A few weeks ago, KDFC radio launched a new live talk-and-performance series hosted by the indefatigable pianist and Classical CA Resident Artist Lara Downes. Classical Americana Live brings Downes together with three artists “whose work mines the American musical landscape to disclose its buried treasures.” It’s a series about intersections and cross-pollination. The concerts-with-conversation get space at KDFC’s new residence at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s Bowes Middle and are available later on Classical California’s YouTube channel. In February, violinist Daniel Hope joined in for a conversation about the emigre composers who helped found the music departments of the Hollywood film studios.
On March sixteen, youthful violinist Amaryn Olmeda, a learner at SFCM, chats with Downes about the music of composers Florence Price, Margaret Bonds, Jessie Montgomery, and others as portion of a Women’s History Mo theme. And in May, NY Times columnist and cultural commentator John McWhorter flies out to speak about the musical heritage of Scott Joplin, reprising a conversation he and Downes recorded for WQXR a year ago, after the pianist’s recording Reflections: Scott Joplin Reconsidered came out. Downes recalls that the idea for Classical Americana Live was portion of the original discussions about her resident artist position at Classical CA (which combines KDFC in San Francisco and KUSC in Los Angeles.) “Mark Steinmetz the Sta asked for a phone call, and we hit it off. He said, ‘I ponder if you’d ever think of doing something for the radio.’ And before my brain knew that the words were coming out of my mouth, what I said was, ‘Well, sure, beca I wish to be Leonard Bernstein when I grow up.’ My Bernstein thing was about the outreach and the education, and so to harness this media platform as portion of that was so fascinating to me.
So my position was structured the beginning as a combination of doing stuff online, on air, and doing live events — the live events just took a while to start beca of COVID.” Downes has her fingers in many pies, but she’s done a lot of education and what's called, using Corp speak, “outreach.” She says, “I’ve gotten really comfor with conversation. Daniel [Hope] and I've the same approach to storytelling, and so [February’s show] was emotional and funny. This concert in March is going to be a tiny different; it’s a much younger artist. So this conversation is going to be about the music and the stories of composers. And with John, it’ll be love American history through the lens of music. And what I want, as this goes on, is to have all kinds of collaborators, not necessarily only the classical world, and discover the places of connection. It’s a flow. We generally map out what we’re going to play, and sometimes we play that, and sometimes we don’t.”
Over the past year, Downes has been heavily invested in her new recording label, Rising Sunday Music. “We keep out so much music latest year. I really made a large push, and it nearly killed me. We were putting out records every single month, which meant that there was hardly a second to breathe. I mean, I've an helper and then my PR team, but it’s so much. And the Joplin album also came out on that label, and we've several other major projects in the works.” It’s a relief to her that her latest album, Like at Last, coming out in April, is on Pentatone (which is presently owned by SFCM).
Love most of her albums and love the Classical Americana Live series, Like at Latest is about histories intersecting in ways that American culture. “It’s really fascinating to get music America Again [one of Downes’s previous albums], which was years ago now, and we’re still dealing with unexpected connections — here’s the histories connect. And that’s my message, whatever I’m doing,” she explains. In describing the new album, Downes shares an example of how her process works and how serendipity can sometimes be an artist’s best friend.
