Artist Portrait: Lara Downes
As a very little girl, Lara Downes remembers going to pre-school music classes. “There was a little boy who was not paying attention and making trouble. He was around under the piano and she (the teacher) was dealing with him. And, I just remember thinking, how could he not be having fun? This is so much fun!”
She laughed as she told me that she “must have been a remarkable child” because now that she is a Mom she knows how very, very hard it is to get children into a practice routine. Music was all around her as she grew up. The family went to standing room performances of the opera, and symphony. She and her sisters were home schooled which gave her the flexibility to practice and explore. “My sisters both played. There were 3 pianos in my house.”
When I asked her if there was a moment when she knew the being a pianist was going to be her life’s work, she responded, ” On the contrary, I don’t think there was a moment when I wasn’t going to be a pianist …and I was fortunate to have a Mom who supported me in that. There were definitely moments when I was sort of awestruck about what music could be.”
Lara talked about her teachers’ sometimes negative attitudes toward careers in performance, and felt that her teachers “were always mourning what they saw as the end of an era.” She went on to talk about how these pianists had come up in a field that was much less crowded and not so competitive, where there were more direct paths for them to follow and more people willing to help them toward a successful career. “ How many students does a conservatory turn out now a year? And, it’s getting more and more all the time.”
She celebrates all the possibilities available at a grass roots level today. “ All around the country you have alternative venues for performance and recording takes on a whole different context against that. For artists who are entrepreneurial there’s tremendous opportunity.” She views the vastness of the piano repertoire as a plus in programming and enjoys the process of moving from inspiration, through research and exploration, to the final program or program series.
Lara says that she always knew the Goldbergs would have a special place in her life. In 2009, she decided she wanted to record 13 Ways of Looking at the Goldberg and launched her project on Kickstarter to make the recording a reality. And now it is. Her splendid recording was released this September on the Tritone label with part of the proceeds going to Lara’s 88 Keys Foundation which “provides services and funding for classical music education, research, performances, and artists, to benefit listeners and learners alike.”
Inspired by Wallace Steven’s poem, 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, 13 Ways of Looking at the Goldberg was commissioned by the Irving S.Gilmore International Keyboard Festival for pianist Gilbert Kalish in 2004. Twelve contemporary composers lovingly re-imagined this iconic theme. Rhapsody described them as “fractured and rearranged versions of Bach’s work …as refreshing as Downes’ performance.”
The variations were each written separately so there is no particular order in which they must be played. One can program all of them or just a few. When I asked Lara about which variations spoke to her right away and which she wrestled with, she laughed, “You want me to name names?”, and told me that they are all her children now and she can’t choose favorites. She recommends Jennifer Higdon’s Gilmore Variation, Ryan Brown’s Ornament, Lucas Foss’ Goldmore Variation, and Fred Hersch’s Melancholy Minuet as some of the most accessible pieces in the set.
When I asked Lara what advice she would give a young person considering a career in music she said seriously, “Don’t think it’s all about practicing 8 hours a day.” Then she went on, “I could not do what I do if I did not seriously love it. Everything that’s hard about my job, whether it’s getting up at 4 am to take a flight, playing, and then getting up at 4am the next morning to come home …all of it. If I did not love it- if I did not absolutely love it I think it would be a very, very hard life. Your heart has to be in it 100%.”
Ok, now it’s time for me to ‘fess up. I spoke with Lara for 30 minutes or so via Skype last Monday only to discover, after we had said our goodbyes, that the call recorder I use had wimped out and I only had about a minute and a half of our talk. After the tantrum, I emailed Lara with the bad news. She was completely gracious about the situation. We Skyped again last Tuesday morning and laughed together over our unscheduled rehearsal. Thank you Lara.
You can purchase the piano score to 13 Ways of Looking at the Goldberg here
