BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
Back in 2019, Jeffrey Palmer wrote about the Music in the Alps Festival. This was before the pandemic brought international concert tours to a grinding halt.
Now, the Brooklyn-based countertenor is about to return to that Austrian festival once again — coming full circle in his performing arts career after a challenging few years for the industry.
In this interview, we sit down with this musician and CutCommon writer to learn about his musical life and how it changed during the pandemic. Jeffrey also sheds light on what it means to brave global travel for the sake of live performance, despite risking some setbacks along the way.
Jeffrey, you’re about to return to Europe to perform for the first time in more than two years. Of course, the past two years have been nightmarish when it comes to international touring. What does it mean to you that you can once again access the world’s stages?
It’s quite difficult to express how incredibly exciting and meaningful it is that I am returning to Europe to perform for the first time since February of 2020. I wouldn’t say that I took international touring for granted before the onset of the pandemic, but it’s certainly something I never dreamt would be so dramatically interrupted.
Although I have done quite a bit of performing in New York and Connecticut over the past few months, there was a good year and a half where all the singing I did was in my home, or whilst taking long walks in the woods of Virginia, where I spent a good portion of 2020. During that time, I made peace with the fact that perhaps that was all the singing I’d be doing moving forward. In a way, there was something nice about stripping away the business side of music and getting back to the heart of why I sing – which is simply because I was made to do it!
Now that I am returning to the stage, I hope that I am able to carry some of that purity with me, and fully appreciate what a gift it is to be able to share music with an audience.
You last wrote about your Music in the Alps Festival experience back in 2019. While you haven’t been able to travel to Europe to perform in the past two years, how have you found the experience of living as a musician, in a pandemic, in America since that time?
It’s been very strange! It was amazing, in the most tragic of ways, to see how, in the blink of an eye, all the plans for concerts, operas, festivals, and so forth that I and all my colleagues had were completely swallowed into oblivion.
I was very fortunate to have a source of income that wasn’t tied to performing, but the lives of many of my musician friends in New York City were thrown into a complete state of chaos. But, as artists are wont to do, we still found ways to create despite what the world was throwing at us.
By the end of 2020, I had started performing in a few live-streamed concerts. While it was quite eerie performing in a hall or a church with no audience present, it was heartwarming to know that there were people from all around the world who were sharing that moment with me, albeit virtually.
It was very inspiring to see the new and unique ways that artists of all kinds were finding to share creative experiences with others, and I feel quite privileged that I was able to take part in some of them.
Your upcoming event is called The Circles That You Find. I feel like it’s fitting that you’ve come full circle, returning to the festival once again. But what was your intention behind the name?
At some point during the summer of 2020, pianist Irena Portenko, who is the founder and festival director of Music in the Alps, and I collaborated virtually on the song The Windmills Of Your Mind by Michel Legrand. She recorded the piano part from her home in New York, and I recorded the vocal line in Virginia. I was already a big fan of the song, but I was amazed at what a moving experience it was performing it with her, even though we were separated by hundreds of miles.
The haunting nature of the music and the enigmatically genius lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman seemed so fitting for the time. When I came back to New York later that year, we worked on it together in her living room and knew for sure that we had something special.
When we were thinking about our return to the festival this summer, we knew we had to include this song in our concert, and the line “the circles that you find” emerged from it as the perfect title. Returning to Austria this summer will most definitely be a full circle moment for the both of us, as it will be for many of the other musicians present.
Your program is varied — Handel to Ravel, Legrand to Gershwin, to name a few. On your website, you describe this as a collection of pieces that “reflects on the difficult times our world has faced in recent years”. How do you feel the works you’ve chosen achieve this — especially pieces that come from the past, which you’ve used to share stories of the present?
The repertoire we’ll be covering is very diverse, ranging from Baroque arias to jazz standards to a song by the early 1980s British band Monsoon. However, the program very much tells a story.
We’ve assembled the pieces in a way that first greets the audience with an atmosphere of ease and conviviality, which is quickly followed by a little chaos. That chaos leads to a place of despair and questioning, and from that questioning we are given a few answers and, ultimately, hope.
We were quite intentional about putting the pieces in an order, both in terms of musical mood and lyrics, that convey this story. And, while it may sound a bit abstract in theory, I think the audience will be quite aware of what we are doing! From the pandemic to the war in Ukraine to the dramatic shifts that people have gone through on a personal level, including the death of my own mother last year, Irena and I very much wanted to acknowledge the struggles that we have faced as individuals, communities, and as a planet over the past two years.
It’s important to remember that we are not alone, and that suffering is universal – as is the possibility of liberation from suffering. Music is timeless, so it was quite easy to find pieces that contributed to the story we are trying to tell from many different eras.
We can’t ignore that while you are about to embark on a European concert from your home in the United States, which is a positive experience, there still exists the possibility that you may suffer a setback: sickness, travel delays, cancellations, or postponements. What approach do you bring to such a big international commitment, knowing you may still need some flexibility in the way it’s arranged?
I am constantly surrounded by stories of unexpected illness, flight delays, and various political situations that are causing trips of both musical and non-musical natures to be postponed or cancelled. While these setbacks are perhaps more likely to occur today than they were a few years ago, I feel it’s important to remember that nothing we plan in life ever has been or ever will be for certain. Remaining flexible and addressing challenges responsibly is key. Whether or not this trip goes exactly according to plan is not the most important thing, but rather that we remain attentive to the ways in which we can most safely and effectively bring this musical experience to our audience.
What advice would you give to other artists who are gradually returning to global travel for their work?
If there is one lesson we’ve learnt from world events over the past two years, it’s that we never know what tomorrow will bring. So, carpe diem! Of course, be responsible, stay safe, and take all necessary precautions, but also don’t be afraid to make plans to share your music with others – whether that be on the other side of the globe or in your own back garden.
Jeffrey Palmer will perform alongside Irena Portenko and Taras Volos in Austria’s Music in the Alps Festival, 17 August.
Visit his website to keep up to date on his American and international concert dates, and find the music reviews and articles he writes as our United States Correspondent in CutCommon.
Images supplied.
