Renée Fleming

But now seemed like the moment to seize on it, uh, for all the reasons of, uh, leadership, our relationship with China, and to celebrate a great American composer, John Adams.

And so I'm thrilled that we are presenting it, conducted by our music director, Bob Spano, and starring two, two of America's greatest singers, Renée Fleming and Tom Hampson, uh, in their American stage debut in these roles.

They did perform them at the Paris Opera, but I-- for me, it was really important.

I was like, "You guys, we have to do this in Washington, D.C., in this building.

Yeah

... for, uh, Nixon in China especially.

I think it's amazing to be able to have the US premiere, uh, the US debuts of, of, of Thomas Hampson and Renée Fleming in these roles that they've given to Europe, and I know they're doing it La Scala as well.

So how wonderful to be able to bring it to the, to Washington National Opera as well.

Um, I'm just bringing, you know, what I think is a layperson's experience, and having gone through my own health struggles and experiences with my wife more recently, you know, I share that, and I think people like that transparency and that openness, so that's another one.

And then I've just launched a program with the opera singer Renée Fleming and one of the last surviving members of the original Grateful Dead, Mickey Hart, uh, and we've got a program called Music and Medicine that we run through the foundation of the National Institutes of Health.

That's a very interesting new program, uh, that is going to give grants to scientists who are looking at the relationship of music to health improvement, particularly mental health improvement.

Sweet.

It's amazing

... and then in that final cue, it's the penultimate cue, um, uh, where there's a, a vocal track, uh, that's Renée Fleming, uh, the opera singer.

Oh, wow.

She is a soprano singing in an alto, uh, register, and it is haunting and, and uh, it, it, it works.

She obviously had the stamina and the genetic makeup of a bull because her life would have failed anyone else, man or woman, you know, and she kept going.

But she also, I find it fascinating that a woman who wasn't born with a genetically phenomenal voice because, you know, Renee Fleming came out of the shoot with a great voice and then she developed it.

Anita O'Day had a more limited gift.

I happen to love her singing.

artists and

hobnob with Renee Fleming or Wynton Marsalis and do that thing, right? They want to do that thing.

And at the same time, at the same breath, I'm like, well, we need to make it accessible.

You can't have your cake and eat it too.

I think we don't spend a lot of time thinking about song in most of our arts institutions today, the art song, and there are some...

There happen to be, at this point in time, a whole host of great American singers, Renée Fleming, Susan Graham, Dawn Upshaw, Tom Hampson, who are absolute leading proponents of song, and we'd love to have more of that at the Kennedy Center.

So there's a whole lot to be done.

Thank you for coming.

And so I did spend three wonderful years in Toronto.

Then when I finished that, I thought that my career would be, you know, starting, I'd be the next Renee Fleming.

And, you know, I would be a millionaire at age 25.

Well, haha, joke's on me.

And I think that's one of the strongest things that I sort of learned about string band music as I started to get into this world and think about fiddle tunes and that kind of thing as well, is that there's a point where somebody collected a tune or somebody, there was some sheet music or somebody like early forms of this that then sort of pinned the butterfly onto the board and it became a still thing.

But before that, I was talking recently to Bela Fleck and Rene Fleming about their record and Rene was talking about, you know, talking to people about certain songs going well yeah it goes like that here but if you grew up on this side of the mountain it doesn't go like that it goes like this yeah wow that's so hip so hip isn't that cool and it's that idea of what how does the tune actually go like what does whiskey before breakfast actually sound like who really knows you know

who knows and it's it's the I just think if that question is alive and well, it's a good thing.

Do you know what I mean? As long as you know that there could be...

And at the same time, a- if someone comes into our space, you know, we have to welcome them, and we have to also, um, understand that just, you know, just a single presentation or a conversation isn't going to do it.

You have to start working on projects together, which is why, um, Renée Fleming's Neuro Investigator Awards, uh, where she has funded, uh, groups of scientist-artist collaborations, has really been groundbreaking because it allows people the time, you know, a year to actually work on a project together, and that's where you're gonna get that, uh, collaboration and that, um, inner conversation happen.

Yeah, we learned in Massachusetts when we were doing the beta testing, we were collecting the data that mattered to us, and then the wise Chris Appleton said, "No, we have to collect data that healthcare payers and healthcare systems need." And that was a big, big, big shift for us.

Mm-hmm.