really informed the character for me: most of the time in this job I’m playing quite stock characters or people who’ve been dead for hundreds of years (if they ever existed at all), so to have somebody like Sister Helen Prejean who challenges every preconception you have about a nun was incredible. (In the show, Joe de Rocher says ‘She’s a rock'n'roll nun’, and that’s exactly it!). It also added another layer to my preparation of the song ‘Music’ from The Breaking Waves, which is included on this album: having that personal time together meant that I was able to bring a certain amount of truth to the words that she wrote, and that’s such a luxury because so often I’ll never get to meet the people who wrote the texts that I sing.

And I think you have close friendships with some of Jake’s other mezzo muses..?

JB: The one singer I don’t know is Jennifer Larmore, which is a little crazy as we’re both from Georgia!

JH: How do you not know Jennie Larmore?!

JB: It’s the mezzo curse, Jake – if you’re the same fach you’re never hired at the same place at the same time! But I’ve been very fortunate to get to know several other people Jake has written for, and Joyce [DiDonato] is a particularly dear friend: she’s served as my big sister in this career, giving me advice along the way. And she was so supportive when I did Dead Man Walking: she’d send me motivational text-messages through the rehearsals and performances!

The cycles Statuesque and Iconic Legacies are both inspired by the visual arts – did either of you see the artefacts depicted in person?

JH: Statuesque was the first time Gene Scheer and I worked together, and we were writing something for Joyce Castle, who’s now 81 and absolutely indomitable. When I was introduced to her I was just blown away because she’s so iconic-looking - I remember stammering ‘What can I write for this woman, she’s so statuesque…’, and that was that! So Gene and I went to work researching all of these sculptures; I made sure I saw all of them in the flesh, and it grew from there.

When the Dallas Opera commissioned us to write a set of songs we chose objects in the Dallas Museum of Art, and when we started working on Iconic Legacies and knew it was going to be done at the Smithsonian it seemed obvious to pick items from their collection too. We initially thought we’d write about things like Dorothy’s shoes from The Wizard of Oz, but then this other dimension came in: we realised that various First Ladies had a specific connection to certain objects there, and that was a fascinating area to explore. So yes, I’ve definitely seen all the objects in these songs – I don’t know if you have, Jamie?

JB: I haven’t, but next time that I’m in town you’d better believe I’m gonna go!

You both identify as ‘die-hard feminists’ – who have been the major influences on you on that front?

JB: There are so many, but first and foremost my mother. I was incredibly lucky to be born to the parents that I was born to – two little hippies in the North Georgia hills, which is not typical in that area! My mother has always been a beacon of strength, and really raised me in this mindset of equality, not just of the sexes but between races, orientations and everything else. In terms of my own profession Marian Anderson comes to mind, as one of several women of colour who really paved the way for generations after them: it’s just astounding to me that in spite of the challenges they faced, these women still came to the stage night after night and delivered this unspeakable beauty. I also want to mention Michelle Obama, and Deborah Frances-White is fantastic: I was just listening to her podcast The Guilty Feminist right before you called! It’s lovely to be living in 2020, because although there’s still so far to go there are also so many incredible women to look to and men who are hugely supportive allies in helping the world come around to the radical view that men and women should be treated absolutely equally.

JH: Jamie mentioned women of colour in opera: at one point I page-turned for Leontyne Price, and I remember seeing how these amazing women would be treated in one way in a certain circumstance and then horribly differently in another. I grew up surrounded by strong women, and I’ve been on their side since my childhood. My father committed suicide when I was ten, and my mom was absolutely heroic: at 39, she was left to raise four children in central Ohio, and I saw how appallingly she was treated by people despite that heroism. Mental illness and suicide were black marks back then – you couldn’t talk about them, and seeing that injustice really made me look at the world differently. My mother’s support and advice altered my life, and so pretty much all of my pieces (except for Moby Dick, obviously) have a feminist bent.

JB: I can absolutely vouch for that. One of the reasons it was such a pleasure to pull this album together was that all of these pieces are from the perspective of incredible women, told through the voice of Jake Heggie - and Jake gives you musical truth like no-one else.