Jamie Barton on making music with Jake Heggie

Limelight Magazine
September 2020

American mezzo Jamie Barton, a star of the Metropolitan Opera who brought the house down at the 2019 Last Night of the Proms, has just recorded her second recital album. Catching up with Clive Paget over the phone from her home in Atlanta, she talks about her musical love affair with Heggie and the joys and challenges of new music.

When and where did you first meet Jake Heggie, and was it musical love at first sight?

Hilariously, we first met after a performance of The Magic Flute at the Houston Grand Opera Studio. I was singing Third Lady and I was sharing a dressing room with the Papagena. We had a knock at the door, and when we opened it there was Frederica von Stade and Jake Heggie (laughs). I’m pretty sure we both started screaming! Jake was there for the very first outing of his opera Three Decembers. We got to see each other around a little bit, but I got to know him better over the years until it became very clear that we just had to make music together.

In 2015 you and he were commissioned by the Pittsburgh Orchestra and Carnegie Hall for a song cycle that is here on the new recording. Can you tell me a bit about the project and how it led to the new CD?

Jake had been commissioned by Pittsburgh, and at the same time I had been asked by Carnegie Hall if I would like a new piece to be commissioned for me for a recital I was doing. They asked me who would be your top pick for composer, and I said Jake Heggie. So, they reached out to him, and he said, “let me check,” but the long and the short of it was a co-commission. Jake created the chamber version of The Work in Hand, which debuted at Carnegie Hall, and later that season we went to Pittsburgh for the orchestral debut. And that was really how we got to talking about the CD.

So, what is it about Jake’s music that really resonates with you?

Oh man… well, Jake and I both really love musical theatre. I know Sondheim is one of his idols, and one of mine as well. I wanted to do musical theatre before I knew opera was an option. So for me, when it comes to Jake’s songs, he’s almost toying with the kind of expression you find in musical theatre, but within a very classical and incredibly rich kind of compositional tapestry that he’s able to pull off. I don’t know if I’ve ever said this to Jake, but there’s something about it that reminds me of Bernstein, who was one of the reasons I went into classical music. I thought, well, if that guy can write operas, then surely there’s stuff in classical music for me.

For me – and this is my own understanding of his music, the way I hear it – Jake really does manage to step into different genres. The “Ice Cube” aria I do on the CD, it’s so jazzy. And then you go to “The Winged Victory” at the end of the song cycle Stauesque and its straight up Kurt Weill. He has such an amazing understanding of different compositional styles, and he’s able not only to apply those, but to apply them in a way that adds so much truth to the music in the way it supports the text. To me, that zings right to my heart.

The recital opens with a song called Music to a text by Sister Helen Prejean, famously the author and inspiration for the opera Dead Man Walking. Where does that text come from and what made you choose it?

Jake was the one pulled it out and said I really think we should do this. It’s from a group of songs he wrote on text of Sister Helen. I remember the first time I took a look at it. The first page is all a cappella, and I was just humming the little rock and roll hook that he wrote into it, and by the time I got to the part where it says “I listen to music all night long” I was sitting at the keyboard in tears. It hit me in such a visceral way. This is a true story – this isn’t something Sister Helen made up. This was a real situation where she got to bring this man headphones and a cassette player and he got to experience humanity – something that had been lost to him since entering jail. That’s a powerful theme, and Jake is incredible in being able to infuse that kind of reaction into the music and not even have the piano playing underneath it. It’s just amazing to me!

The two songs from Of Gods and Cats, and the song cycles about First Ladies (Iconic Legacies) and the secret thoughts of statues and sculptures (Statuesque) have some profound thoughts, but also share some very funny moments. You strike me as a natural comedienne – have you always had funny bones? And is finding the balance a challenge?

Thank you! I think comedy is something I’ve easily taken to. My dad has a terrific sense of humour – he’s the jokester of the whole family – so it came pretty naturally to me. But the lovely thing about a recording is you get to dedicate a chunk of time to one song. I’ve gotta give the credit to Jake in terms of the balance between the comedy and the dramatic. With Iconic Legacies, when I tell people there’s a CD coming out where I get to sing Barbara Bush on Sesame Street people are like, what? (laughs). But to me the set is beautifully balanced, because you start with Eleanor Roosevelt, which is just uplifting, and then you go straight into Mary Todd Lincoln, which is moving, and then you have Jackie O, which you know from the beginning is going to be haunting. To me that’s just life – it’s rarely all doom and gloom, or all hilarity.

How special is Jake as a piano partner and how do you work together in rehearsal?

As a singer, it’s definitely a different thing coming to rehearsals when you know the person at the piano has written the music (laughs). Of Gods and Cats were the first songs of his that I ever did, and I was nervous to sing it in front of Jake. I mean, he wrote it, and I wasn’t sure if there were things that I was doing that would get on his nerves. But what I found was an incredibly supportive partner who as a composer – and this is just astounding to me – was so open to hearing what I do or what I think. There was a running joke during the recording sessions in San Francisco. The recording engineer would say, “Hey Jake, Jamie didn’t do this the way it’s written,” and Jake would say, “That’s OK, Jamie gets to rewrite my stuff!”

That’s the mark of a really generous composer. He was so supportive, and such a cheerleader all the way through and, fingers crossed, we even have a recital tour that has developed. We’re going to be doing a little bit of the CD, and he’s composing a new song cycle for me, and he’s going the one at the piano. I’m so excited about it because he’s such a sensitive collaborator, he’s somebody who is truly there for the storytelling and I feel we are truly hand in hand.