[music]

Kousha Navidar: This is All Of It. I'm Kousha Navidar, in for Alison Stewart. Tomorrow, American soprano Rachel Willis-Sørensen is making her New York recital debut at Carnegie Hall. Willis-Sørensen was raised in Washington State before becoming a singer heard in opera houses around the world, from cities around America, Europe, even Hong Kong. She's also one of the only living artists signed to the famous Sony Classical label. Last year, that label released an album featuring her renditions of Richard Strauss's compositions. Let's listen to an example.

[opera music - Rachel Willis-Sørensen]

Willis-Sørensen will be returning to New York this fall to perform in the opera II Trovatore. This is an educated guess on how it's pronounced, but I think I got it pretty right. Rachel, you can correct me if I got it wrong.

Rachel Willis-Sørensen: You did great.

Kousha Navidar: Thank you very much.

Rachel Willis-Sørensen: [unintelligible 00:01:34] so much for that.

Kousha Navidar: [crosstalk] It's at The Met beginning October 26th. Soprano Rachel Willis-Sørensen joins me now to preview her New York recital debut, which is tomorrow at Carnegie Hall at 7:30. Rachel, welcome to WNYC.

Rachel Willis-Sørensen: Thanks so much for having me. Nice to meet you, Kousha.

Kousha Navidar: Nice to meet you, too. Tomorrow, your Carnegie Hall debut. That's a big deal. Congratulations, first of all.

Rachel Willis-Sørensen: No pressure at all [laughs].

Kousha Navidar: What does the occasion mean to you?

Rachel Willis-Sørensen: It's such an honor. What an auspicious place, and to be able to contribute in my small way, some music that I deeply believe in, I'm very excited about, to those halls. That really means a lot to me. It's an honor.

Kousha Navidar: Thinking about the performance tomorrow, I think warmup is a big part of it. Something our two jobs have in common is that before a show, we both warm up our voices. Now, obviously you are a world class professional opera singer. I just talk good. Warming up is still important. As you get ready for the performance tomorrow, how do you prepare your voice? How do you prepare your mind?

Rachel Willis-Sørensen: I really like semi-occluded vocal tract exercises, which is to say like lip trills. That's probably my most favorite. I do those. I set a timer and do them for about 15 minutes. I stretch down. I stretch the voice up. I stretch my body a lot. I meditate. I think my favorite practice is to focus on positive adjectives, which I'd like to embody during the performance, rather than just letting my mind and my nerves run amok convince me that I don't deserve to be there or other nonsense.

Kousha Navidar: What are some of those positive adjectives?

Rachel Willis-Sørensen: Usually, I say things like supported, beautiful, engaged, honest, connected, things like that.

Kousha Navidar: Your debut album was released in 2022. I'm curious, how is singing in a studio different from singing in a large theater in front of a live audience? Do you have to make adjustments to the way that you perform?

Rachel Willis-Sørensen: I think because it exists. When you sing live it doesn't exist anymore as soon as it's done. That's the notion. Obviously, a lot of things are broadcast now, so it's possible to see live performances, but they have a little bit of recklessness, which makes them special in a way that when you're recording in a studio you're toxic perfection-mongering might rob you of. Sometimes I favor a take that is wild, even if imperfect.

It's so hard to say because someone is going to go over that with a fine-tooth comb and be so intensely perfectionistic as to just require a much higher degree of perfectionism. I would say, the difference, it's like a mind game. Sometimes you get the best vocal take of your life, but that's the one when someone dropped a pencil, so they have to redo a whole section. It's such a different game, I would say. I love that there are these recordings that now exist. It's a picture of what I was doing at that point in my career. I'm really happy to be a Sony Classical artist.

Kousha Navidar: Let's dive into that a little bit. You released your last album in 2023 dedicated to the German composer Richard Strauss. Who was he and why are his compositions important?

Rachel Willis-Sørensen: He was celebrated a lot during his lifetime. I think he wrote so beautifully, particularly for the soprano voice. His wife Paulina was a soprano. I don't know, his works are so singable. I feel very comfortable in the German language. That's another thing. Singing these works in German, these beautiful poems. What really gets me about those pieces on that album particularly, are they resolve in a way you don't expect.

When you're listening to them harmonically, there's this-- because it's so tonal, it's so lush and beautiful, it would almost be expected the way it should have an outcome that he goes sideways. What I learn from this is it's like a beautiful symbol for life, because sometimes you have an expectation of an outcome, but when life changes course and you have a new outcome, maybe something different than you planned, it's even more beautiful than you could have imagined.

I think that's what those songs say to me. The four last songs and the Capriccio [unintelligible 00:05:40]. It's really, really stunning, exciting music. This concert at Carnegie Hall will include five Strauss songs, and I love each of them so much. It was really hard to decide the order. In fact, I think we changed it from the play bill. Sorry, audience.

[laughter]

Kousha Navidar: A little Easter egg in there. Heads up.

Rachel Willis-Sørensen: Yes. I had to include some Strauss because he's one of my favorite composers to sing.

Kousha Navidar: Let's listen to another performance from your album. Here is a clip right now.

[opera music - Rachel Willis-Sørensen]

Kousha Navidar: If you're just tuning in, who is that amazing voice you're hearing? It's Rachel Willis-Sørensen, the soprano. She's making her New York recital debut tomorrow at Carnegie Hall, beginning at 7:30 PM. Rachel, you had mentioned before we listened to that clip, learning songs in German, and important fact, operas are sung in multiple languages like Italian and German. My understanding is that the learning of language is a huge part of what it is to be an opera singer. Is that a requirement? Dive into that a little bit.

Rachel Willis-Sørensen: I love that part of it. I've always been really interested in the ways that humans communicate with one another. The idea that there are these other rule structures that exist to accommodate communication. I remember being about five years old and having the concept introduced to me and just being so excited and thinking, so I can just make sounds and someone somewhere thinks that means something, which is obviously not how language works.

The more I've studied them-- I speak five. I love linguistics. Very fascinating. I think that some themes become universal. Somehow the idea of building a bridge between myself and another group of people through language is so meaningful. I think also I'm a little bit too lazy to just memorize a bunch of sounds. That doesn't sound fun. I'd rather work on language acquisition. That said, I'm singing in two languages on this program that I do not speak, Swedish and Russian.

That is a hard work, a labor of love. The pieces are so great, I just had to include them, even though I don't actually speak those languages with fluency. I just had to study the translations and study pronunciation and let's see what happens. Sorry, in advance, to be defensive. I think I believe so much in the music, and I believe so much in the messages of the poetry, which will be translated into English for the audience, that it's definitely worth hearing.

Kousha Navidar: You had also mentioned believing in the bridge, the communication that opera can provide. I understand that on top of being a singer, you also like to teach on Instagram, which I think is super cool. You've got Wednesday Workshops where you offer advice about singing. Why is it important to you to share what you've learned throughout your career, especially on Instagram?

Rachel Willis-Sørensen: Early on in my career, someone asked me for, I think, it was a news program in Germany in Dresden. They asked me, "How do you warm up?" I just remember saying, "I don't really warm up." It was so embarrassing. I thought, it usually works, but I was still not going from the idea that you could contrive the outcome by being really well prepared. It seems so stupid.

There was this blaring, conspicuous missing element in my training. I thought, okay, how can I contribute that to young singers? We're coming up now, and I thought, okay. I started working with a press agent that was very helpful. She said, "Let's make a video about [unintelligible 00:09:28]." I remember thinking, this is so embarrassing. No one cares about this, but there was such a vacuum for it. People ask for more and more.

Now, I realize I don't even have to make the disclaimer that I'm just sharing what works for me. I find people all over the world tell me that they love it, they love following along. Even non-singers very frequently share with me how much they enjoy watching me with my little warmups every Wednesday. I find more and more I'm adding the psychological element, trying to encourage people to be true to themselves, to be open with their expression, to accept themselves and how that will lead to a more earnest presentation, and it'll make their art more worth hearing to the public. Also, it'll be more satisfying and rewarding for them. Those things I try to encourage people with on Instagram.

Kousha Navidar: That psychological element of it, I think, is super key when talking about the future of Opera, too. I'm wondering how you see Opera in today's culture, and what you hope a new generation can discover.

Rachel Willis-Sørensen: I think we've gone in a weird direction in the field. I don't know, sometimes there are competing egos all the time. For me, the pure expression of the human instrument without a microphone, it has such a potential to reach people. I'm finding, for example, I'm singing Violetta Valéry in La Traviata in Los Angeles Opera right now. We opened on Saturday. I have a few days off between performances, so I've come here to do this, but I'm going back. I have to say the production is one of my favorites I've ever done. The director Shawna Lucey just said, "I'd love to tell the story in as clear and heartfelt way as possible."

She often references the audience, and we talk about how great it is to help them feel. That's what we want to do. I think, because of that, it's really worth seeing and hearing from people how moved they are by the presentation, how much they relate to this character, although none of us alive today are a late 19th century Parisian courtesan, but still, there are these themes that really-- the love, the reckless love of this character. I think Opera can do something I don't find any other art form able to do in the same way. It definitely has a place in the modern narrative, even though it feels old-fashioned, but we have to do it well.

We have to do it remembering the people watching it, remembering the people interpreting it. It can't be about those other external things. I don't know what wealth to be there to practice, to be seen. There's these other versions of an Opera audience that I don't think-- it's fine, but it's not the point. The point is to really reach into the people's hearts, and help them to understand themselves better, and help them to feel good in their lives. That's something I think Opera can really do, and in my opinion, it will be around forever as a consequence.

Kousha Navidar: What a wonderful thought to close out on. We've been with Rachel Willis-Sørensen, the soprano. She's making her New York recital debut tomorrow at Carnegie Hall, beginning at 7:30 PM. Let's go out on another performance. Before that, Rachel, I just want to say thank you so much. Good luck tomorrow, and thanks for joining us.

Rachel Willis-Sørensen: Thank you, Kousha.

[opera music - Rachel Willis-Sørensen]

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