Tenor Lawrence Brownlee, who is known for his amazing range and expressiveness in operas, concert appearances and concerts, was named “Singer of the Year” at the International Opera Awards in 2017 TIME IN In the interview, Larry talks about life during the pandemic – he’s been busy with family, sports, his own interview show, and creating new works Philadelphia Opera to share the joy of the opera with more people.
When the world closed in March 2020, Larry was nearing the end of a US concert tour and happened to be at home with his family in Florida between engagements. Although the pandemic resulted in live performances being canceled, it didn’t stop his artistic journey.
Among other things, it started in May Sitting with LB, A podcast about Zoom with interviews with Denyse Graves, Soloman Howard, Angel Blue and other artists about life as an opera singer of African or African American origin.
In his role as artistic advisor for Opera Philadelphia, He worked with CEO David Devan on the company’s new digital channel, which features programs like Lawrence Brownlee and Friends, as well as a film version of Cycles of My Being, a cycle of songs about being a black man in America.
In November he and his tenor colleague Michael Spyres released their album with Rossini duets and trios. Friends and rivals. And in December, Larry was on the cover of Opera News.
In October, Larry met me in Europe for a recording session on Zoom from his hotel room in Munich to talk about life during the pandemic and beyond.
Here are some edited excerpts from our conversation:
When the world closed in March, you probably had a lot of family time that you normally don’t get when you’re on the go.
Yes, I have a son named Caleb who is 10 years old, my little autistic angel as I call him. And I have a daughter, Zoe, who will be nine years old. They were happy to have their father home for a while.
One of the first things I had to do with my daughter was teaching her how to ride a bike without training wheels! There was a young girl on our street, younger than my daughter, who rode a bicycle without training wheels. And so my daughter saw her and said, “Okay, Dad is training the bikes!” I worked with her maybe two days; it wasn’t even that long. And then she drove off.
And I just spent time with my two kids, doing barbecues and cooking and some activities at home. I was truly a practical dad, doing all the things at home that my wife normally does.
And you have hobbies!
Yes. Many hobbies! Tennis is one of my favorite hobbies. Cycling is another hobby of mine; also table tennis, which many people call table tennis. I love photography. I love bowling. And one of my favorites is salsa dancing.
So I have a lot of hobbies and during this time of the pandemic I got the opportunity to keep doing my hobbies, which was fun.
What do tennis and cycling do for you in terms of your career and your life?
Well, there are a lot of parallels in tennis and singing. Tennis is a mental game, but so is singing. And when you think about us doing exercises and vowels and warming up our voices in a certain way, the same thing happens with tennis.
You even see the greatest professionals at the highest level, in Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. And of course Serena Williams, Steffi Graf on the women’s side. They still go out and practice. So if you remember that you can try to achieve constancy in your tennis game or even in cycling, you can achieve the same constancy in your singing.
So they also help me sing because I can draw these parallels.
You also have your own series of interviews called The Sitdown with LB that you started in May.
I started sit down because a lot of young African American singers reached out to me to tell me if you could give us some advice, especially amid this pandemic. We don’t even know what will happen after the pandemic, but we would like some information that could help us so that when we get out we can go in the right direction.
So I’ve decided to hire many of my friends and colleagues who I have great respect for, and we discuss topics from life and careers to discrimination. I’ve mainly focused on African American singers; not just today’s stars, but also the stars who made careers in the sixties, seventies and eighties.
There are many things that people are talking about now that they haven’t talked about before.
I agree. We talk about many things: racism, but not just racism, we talk about ideology; about appearing in a theater when you are not exactly what the director or director was up to. A lot of us bring our own wigs and makeup because even if we have the products we don’t know how to use them because they didn’t have the tradition that people who look like we were in theirs Theater coming.
And we could also discuss how all these people got into music. It’s interesting because a lot of them have a foundation in gospel music or spiritual music. And we talked about doing spirituals. We’ve talked about listing and not listing things like Porgy and Bess, which are historically black.
We talk about some of the choices these artists made and how they all came to be successful in opera. There are many parallels to be drawn, but also many differences. That was really fun about these conversations.
Have you felt surprised by the things you are learning?
Yes. I found some surprises. For example, I spoke to Denyse Graves, a larger than life character. She is someone who is widely recognized, known and valued as an artist. And she told me that her public persona is so different from who she is in real life. She says she is incredibly shy.
When you look at her in pictures and on stage, she looks so glamorous and there is never a hair out of place. But she told me that she sometimes gets up in the morning on her farm, where she has horses and alpacas, and she does everything: work with the animals in the barns, weed, drive John Deeres. Nobody would ever think Denyse Graves would do that, but she does.
And she is an amazing cook. And so, she says, so many people turned to her about her cooking after our show, and she decided to start her own cooking show on Sunday afternoon. Cooking with denyse. She’s having a great time.
I think what we’re showing is that we are normal people, who we are is so much broader than what people might think. I’ve always wanted to be the type of guy who would say, “This is what I do” and then, “This is who I am”.
So I want to be the best [opera singer] I can be. But when you talk to me Larry, the normal guy, I love exercise. I really like american football. I’m so happy that the football season is on. I also like fantasy football. And I spend hours a week doing research and the waiver wire trying to pick a player and find the best match. And I could talk to someone about it for hours.
Which team are you rooted for?
I am a lifelong, non-apologetic fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers! This is my team forever. I was born in Youngstown, Ohio, about an hour from Pittsburgh. It is really equidistant from Cleveland and Pittsburgh. So half of us like Cleveland and then the smart ones like the Pittsburgh Steelers!
Tell us about your work as artistic advisor to Opera Philadelphia, which has launched a new digital channel.
I love the company. You have been very supportive of me since the beginning of my career. I connect with your general manager David Devan;; I also work with the new operations administrator. And they got me involved in some of the projects that I wanted to do.
Another part is getting involved in the community and trying to diversify and expand the attendance. really being an “artist in the trenches,” as I like to call it, being an attorney for the opera company, letting people know that Opera Philadelphia wants to be a place for everyone in town.
Part of the program for this Opera Philadelphia Channel and Festival is a concert called Lawrence Brownlee and Friends that gives me the opportunity to bring some of my friends together.
And we do opera, American song, and spirituals. We want to show that the people who sing opera can sing other styles too, and we’re not stuffy. We have some flexibility in the way we let our hair fall. Lawrence Brownlee and Friends is part of it, but also something called Cycles of My Being, which was part of the new work program at Opera Philadelphia and premiered there years ago.
I hook up with four other black men and a good friend named Myrah Huang, who is an Asian-American pianist. This piece is about being a black man in America.
Do you have favorite music that you relax to?
When I pick up my cell phone, iPad or iPod, you have it all. Jazz: I’m a big fan of Ella Fitzgerald and Mel Torme. I love the vocal jazz group Take 6. I can listen to them for hours. I love Marvin Gaye. I love gospel music: Ricky Dillard, James Hall, a group called Commissioned, Kim Burrell. Gosh, Milton Brunson, love that. But I can hear Sting, Dave Matthews Band and Steely Dan too. So I have very different tastes in music.
Are there any activities that you think will continue after the pandemic ends?
There is nothing for me to replace actually being in the place that was intended for the production of live music, in this place at the moment. I hope we all flock back to these places, Broadway, the Metropolitan Opera, the Philadelphia Opera, and the various theaters around the world. People will want to be in the actual places.
But I think this pandemic has shown people a lot of things. I think online engagement in the arts is encouraged. I think there is a lot to learn [from this year]in every aspect of life; that we are much more connected to the possibilities of what we can do remotely.
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