Mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato and the members of Time for Three—Nicolas Kendall, Charles Yang, and Ranaan Meyer—join Air Time host Charles Donelan to discuss Emily — No Prisoner Be, a new song cycle by composer Kevin Puts based on 24 poems by Emily Dickinson.
In this conversation, the artists reflect on collaboration, poetry and the challenges and rewards of bringing Dickinson’s voice into a contemporary musical language.
🎧 Listen to the episode above or read the full transcript below.
About the Artists and Event
Emily — No Prisoner Be will be performed on Thursday, February 5, at 7 p.m. at The Granada Theatre. Tickets and information are available at artsandlectures.ucsb.edu.
Charles Donelan
Today on Air Time, I’m joined by mezzo soprano Joyce DiDonato and the genre-defying string trio Time for Three: violinists Nick Kendall and Charles Yang, and double bassist Ranaan Meyer, all of whom also use their voices as part of the ensemble. We’re going to be talking about Emily – No Prisoner Be, a concert song cycle setting the poetry of Emily Dickinson and written by composer Kevin Puts. And it was written specifically for these artists. They will be in Santa Barbara on Thursday, February 5, at the Granada Theater to perform this song cycle for UCSB Arts & Lectures. And I’m delighted to be able to spend time with them today and to share their thoughts on this wonderful project with you.
Charles Donelan
We’re so happy to be here. So what does it mean to spend time in Emily Dickinson’s world, and in particular with her voice, and go anywhere you want with this? I’m not trying to hold you to any particular thing, but you’re living with one of the most extraordinary minds in all of literature, what has happened?
Group gathered in New York City–Joyce DiDonato, Nick Kendall, Charles Yang and Ranaan Meyer
(altogether) Hello Charles!
Charles Yang
Like so much! Yeah, can I start just to give Joyce a little something? Before we recorded this, first of all, we got the music, we read it. But right before going into recording, Joyce would, before recording each one, Joyce would come into the room and read the poetry, and really for us to understand what we are playing, what she is singing, what we are all singing, just to get into that mind. And I think it changed all of us even before recording. We had already rehearsed, and that really put the love into the album. That was a really special thing.
Charles Donelan
So this is Charles, who’s talking, and let me make sure I understand now you’re saying that even before you heard the music, Joyce introduced you to the words just by reciting the poems that had been selected, is that correct?
Nick Kendall
Yeah, well, I’m going to partly off of what Charles said, because this is Nick Kendall. I think, I mean, yes, Charles, that is exactly it. But I think, I mean, obviously we knew the poems. But I think even for everybody in the booth and in the control room. Joyce has this way of… it’s not just the words, but taking the words and helping everybody understand the meaning behind all of this. And you know, like, what, Charles, I agree with you because, you know, being classically trained we’re very used to taking the notes that are given to us by the composers and interpreting that. But also, as songwriters, we often are writing words, but then the way we play the music behind those songs is not just about the notes anymore. It’s about how we shape those notes and the meaning of those notes. And Joyce, by setting us up before recording, completely changed up the way we all put the music into the microphones and on this record.
Joyce DiDonato
Thank you guys. Now this is Joyce talking. You can see why I just love you guys so much. We had worked on the music, and we were just getting an overall feeling as we workshopped it. We would work on suggestions with Kevin [Puts, the composer]. Kevin was unbelievably cooperative and open, and so it feels like all of us were able to imprint the music as well in our own way, and Kevin kept us all together, so as to make sure that we were still doing his original vision. But it was really important to me when we went to record this, before each take I would read the poem, and then I would, I won’t say what the meaning was, because with Emily right, it can go in so many directions. But I would speak about how I was thinking of it. And I have to say, like all great poetry when we recorded it last February, so just about a year ago – I know, right – and we premiered this for two performances in Bregenz, Austria. And in the experience of recording it I thought we went really deep on each piece, being really true to the poetry. But then it took flight in a very unexpected, different way for me in the performance.
I liken it – I hesitate, but it’s true – I liken it a bit to Winterreise because that’s also 24 extraordinary poems, like with Emily that Kevin chose 24 poems for this, and it takes us on a journey. We’ve done all the work, we’ve prepared, all the notes, we’ve discussed it. We have our own approach to it in the sound world. But on that stage, Emily is driving the car through Kevin’s music. The two of them are like, let’s go. And as prepared as we are, I feel like it takes us. And because Emily’s poetry is full of so many different universes that one different take on a word can spark it in a very different direction each time, which is why I think when people hear the album, they’re going to want to listen to it over and over again, and they can repeat each song on its own, but the journey from beginning to end will really take you somewhere, and likely it will take you somewhere different each time. So it is that I’m can’t wait to start the tour, because I know by the time we finish it, we’re going to be in a very different place with this piece, and we are going to have traversed and traveled so many nooks and crannies of her mind, illuminating our mind, our hearts, our imagination, our creativity. She uses the word finite infinity, and I feel like we’re going to have a glimpse into her impression of infinity by the time we get through with this.
Charles Donelan
I love the idea that she is someone who looked upon infinity as a possibility, that it was an option in her mind, which is not necessarily the way that ordinary folks understand something as grand as that. Joyce, you’ve already touched on several of the things that I’m really curious about, and I guess one way we could get into it is with this idea that the piece really comes alive in a performance with an audience. Could you talk – and this would be a good question for Time for Three as well – about maybe a moment when things began to come into focus, or certain ideas about what it means to be in dialog or engaged by an artist, because you’re not playing Emily Dickinson, you’re, you’re, you’re conversing with her, or you’re engaging with her. Can you tell me, are there some specific moments or ideas about when this kind of thing started to happen? You said partly it was in Austria when you got in front of a live audience.
Ranaan Meyer
Well, I think, ladies and gentlemen, run on the double bass.
Perfect podcast voice, yeah, if only you could all see me. I’m taking my hat off next time. I think this is all about opportunity. When you’re gifted the opportunity to collaborate with Joyce DiDonato and Charles and Nick, and to work with, you know, one of the leading classical composers, we could go there, but just as a human Kevin Puts sees music as something that is more than a genre where there are infinite possibilities. You’re given this opportunity to constantly discover, and you know, when you think about this, a year ago was the recording. A year before, that was the inception of the idea. And now, you know, a year later, in real time, the tour begins, and we’ll be doing this over the course of three years and three continents, and we are so excited to begin this journey in Santa Barbara. And it’s never going to be the same each time that we perform it, each time that we rehearse it, the way that we kind of get into the weeds with each other, and even sometimes get heated in a good way, you know, where we feel so passionately about a certain direction, or we find it together and triumph as a group. Whether it’s in the rehearsal laboratory or it’s on stage in front of your audience, etc, it’s like a fingerprint. There’s no two that will be the same ever. And so I think from that standpoint, the word “discovered” comes into my mind, because that’s one of the things that I’m just looking forward to in our journey together. I’m so excited about that, knowing that, you know, and we’re pretty darn, I don’t want to speak for all of us, but I think we’re pretty darn proud of the recording that that is printed and forever, but it’s also pretty darn thrilling to know that every time we get to play that it won’t be like the recording.
Joyce DiDonato
We had two performances in Bregenz, but we opened up a dress rehearsal to some of the singers that were performing there in the festival and some of the other musicians. We had maybe 30 people, 25 or 30 people, musicians, singers, people in the industry who couldn’t attend a performance because they were also doing things simultaneously. And it was the first time we put this in front of strangers. It was the first time we put the whole piece to a group. And with any premiere, you never know. We’ve been cautious, because from the first notes, we’re like, “This is amazing. This is so special. This is extraordinary,” but you have to stop and go. But that’s what we think, right?
Ultimately we hope other people feel that, but you don’t know. And I’ve gotten pretty good, as I know you guys are as well, at reading the energy in a room of an audience, and we were in this beautiful black box theater, 25 singers and musicians, and I felt from the first chord of the piece, the sensation you guys of listening. You know that, “is it live, or is it Memorex?” commercial, where the sound goes and people are blasted back in their chairs. It felt like the whole room just went and they didn’t breathe until the end. It’s like they were just with us, and they didn’t let the tension release for one second, and we didn’t either, because that becomes a self-generating kind of energy. And we just came off of there, I think, exhilarated. And I for one, said we got to put some breaks in here, because that’s too intense. It’s too much. And we found the pacing in, I think, a beautiful way, and to have people in the industry recognize that they were hearing something really powerful, and it pulled them in. There wasn’t a chance for them to go, “well, I don’t know”– there was no room for it. It was just reception, like they were just absorbing it. And almost everybody was like, “we need to see this again.” Yeah, in a good way. And so that tells me, as a performer, that it works, if it can grab an audience like that.
Nick Kendall
I also think that it’s the live performance aspect of this, the tools. Kevin just knows his players so well. And the reason why I think he had a sense that it would work is because there’s a special ingredient in here, of where Joyce is coming from, and where Time for Three is coming from and the fact also that when he asks us to sing, we’re not singing. We’re the way we go out in the world is we write pop songs or folk songs, or whatever kind of comes. I mean, Charles is our lead singer, and Ranaan and I sing back up, but we found this really cool blend between us. But it isn’t classical. It isn’t, I mean, we can say this in this context, it’s not refined. We’re not trained. But the rawness of that, I think, at least the comments I got from some of the singers really added this color. And of course, our playing is much more refined, because that’s something we’ve been doing, and we do have a very original kind of orchestral sound. But live, I think having all of those tools, and then this incredible music with all the emotions, with each of these poems, it just, I don’t know, I think it takes. There’s something at every moment for somebody, and it’s a little bit unexpected every time. It’s awesome.
Charles Donelan
I’m going to take a moment, and bear with me. There’s a question coming, but I want to sort of set the table for my audience, and in particular for my friends here in Santa Barbara, who were at the Granada Theater in January of 2023 for Joyce’s performance of EDEN, and the table I want to set is to remember how that gorgeous children’s choir was so wonderful. Yes, our friends from the Music Academy, the sing choir, the faces of those children, the sort of radiant quality of that performance is something that I will certainly never forget. But I’m thinking about that month of January 2023 because I think that’s also the month that Contact [a Kevin Puts concerto written for Time for Three] won the Grammy Award.
Nick Kendall
Yeah, technically, the beginning of February, but yes.
Charles Donelan
Okay, so and so. Contact is a composition by Kevin Puts that won the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition. And it was written for Time for Three and you’re still performing it. You’re performing it when? Next week? Yeah, so it’s got legs. Grammy winner,
Nick Kendall
How many performances have we all got? I mean 70? Oh, I mean, well, 70 organizations, because sometimes you play doubles or triples and and where we played it? In China, we played it in Shanghai. We’ve played it in Europe. In Macau, we played it Prague, Germany. It’s it’s gone, it’s going everywhere. And there’s many, many more.
Charles Donelan
And it’s this, just this incredible concerto that really could only have been written for your particular talents. But then I have to add one more layer to this, because that’s also got to be right around the time that the Metropolitan Opera decided that they needed to bring The Hours back the next season, which had never happened before. Never mind with a new opera, for back-to-back bookings of Joyce in Kevin Puts, wonderful opera The Hours, which is also, I think, a work that changed music, you know, it’s, it’s one of these things. I don’t know if “monument” is exactly the right word, but it was a moment, and is still a moment. And, you know, we have a wonderful relationship with Renee Fleming, who comes to Arts & Lectures quite often, and that piece, I think, has had an impact beyond the opera world. It’s something that has really resonated with a lot of people. And now my question. Joyce, or Time for Three, talk a little bit more about Kevin. I mean, look at the ground that he’s breaking with these compositions, and especially with the way he writes for people. I mean, now, Joyce, you were Virginia Woolf, and now you’re not well. Are you Emily Dickinson? Or how does that work? Go ahead.
Joyce DiDonato
We’ll let the audience decide. But it’s, I mean, we’re presenting it in a way that it’s, ultimately, I don’t think it matters. But if people want me to be Emily, I am. I’m wearing the white dress with a little Joyce spin on it, so it’s a little, it’s not, it’s slightly abstract, you know. And ultimately, I don’t think that will be even a topic of debate, just it is what it is. And Kevin didn’t intend for it to be Emily in Persona. This was all Kevin’s idea. And I will, I remember he said in the recording, I think it was he said, “You know what? This is the first project I’ve done that’s been my idea.” Because usually people come to him with commissions, or an orchestra commission, something, or an opera company commissions him. And this was his genesis, from the very start, all the elements. He came to me and he said, Joyce, he goes, this was during The Hours, the first round of The Hours. And he said, “I’d love to write more for you” and Contact, I think had already won the Grammy. And he said, “I’ve always wanted to set the poetry of Emily Dickinson.”
Now In my senior college recital I programmed the 12 Copeland Dickinson songs, so she’d been in my first solo recital. I put those on the disc. So she has been with me from the beginning, because as an American singer, her words set to music are everything you could want for an artist. So she’s traveled along with me, or I’ve traveled along with her, my whole career. And then he said, Do you know this time for three guys? I was like, I did. They just went to the Grammys, yeah, but we had, we’d never met. And Kevin’s genius was that he sensed, I dare say, very rightly, the chemistry would be good. And he – I will never forget, we were at this exact spot, he came over for dinner – and he said, “I already hear the first song. I came across, this poem,” ‘They shut me up in prose,’ and I can hear like, I can hear Charles, just like, shredding. And then Nick comes in, they’re like, shred there, and then you come in, ‘they shut me up.””
He already knew, and this was way before anybody had said anything. And we started this project without a commission. We started this project because everybody just said, Yeah, let’s make it happen and we’ll figure out the rest. And so I really feel that this is something that had to be born, and Kevin, it has been born through Kevin and his vision and his identification with Emily’s poetry. Because the other thing he said, he wrote this, it flew through him. It flew through him. He said, I don’t know, I took a day or two on each song, and that’s not to make it sound easy, no, because in the workshop, we also refined them and all that. But the genesis of it, it was just there, and he just tapped into it. So this whole thing, it’s, what do you call him, “Heaven Puts”? They call them Heaven Puts,
Oh, that’s great. So this is all
Nick Kendall
Amen, yeah, classical composers can also have like, you know, really cool nicknames.
I remember you’re saying it just flew out of him, I remember. And it is funny. Now wehn he finished it. He goes, I don’t even know if I’m getting paid for this, you know, we’re just like, that’s amazing. It’s pure, just his artistry. He knew it. He knew what a humble giant he is, you know, and, yeah, we’re going to pay you back [Note: UCSB Arts & Lectures has since become a co-commissioner of Emily – No Prisoner Be.]
Charles Donelan
You know, what I can also hear is in the quality of the voices when you start talking about him, the emotional investment in the project and in the relationship, and that is so exciting for us here in Santa Barbara, to be part of this, to be I guess maybe we’re the second stop on this tour, is that right? And the Granada is a wonderful venue, I think, an ideal kind of a hall for this type of music and this performance, and this has been so much fun speaking with you, I could go on all morning. I’ve got a final thing that I don’t know whether it’s going to work or not, but I’ll give it a shot.
Charles Donelan
Yeah, go for it. Yeah. Don’t let me close things out.
Speaker 4
No, no. I mean, just along those lines, it really, I mean, you know, all great projects, take a take a huge team, right? And we are, I mean, we’re talking about, like every component of this team is crazy high level, virtuosa, virtuosic in what they do. I mean, from from our label platoon, who has just been like a yes label, unbelievable Yeah, single way that’s great to hear incredible PR team are, you know, we have more than one management team because major shout out to our CO
Charles Donelan
producer and Andrew staples, yeah, do the lighting, yeah, lighting sound. I mean, everything. This is a big production,
Charles Yang
and we would only be able to do it at this type of incredible, you know, venue that you guys have where you, you know you, you offer us the opportunity yet again, to put this out there in the way that we see it, you know, in the way and the way that it be, because you’re right. It’s when you’re talking about Emily Dickinson. I mean, these 26 poems and the songs and the way they were all put together very tastefully. You. And specific to create this journey. You know, we can’t, we can’t do this everywhere, so we’re grateful to be able to do it well.
Charles Donelan
We are grateful to be part of it. It’s what makes our organization special, that we have these relationships and that we have people like Joyce, and now Time for Three, that know us and we like to think love us, we love them, and that they share with us. It’s one of a kind, this work. There’s nothing else like it that’s going on right now. People have been asking me, so what’s the music like? And I just say it’s new music. You know, that’s the thing that you need to understand. I wouldn’t want to label the genre. It is just new music of the most interesting, beautiful kind that you can possibly imagine.
Speaker 3
What we say amongst ourselves and and then after Bregenz, this was verified by our team, the people that hear it for the first time, there’s this sense… I remember my voice teacher came to one of our workshops in Juilliard, and he said, I looked over at him, he wasn’t listening as a teacher, his jaw was just open, and he was like he had tears in his eyes. And he said, this is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever heard, and he was supposed to be taking notes for me – get to work, Richard – our sensation, and I believe this to be true, is it sounds like nothing you’ve ever heard of classical strings, a classical voice, the three voices of these amazingly talented Time for Three guys that defy genre. You say you’re not trained, you’re musicians beyond, in every cell of your bodies. But the voices, is it Americana? Is it folk? Is it rock? I mean, you’ve got some Steve Perry, it’s new, and it doesn’t. It feels like something you’ve never heard before, but it immediately feels like you’ve always known it. Yes, like did I know this is this from something I’ve heard? And not that it’s a refabrication of anything. It’s just new, but it’s written with so much heart, boom, that it goes right there and it, to put it in, in very concrete terms, for a classical audience, they don’t have to be scared. Yes, you don’t have to be scared. You’re in good hands. And you will have an emotional experience, and you will remember the tunes you will leave the hall singing along with us. And I don’t think that happens very often in new classical music, but it happens with this yes, in an extraordinary way. Yes, you’re in good hands. People of Santa, Barbara, one of the thing, Charles,
The Group, singing
“Where Liberty herself abides”
Speaker 2
Thank you so much. Love you guys, see you soon.
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