Emily Dickinson is one of those enigmas of the American imagination, a writer whose personal mythology seems at odds with her poetry. My first impression of her — from a textbook for my high school American literature class — was that she was a recluse who lived an anxious and lonely life, dying in the same house where she was born in Amherst, Massachusetts. But her poetry reveals a completely different person with a rich inner world and a vibrant outward life.
It feels like only in the past decade or so has there been an attempt to reconcile these two sides of Emily Dickinson. In the delightfully anachronistic “Dickinson,” Hailee Steinfeld plays her as blunt, rebellious, and even funny. A tour of the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst reveals a much more historically accurate, but no less remarkable, picture of the poet.
While it’s true that Emily Dickinson didn’t leave her family home during the later years of her life, this is not the full story. Yes, she found the expectations and pressures of “polite” 19th-century society to be stifling, but she was hardly a lonely person. She was devoted to her family, and especially loved to babysit her young nephews and niece; she had a faithful companion in her giant, shaggy Newfoundland dog, Carlo. She was an accomplished pianist, an excellent and curious student, and a voracious reader. She would much rather spend her Sunday in nature than in a church pew, and by all accounts she had a very green thumb.
This is the picture of Emily Dickinson that Pulitzer-prize winning composer Kevin Puts has captured in Emily – No Prisoner Be, a theatrical song-cycle of Dickinson’s poetry written for mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato and the genre-defying string trio Time for Three. Here Dickinson leaps off the page, both within the music and in the dynamic live performances by DiDonato and Time for Three as they embark on their album tour.
I spoke with Joyce DiDonato and Time for Three the morning after the American premier of Emily – No Prisoner Be. Still riding the high of live performance, they joined me from a hotel lobby near San Francisco for a conversation about what it’s like to inhabit Emily Dickinson’s world, the thrill of performing this music live for the first time, and the creation of art for art’s sake.
Listen to the interview, along with excerpts from the album by clicking the player above, and follow along by reading the transcript below.
TRANSCRIPT:
Edyn-Mae Stevenson I’m Edyn-Mae Stevenson from WCRB. And this is an Emily Dickinson poem set to music by Kevin Puts and performed by mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato and Time for Three.
[SINGING]
It’s from their new album Emily - No Prisoner Be, a theatrical song cycle of Dickinson’s poetry. In February, Joyce DiDonato and Time for Three took the piece on tour, and the morning after their first concert, they joined me via Zoom from a hotel lobby near San Francisco. When I asked where the idea for Emily - No Prisoner Be came from, Joyce said that she’d already sung a piece by Kevin Puts at the Metropolitan Opera…
Joyce DiDonato I was in an opera called “The Hours," written by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Kevin Puts. And he came to me and he said, "Joyce, I'd love to write something more for you, and I'm thinking Emily Dickinson." And that just stopped me in my tracks. And I said yes before he even went any further. And he goes, "Do you know this group called Time for Three?" And I'm very embarrassed to say at the time, I did not. And he said, "Well, they're these guys and there’s a string trio but they also sing, and I can just hear the four of you together."
Kevin, from the very beginning, without a commission, without a directive, he felt he needed to write this piece for the four of us, even not knowing exactly what it would be or where it would end up. It just spoke to him so deeply. And the four us were in from the very start, and within a very short amount of time it evolved into this 24-poem song cycle that will tour the world over the next couple years, and this all was the vision of Kevin.
Edyn-Mae Stevenson So this is your first time all four of you are working together, then?
Nicolas Kendall Yeah, Ranaan's been talking about this. So, in Time for Three, we've spent since we were three years old, four years old, perfecting our instruments in a classical style. You know, just working really hard. And then singing sort of happened when Charles joined 10 years ago, and the singer-songwriter aspect of what we do and… Charles just has this incredibly natural, amazing voice that he never studied for. He's just gifted with that. And Ranaan and I, probably because of solfège or whatever, class and conservatory—although I failed out of that, sorry [laughs]—but anyway, we figured that we had a blend and so we found this thing. But you know, we never really imagined that we would be using that as a tool in our professional career, as it has turned out. But literally, we would have laughed in your face if you said, "Your future holds you singing with Joyce DiDonato." I mean, that's just, that's crazy. But it's worked, and it feels so natural, and it has actually worked out perfectly. And we feel like, that's Kevin's genius about really understanding his players, and understanding what the sound world and the energy and just the humans involved in this project, what we all bring. And how it really just, it all sits so naturally and organically, all to serve bringing Emily Dickinson to a whole new generation of listeners and young people. It’s one of the objectives for us, for sure.
Edyn-Mae Stevenson Yeah, absolutely. And I learned from just chatting with Joyce earlier that last night was your first concert at the tour. How did that go? What was that like?
Nicolas Kendall Thrilling, so fun.
Ranaan Meyer There's nothing like the real thing. When you get into the presentation mode of that live experience, it's just a totally different animal because you're gonna live in this zone. Actually, I don't want to speak for anybody else. I think ultimately it's like the blood starts pumping, you know? You feel alive if you allow yourself to. I mean, why not have that happen, right? Why not feel human?
Emily was in her room knowing she wouldn't really be published. She was using that pencil through her immense imagination to navigate a very complicated world, a very complicated existence of being human. And that vulnerability and rawness is why I think we're still seeing ourselves in those words.Joyce DiDonato
This was the US premiere last night and you don't get a premiere a second time. It's like this opportunity to have worked for two plus years and work as the team. You're seeing right now, you’re seeing Joyce and Time for Three on here, right? We have this opportunity to be center stage. But there's, I don't know, like 40 people working on this whole thing, from the show to the recording to getting it out into the world, all people that just believe in this so much. So there's a sense of... not pressure, but responsibility…
Nicolas Kendall Yes!
Ranaan Meyer …to have this voice, go to these people, have them be inspired. I always feel like we're in this business of inspiration. And it goes beyond, it transcends music making. Ultimately, in addition to the fun that is music, there's a point in life where there's this turning point. It's just, it's natural. It's a natural progression where it becomes sustenance. So to those people especially, when we have that opportunity to create that sustenance, now's the time.
Joyce DiDonato We, the four of us, have lived with this project for about two years and we've been so excited, and we had a very meaningful and intimate time with this material. And you never know—we think it's brilliant—but you never really know how it's gonna land until you test it in front of a live audience. And what was so beautiful about last night was the way the public held the silence and went on this journey with us. And then every once in a while, a new song would start and the first line would come up on the surtitle and you heard the audience go, "Oh," because they recognize the poem. But as Ranaan is saying, the responsibility. We're gonna introduce a new version of that poem for them for the first time. Maybe people know "Hope is the thing with feathers that perches on the soul." They know that one, but they've never heard it set to this kind of music before.
[SINGING]
And so it was such a beautiful kind of dance from the stage to the auditorium last night and I suspect we're going to have a different kind of encounter every time we go because the audience will respond differently and that makes us feel human, as Ranaan was saying.
Edyn-Mae Stevenson I think the music is so human and alive, and really just lends itself to Emily Dickinson's poetry in such a wonderful way. I was lucky enough to visit her home in Amherst over the summer, and when you're there, I mean, it really feels like she just left the room the minute you walked into it. And that's how I felt when I was listening to this album. I felt like she was there again. It just feels very alive in such a wonderful way.
[SINGING]
Joyce, I was wondering what that process is like for you. Were you singing as Emily, or were you just inhabiting this poetry? What was that like?
Joyce DiDonato I've not yet been to the museum, that's on the bucket list for sure, but that means a lot to hear that that was your experience listening to it. I think, in a way, I've said that it feels like these 24 poems that Kevin found to set to his music, it just feels like they've always been waiting for his interpretation, for his music around it. I don't know honestly how I'm singing them. I arrive simply in the moment. And there is a sense of inhabiting Emily's world, absolutely, but there is this ambiguity and abstractness to the presentation, to the performance, that on one level, it's a creative person waiting for inspiration. It could very literally be Emily. It is also the sensation of somebody inhabiting great art. It works on a lot of different levels and it is, I will say, it's not a character monologue. It's not intended to be that, but if people want to see me as Emily, that's an option. If people want see themselves experiencing this, I think we present it in a way that it's open. And that is, I think, our intention that it is available to anybody to experience it as they want.
This is not the first time music has been written for Emily Dickinson’s words. It's been done by so many others and it takes a new life each time. I feel like we all have the opportunity to be a part of her canon, where we're curating the progression of this.Ranaan Meyer
Edyn-Mae Stevenson And you said something in the notes for this album as well, that exploring this idea of what it means to create simply for the act of creating. I was wondering what that means to you. Tell me more about that.
Joyce DiDonato Emily was in her room knowing she wouldn't really be published. She was not putting pencil to paper to try and meet an algorithm. She was not entering ideas into ChatGPT for inspiration. She wasn't trying to go viral or be popular or not be cringe. She was using that pencil through her immense imagination to navigate a very complicated world, a very complicated existence of being human. And that vulnerability and rawness is why I think we're still turning to her words a hundred and some years later and seeing ourselves in those words.
[SINGING]
And so this idea of, have we forgotten that as a society? Like, are we still going there? Or are we just siphoning off that work to ChatGPT or putting it into a filter or putting it into an algorithm? I think all of us are on the same page that it's like, “Oh, we've got to get in there and do the hard work of exploration.” And art is a throughway to that. Art is a highway into doing that. And I think we all feel pretty passionately about that.
Charles Yang And Kevin especially.
Nicolas Kendall Yeah.
Charles Yang I mean, we spoke about Kevin earlier and how this work came to be, but he just put pen to paper and started writing. He had the idea that was, like Joyce is saying, not for algorithms, not for anything to go viral, but just for the pure sake of art. He heard the sounds, he has the text of Emily Dickinson, and he just did it without any commission, without anything, and we get to bring that to life as artists. We get to interpret what he's writing and we absolutely feel the same way. This is not for anything, but us being in a room and just living through these texts, through Kevin's music, it's the most wonderful experience.
Nicolas Kendall Part of what's so satisfying about being in Time for Three is because, first of all, there's just a generosity of music making in spirit whenever we play, which—I keep using this analogy, but the backbone—Time for Three kind of stands on the shoulders of tradition, right? There's a lot of use of the tool of improvisation or living in the moment. So while Kevin created this master score and the notes for us, but ultimately what's so amazing, that's working so well with Joyce, is that the four of us are using this. But then we're not just following instructions, we're using the creative inspiration in the movement to bring all of that stuff to life.
I think the reason why this troupe works so well is because there's such a "in the moment" presence and "in the moment" human intention that there's never one thing that feels like correct. It's all feels so spontaneous and real. And I really felt that last night, throughout the whole thing, there was like this tension in the room, like the silences were louder than the music sometimes. But that's because, I think, after all—it's like the great scores, like the great literature—it becomes the conduit for human expression. And we get to live in that every day and that's the creative moment. So I mean, it it’s genius what Kevin put together here.
Edyn-Mae Stevenson Is there any chance that you might be bringing this album to Boston at some point?
Ranaan Meyer There is a chance. And in the way that I think you're speaking of visiting Amherst and Emily Dickinson, I remember reading about Anne Frank and finally going to Amsterdam and going to the house, the office building and the attic. And experiencing that and just... I don't know if this resonates with you, but like how that takes things to a whole other level of exploration. Maybe even thinking that you're identifying with it in some way.
Fortunately or unfortunately, history has this way of being cyclical. This is not the first time music has been written for Emily Dickinson, those words. There's a sense of beautiful irony here. I think when we play…we've played as a trio—Joyce knows this—Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" at least a thousand plus times on the stage. And you know, Leonard Cohen's version is beautiful and it's the purity of that, but it's been done by so many others and there's so many versions of it where it takes a new life each time and it tells the story in a slightly different way. I feel like we all have the opportunity to be a part of her canon, where we're curating the progression of this. All this to say that if we could do that near or even at where it all came to be, that would be extraordinary.
Edyn-Mae Stevenson That would be incredible. And I absolutely want to be at that concert.
Joyce DiDonato You must, Edyn-Mae, you must be.
Edyn-Mae Stevenson All right, well, thank you all so much for your time. It was wonderful chatting with you. Have a wonderful rest of your tour!
[SINGING]
