Behind the Curtain with Nanette McGuinness - Part 1

For Good Measure, by Ensemble for These Times (E4TT)
Episode 100: Behind the Curtain with Nanette McGuinness (part 1)

Looking for a way to listen to diverse creators and to support equity in the arts? Tune in weekly to For Good Measure!

In this week’s episode, we go “Behind the Curtain” and talk to For Good Measure’s host/producer and E4TT co-founder Nanette McGuinness. If you enjoyed today’s conversation and want to know more about Nanette McGuinness, check her out here: https://www.e4tt.org/nanette_mcguinness.html.

This podcast is made possible in part by a grant from the California Arts Council and generous donors, like you. Want to support For Good Measure and E4TT? Make a tax-deductible donation or sign up for our newsletter, and subscribe to the podcast!

Intro music: “Trifolium” by Gabriela Ortiz, performed by E4TT (Ilana Blumberg, violin; Abigail Monroe, cello; Margaret Halbig, piano), as part of “Below the Surface: Music by Women Composers,” January 29, 2022
Outro music: “Lake Turkana” by Marcus Norris, performed by E4TT (Margaret Halbig, piano), as part of “Alchemy,” October 15, 2021

Transcription courtesy of Otter.ai.

Co-Producer, Host, and E4TT co-founder: Nanette McGuinness
Co-Producer and Audio Engineer: Stephanie M. Neumann
Podcast Cover Art: Brennan Stokes
With assistance from Hannah Chen, Sam Mason, Renata Volchinskaya

Transcript

Stephanie M. Neumann  00:00
[INTRO MUSIC] Welcome to For Good Measure, an interview series celebrating diverse composers and other creative artists, sponsored by a grant from the California Arts Council. I'm Stephanie M. Neumann, co-producer and audio engineer of For Good Measure, filling in as host for this episode. Today, we celebrate our 100th episode by interviewing the one and only artistic executive director of Ensemble for These Times, and For Good Measure host and producer, Nanette McGuinness [INTRO MUSIC ENDS]. Thank you Nanette for doing this interview today. This is a treat. Welcome.

Nanette McGuinness  00:46
Thank you for suggesting I do this. It had been the farthest thing from my mind when we were putting together the behind the curtain season, to even be involved, so thanks, Stephanie.

Stephanie M. Neumann  00:59
Yeah, well, to get started, you're an opera singer, a musicologist, and arts administrator, and have had an exciting career in music. And you talk about your musical journey. When did you know you wanted to become a musician?

Nanette McGuinness  01:16
So, my interest in music started really early. There are pictures of me, age two or three at our family's, Hammond, Oregon, with my little legs dangling and pounding away, I'm sure very unmusically, at one of the keyboards. And I always did love music, the family sang in the car, my mom taught me to do desk camp by ear. And so my dad would sing bass, my sister would sing the melody, it was fun. I took organ lessons, after my parents got divorced in high school, guitar lessons, and then I started teaching guitar. And then in junior high and high school I did musical theater, because they did that at my school. So from really early on, I loved music. Whether I was going to have it as a vocation or an avocation was less clear, you know, do something and do music as part of my life. Because I was a math science history language kid. And my family, there are no professional musicians in the family, just people who are good at music, who do other things. But I guess, in the end, the lure of music was too strong. And in college, I started taking voice lessons, and I continued my organ lessons, and I decided to major in music. And I got interested in early music, played a bunch of crumhorns and recorders, you know, from tenor to sopranino. And they're F and C instruments, so I actually remember in one concert when I was playing one of the F instruments and all of a sudden forgetting whether I was on the F or C instrument, so that was alarming. So I just had to stop and figure out where I was. So, the original plan, what I started out thinking I would do, is sing in an early music group and conduct it and do research into early music. And then my voice started to develop. And it was a big operatic voice. And at the same time I sang, I performed in a couple of baroque operas in grad school with Alan Curtis, who has since passed away, but was really the maven of baroque performance practice. And I was hooked, you know, so I was like, alright, I do want to sing. So I finished my doctorate and started singing, singing opera. I'd asked my organ teacher in college if I could keep both instruments going. And he said, you won't be able to do both instruments at the level that you want. To have a good professional career, you're gonna have to, you're gonna have to pick. So I picked. Yeah.

Stephanie M. Neumann  03:55
I've always loved your operatic voice too, I'm so glad that you...

Nanette McGuinness  03:58
I didn't know that. Thank you!

Stephanie M. Neumann  04:02
Yeah, yeah, I always have, I cherish all the times I've seen you perform. So, yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  04:07
Well thank you.

Stephanie M. Neumann  04:11
So you were born in Massachusetts, grew up in Houston, went to college in New York, and ended up living in Berkeley, California. Did this affect your career and music interests in any way?

Nanette McGuinness  04:25
You know, I don't think so. Mostly. When I was little, when I was born, my dad was in the Air Force, so we moved around the East Coast a decent amount. And then when he left the Air Force to retrain as a psychoanalyst, and I had been sick a lot, we went to Houston, a warmer climate. And I would say that growing up in Texas was hard for a bright young woman, back then. I think it has changed a lot. But then when I went to college, and I knew I wanted a liberal arts education. Going to a conservatory wasn't part of the vocabulary for my family, it wasn't even something we would have thought of. And perhaps if I'd grown up, stayed in the East Coast, I would have had a different musical background than what I had. But when I then went to Cornell, I loved Cornell, it was it was great. And then when I changed over, moved from Ithaca, Cornell, to Berkeley for Cal Berkeley, for my doctorate, the ethos was pretty much the same, very similar. So it was almost a seamless transition, I went from one place I loved to another place I loved, both of which were very similar in kind of the overall way, some, you know, so it felt great and, and I ended up staying here.

Stephanie M. Neumann  05:50
You have performed in a variety of vocal situations such as operas, song cycles, art song, chamber groups, would you talk about your experiences in these different vocal environments? And what are the similarities or differences between them? And do you have a favorite?

Nanette McGuinness  06:10
Well, I love all of it, to be honest, you know, there's so much really great music. Opera is thrilling, the immersion in a role, working with a conductor, singing with an orchestra, the whole, it really is a Gesamtkunstwerk, the costumes, the sets, the whole thing. And I've sung in my career a lot of Mozart and Puccini, I ended up being kind of a Mozart, Puccini singer, which is great stuff. But I also did some Handel, and I've even done some Wagner, which was also very thrilling. So that's opera and yet, chamber music... chamber music is really intimate. You embody multiple characters, especially in art song. But in chamber music, you have a very close relationship with the musicians you're performing with, instead of with a conductor as the intermediary. And that's, that intimacy is very nice, also. In both of them... in both of them, you have to allow yourself to be vulnerable, to let your spirit and your, yourself show. But art song is more naked, because you don't have any of the accoutrements, you know, the costumes and the sets and all that. I mean, in art song you can have them in your mind, but you're not actually seeing them and wearing them and looking around. And it requires you to switch gears more quickly, often. So I love them, I love 'em both.

Stephanie M. Neumann  07:44
[OUTRO MUSIC] Thank you for listening to For Good Measure, and a special thank you to our guest, Nanette McGuinness, for joining us today. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to our podcast by clicking on the subscribe button, and support us by sharing it with your friends, posting it on social media, and leaving us a rating and a review. To learn more about E4TT, our concert season online and in the Bay Area, or to make a tax deductible donation, please visit us at www.e4tt.org. This podcast is made possible in part by a grant from the California Arts Council and generous donors, like you. For Good Measure is produced by Nanette McGuinness and Ensemble for These Times and designed by Brennan Stokes, with co-producer and audio engineer Stephanie M. Neumann. Remember to keep supporting equity in the arts, and tune in next week "for good measure" [OUTRO MUSIC ENDS].