Please tell us about your artistic partnership with Rhiannon Giddens. I love building sound-worlds out of unexpected elements. I want the same freedom to exist within my recordings and live performances. I love it that a track of mine can end up on multiple playlists that tap into totally different aspects of the music, co-existing with music of many origins because of some commonality of sound and mood, to find its way to thousands of different listeners. I love what the openness of the streaming world has done for my music. So it seems to me that classifying and segregating music is nothing but a limitation. Anyone can follow their curiosities and their desires into an infinity of choices. Any individual listener has all the music in the world literally at their fingertips, accessible by swiping the screen of their phone. We live our lives with so much freedom and flexibility and choice! If there are any barriers between musical genres, they really only exist in the hands of gatekeepers. Our world moves so fast, and change is the only constant. I call my music genre-fluid because I think that today everything is fluid.
Why do you think it important to reduce barriers between music genres for audiences? So, I felt it was time for me to acknowledge that legacy, by collaborating with women who are carrying on the torch of unconventionality and courage, breaking the mold and the rules, changing the world and making holes in the sky. I know that without them behind me, I wouldn’t be here at all, making my music the way I do.
I was raised by an unconventional woman to be an unconventional woman myself, so when I look back at these women who were so ahead of their time, whose music has literally changed the world, I feel a powerful kinship. Lara Downes: I’ve always been excited and inspired by the music of courageous, game-changing women like Judy Collins, Aretha Franklin, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, and before them, the women who broke through centuries of barriers and conventions to write and perform music in a man’s world. Wanting to know more about “Holes in the Sky,” I had the opportunity to interview Downes recently.ĭavid Siegel: What was your impetus to develop your “Holes in the Sky” album?
As I grow as an artist, I’m just more and more determined to combat the sorrows with the beauty I’m able to make in the world.”
#LARA DOWNES HOLES IN THE SKY FLAC FULL#
Inspiration for “Holes in the Sky” came from Georgia O’Keefe’s words “I want real things- live people to take hold of-to see-and talk to-music that makes holes in the sky-I want to love as hard as I can.” Downes added her own reflections to O’Keefe’s words “The world is a strange place, full of beauty and also so many troubles. Her special guest will be multi-instrumentalist/composer/singer and MacArthur “Genius Award” winner Rhiannon Giddens, a member of the Grammy-winning Carolina Chocolate Drops. In her live “Holes in the Sky” performance, Downes will pay tribute to women composers and poets past and present.
The live event, entitled “Holes in the Sky,” will also benefit the continuing “Because I Am a Girl” campaign in the United States and a number of other countries. It will be an intimate evening of solo and ensemble work like no other. With a singular mission to expand the music universe for diverse audiences, ground-breaking pianist Lara Downes will be gracing DC’s Sixth & I Historic Synagogue stage in a live event co-commissioned by Washington Performing Arts.
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