Washington National Cathedral

Sam Lloyd: Good morning, and welcome to the next in our series of conversations of exploring the connection between faith and all of the arenas of our public life. I can tell that you are excited about our guest today. The guest doesn’t normally get a first round of applause just stepping onto the stage, and Denyce Graves just did, so I can tell that there are some people very excited about being with her today.

We have with us today one of the great opera singers of our era. It was USA Today that called her likely the operatic superstar of the 21st century, who also happens also to be a Washington, D.C., native, which means we get to have her come to visit with us here. It is great to have you with us.

Denyce Graves: I am thrilled to be here.

Lloyd: At little bit more about Denyce Graves. She has been a friend of this Cathedral for quite some time. She recorded a Christmas album here, and she was also in the Cathedral for one of the most important moments in the life of our country in the last few years, the service that took place on September 14, 2001, after the attacks on September 11, 2001, and sang three beautiful great pieces, one of which we will hear just a little bit later in the program. So we have someone who has been very important to this Cathedral, important to the city, important to this country, and, in her opera singing, important to whole world. It is a real honor to have you with us today.

Graves: Ah, thank you for having me.

Lloyd: Let’s start with a little bit about how it is that a young girl growing up in Washington, D.C., happens to catch some vision of singing opera and ends up becoming an opera star. Can we use the word “diva” these days? (Laughter) Diva means divine, so people are declaring some pretty grand things about you, but how did it begin? How did you catch this vision, and how did it unfold?

Graves: I think that it began much earlier than I have acknowledged in the past. I come from a very religious family, and my family had a singing group, in fact. My brother, my mother, my sister, and myself would sing gospel music, and we would go around to different churches and perform. We were called the Inspirational Children of God, and that was the name that my mother sort of anointed us with, yes. So I would say that was probably the beginning of my nourishing ground in terms of the seed being planted for the direction that my life finds itself in present.

Lloyd: I heard something about you would ride around on buses singing.

Graves: Oh! All right, you have been talking to the little bird, I see. That is true. As I said earlier, I come from a very religious background. We were not only required to attend church every Sunday and many days during the week, but we were also required to be involved in the church in some capacity, and my job was to be one of the leaders of the bus ministry here in Washington, D.C. And what that was, is that we would go around in our neighborhood and other neighborhoods in the Anacostia area and speak with parents and try to get them to, or encourage their children to, come to Sunday School. And then on Sunday, the bus would come around to the different places, pick up the children, and my job was also to sing on the bus, to entertain the children as we took them to school. So that also was sort of preparing me for this path that I am presently on, so—

Lloyd: —it sound like a brilliant church growth tool, maybe we could try that around here, would you come ride on the bus for us?

Graves: Absolutely, and I still remember a lot of the songs.

Lloyd: Let’s talk about your beginnings in hymns and spirituals and gospel music that obviously formed you significantly spiritually, and maybe musically. Do you see that heritage being something that has been an important player in your own life, both musically in the way you developed, and spiritually the way you developed, coming out of that church gospel background?

Graves: There is no doubt about it. I mean, it is my foundation. It is the reason that I make music. I believe, if I may say this, that it is the reason that what I hear from people who have come to some of the performances is that I believe that I try certainly very hard to be in my heart, and to be very present, to be very sincere, and I believe that the root of that, all of that, came from my upbringing in the church, because it is all about opening up your heart and allowing God and the Spirit of God, or whatever it is you identify that beautiful divine force as being, into you and to work its way in and through the whole of your life.

So I would say that there have been many times in my own performance that I feel what I have identified as the Spirit or the Spirit of God over me and in me. You know, often I am asked about my participation in the services here on September 14th, and I always say, you know, that I was basically doing my job. But I too am greatly affected by the music that passes through me, and I believe that I am just an instrument, that I am being used in that way.

I believe that one of the challenges for me is to just get out of the way and allow the music to speak through me. I think that it is passed through the lens of my experience. It certainly passes through my heart, and so that colors it a bit; but I mostly am touched by it. You know, one of the great American singers of our time, Leontine Price said to me once that, if the audience has half as great a time as I do, then I consider that I have done a good job. So I too am very, very touched by what happens in the experience of singing, which I believe is a spiritual experience. It certainly is for me. I believe that is what people are speaking about when they are touched or when they are moved. I believe it is that presence of something other, from outside of this realm of life, that speaks.

Lloyd: What fascinates me is how that profoundly spiritual experience of singing gospel music, singing in church, begins to translate into more secular ways, more secular stories, a powerful, very womanly, figure of Carmen and Delila—

Graves: I knew exactly where this was going I could feel it. I could feel it.

Lloyd: Is it the Spirit at work in both of those (Graves laughs out loud vigorously) dazzling powerful women that you are portraying?

Graves: I knew that was where we were going. You know, I have to tell you something. When my mother came to hear me sing Carmen for the first time in Minnesota back in 1991, she would not speak to me for two weeks. She said, “I raised you to be a good Christian girl. How could you be up there doing those things? My God, I brought my friends from the church with me to the theater. I can’t go back to that church now.” I kept saying, mother, it was not me. It was not Denyce. It is a personality that uses and inhabits my body, but I believe that we all have so many, many talents that are given to us at birth, and I believe that singing happens to be one of mine and one of my vehicles, and so I believe when we take those gifts that we have been given, and we develop those, that is to the glory of God, I believe.

So whether I was singing Carmen or Delila and when I sang Delila, my mother said, “Oh Delila, that is from the Bible. I can come to that one, can’t I?” And I said, not exactly, mom, not really. I believe that all of that wears a face of God, and so that is how I see it. Maybe I have found a convenient way to justify it for myself, but I really feel that I am honoring what has been given to me, and in whichever way that illuminates to manifest itself, I feel is to the glory of God.

Lloyd: I suspect so many of us here who have had a chance to listen to opera, even a little, even just some of the great arias can have a sense of being caught up in something that brings tears to our eyes, and it carries us away, even if it is from a very complex place in a Mozart opera, where, you know, all kinds of funny things are going on even as this glorious aria is being sung, or even just one of these very complex women in one of these great operas that are morally ambiguous and troubling things going on. But yet, when that music is soaring, something spiritual happens.

Graves: Absolutely. And this is what we were talking about earlier, and this is what I have identified as being the Spirit of the Divine. I think that, whether people consciously acknowledge it as being that, I believe that is what it is. I think the music is a universal language.

It is a language, in fact. It is the language of the soul, and I think that is why it has the power to express that which is inexpressible, and I think that it is a gift that has been given to us from the heavens, I really do. Music and so many other beautiful art forms as well, but certainly the gift of music can touch people in ways that nothing else can. I think that it penetrates on a much deeper level, and I think that is what... I feel sometimes that I am connected more to God when I am at work and when I am singing. I feel a very personal and intense connection.

Lloyd: It does seem like the sound of an aria expresses a kind of intense and pure emotion, and some of that is an intense yearning or intense grief or intense delight. There is something about the purity and intensity seems to push through to another dimension, a spiritual dimension.

Graves: I absolutely agree with that. I think that it reaches us, to our core. We were speaking earlier and I was saying that I love having this microphone, because I feel some fancy rock star or pop star, having this microphone. One thing that I love so much about classical music is that it is a pure art form—

Lloyd: Meaning you do not have a microphone.

Graves: —Not at all, absolutely not at all, and so I think that also that has something to do with it too. I do not think that it is filtered through anything that is manufactured or anything that is enhancing. I think that it is a direct contact and connection from soul to soul, from heart to heart, and I believe that is one of the reasons that people—and I experience it too, when I go to the theater and when I go to the opera, and I enjoy doing it very much, and I feel that so often. And when I am listening to music, I think, oh my gosh, I feel that it cleans your heart. I feel like I have lost weight after that. (Laughter)

Lloyd: Lost spiritual weight anyway. (Laughter) We are going to play a couple of pieces, parts of things that you have sung, that take us back more into the, especially, religious music, but just to ask you to comment. The first one was from an album you recorded a few years ago of gospel music, called “Angels Watching Over Me” and so we are going to play just a little bit of Witness, a wonderful piece. I would ask you to talk about that piece and why you chose that, and what that means to you. So can we go with that?

MUSIC PLAYING

Lloyd: What strikes you as you listen to yourself singing?

Graves: Oh my gosh, first of all, I have never heard that before.

Lloyd: You have never heard that before? You know there is a singer, Denyce Graves; you should get some of her CDs. She is really great. (Laughter) You do not listen to your own music.

Graves: Not at all, oh gosh, not at all. We did that project some years ago (David is here), we did that project some years ago. You know, I do it and I try to do the best that I can do at that time and then I let it go. Once it has gone to print, I think, that is it, and I never listen to it. I can sing it so much better today.

Lloyd: Okay, let’s do it right now. (Graves laughs again vigorously.) I know you keep trying to sing along when you hear these things, and when we were coming out, you were singing along with the one you were hearing.

Graves: Because I have not heard those, but I just was reminded of something when you said, “Angels Watching Over Me,” and I remember when we did that project some years ago, David (who is here and has been my life partner for seventeen or eighteen years), and I did this project, and we thought, let’s call it “Angels Watching Over Me,” because that is what I feel like so much, throughout my life. And then someone said, when he took it to NPR, who was our partners on that project, oh I love that song, “Angels Watching Over Me,” and we said, “It is a song?”

They said yes, it is a song. You never heard that song? And we said no, and we have got to get that song, wait a minute don’t print it yet. I am going to go learn the song. And that evening we had an engagement here in Washington, and just before that, learned the song, sang it before the concert, recorded it, and then we went away with it. So there it is.

The song “Witness”… Yeah. I understand it, and I feel it, and I feel that my life is being used. I do not want it to sound arrogant, because I don’t mean it in that way, but I feel that my life is being used, I hope, as a blessing in way that shows another face of God and a way that brings beauty into people’s lives, I hope. So I feel that I am an instrument, and I feel that I am absolutely a witness in my own life, in my personal life, to the power and presence, the ever presence, of God.

Lloyd: That leads us into the second piece that we wanted to listen to and it comes from your singing of the Lord’s Prayer at the September 14th service. But something that I have learned about you in getting ready for this, that was very moving to me, was how much personal struggle you were going through at the very time you were being called to do this singing in 2001. You had major health problems, voice problems, and you were not even sure that you would be able to complete the singing that day. Say something about that, and then we are going to listen to it.

Graves: There was a lot going on for me personally at that time. I was at a moment where my personal life was really breaking into fragments, and many things happened to me that particular year. But also, that performance was the first time that I had sung after, I do not remember how long—three months. I had to have surgery, and I had not been singing at all. And I remember when the invitation came and I thought, I better not do this, because I just do not know what sort of form I am going to be in, and David said to me, “Denyce, I believe that you are ready, you know. I believe that this is a beautiful moment for you in your own life that will give you the confidence to move forward in your life. I believe that it is a gift being offered to you personally, where you sort to have to reintroduce yourself as an artist in front of everybody.”

This was very symbolic for me personally, after having gone through a few surgeries and voice surgery, and not knowing if I would really be able to sing again or not. That was the first performance.

Lloyd: Were you anxious that day, that you would be able to do it, or were you confident enough by then that it was back?

Graves: No, not at all. I was praying all of the time, as I always do in everything that I do all the time. I was speaking with one of your associates when we were preparing for this moment here, and I said, “There has not been a day in my life that has been without prayer, not one single day.” It is such a part of my makeup. It is such a part of my fabricated skin, my cellular tissue, and I am very grateful for the gift of living and for the privilege to be able to do what it is that I do, that brings me so much personal happiness and satisfaction. It is not everybody that, you know, I went to the conservatory with a lot of my great friends, and we are not all having the very same experience. And so I realized what a blessing and what a gift that is, although I would sing, would people listen or not. What was the question?

Lloyd: We are going to listen now to some of the Lord’s Prayer that you sang that day.

Graves: You asked if I was nervous. I was very nervous, I will tell you about it.

Lloyd: Let’s listen.

MUSIC PLAYING

Lloyd: Wow! That is stunning.

Graves: Isn’t that a beautiful piece? It is just powerful on its own. You know it just, I am very moved by just hearing the music itself.

Lloyd: And here you are with a heartbroken nation, and you are standing there singing to the whole country this wonderful testament to God’s love. What a privilege.

Graves: Exactly, that is right. Fortunately for me, two wonderful things happened that day. First of all, I did not understand the magnitude in which that performance would be viewed. I had no idea. I was told that the president may come, and so we had to arrive here very early at the Cathedral, and I remember that I was upstairs with David, and I was warming up, and they called us quite a few hours ahead of time. So I just kept warming up slowly and slowly and slowly, and I really had, in that time that I had, I was terribly nervous with all of the time that I had, I watched the nervousness just sort of fall away from me, and that was a great, great blessing, because I am a person who is extremely sensitive and I do get nervous, terribly. I really, really do. So that was great, that I had enough time to be here and to really settle myself, so that was great. I did have one moment of sort of self-indulgence when I was singing. I though for once second, I wonder if this is what it felt like when Marian Anderson sang on the steps.

Lloyd: Marian Anderson, yeah.

Graves: Sure, at the Lincoln Memorial, where Martin Luther King gave the “I have Dream” speech, and I also had the great privilege of singing for the last inauguration of Present Bush, there too, I had that thought in my mind. I though that this is a great day for me personally, and for my family and for all of us as Americans. It was a beautiful moment but I did have that thought in my mind when I was standing there and I was thinking of the moment when she sang Easter Sunday.

Lloyd: The problems with politicians and with ministers, all we have to work with are words, and at a moment like that, you are able to minister to people at a level that words can rarely go to. You were clearly doing that at that moment. It was an amazing moment, I think so many of us would say.

Graves: Me too, thank you.

Lloyd: In just a moment we are going to give people from the audience a chance to ask some questions, but I am going to ask you about a more recent album that you have done called “Church,” and then we will open up to questions. Tell us about the idea of this album called “Church”?

Graves: I was, some years ago, with a very good friend in New York, and we were having coffee, and we started talking about growing up in the church. My friend said, “You know, Denyce, you grew up in the church, and I think that Kathleen Battle did too, and so did Jessye Norman. And looking at some African-American opera singers, I said, whoa, probably not just opera singers. Many of the wonderful women in pop music, R and B, Jazz, and musical theater, and so we thought it would it be a great idea to do a project where you take these women of all walks of different musical genres, and look at those who grew up in the church and how that informed their music making, and so that is how the idea was born.

Lloyd: Who were some of the singers that you used?

Graves: Oh some of the singers we had are Shirley Caesar, of course who remained in the church, the great gospel singer. We had Jennifer Holiday who was known on Broadway and grew up in the church. Patti LaBelle, of course, who grew up very much in the church and then later went into, I guess you would call it rhythm and blues, and just a myriad of artists from different musical genres who all grew up in the church. The thread that we used to connect this CD together was a gospel choir, so basically each woman, each artist, did what it is that they do, their thing in their way, but with a gospel choir threaded throughout each musical number that connected it all together. I sang on the CD as well, an Ave Maria with a very different treatment in terms of the arrangement with the gospel choir.

Lloyd: Good. Now let’s go to the audience and see if there are questions out there about spirituals and opera and this great singing tradition.

Deryl Davis: We will start with a question up front here.

Lloyd: Good.

Question #1: You are in a tough profession, and surely this has not happened to you, but young singers frequently have setbacks. So what advice would you give them?

Graves: I believe, and I mean this most sincerely, that those are great blessings, because they help to shape us and make it clearer what it is we want. I said earlier that I would sing were people listening or not, and that is the truth. I think that those are great moments that cause your faith, that sort of challenges what you are made of and what is at your bedrock. It is a great opportunity for you to see yourself, and for that situation to define for you what it is that you really want.

I have had a tremendous amount of setbacks professionally, much more than not, more often than not great, great disappointments. And in each of those moments, but also because of my upbringing, whenever I am in the face of difficulty, and I am staring challenge right in the face, the first thing that I always say is, “Thank you, God. I don’t know what this is, I don’t know what this is supposed to show me, but please allow me to see what it is that I am supposed to see, or give me the strength to go through with this and to face this and to follow it through.” So I think that they are easily perceived as being setbacks, but I think that they are little gifts actually that show you more of who you are and defines more what it is that may be you want. I think it helps to bring more clarity into just what it is that you want into focus.

Some people, I have recognized, are not made of the same fiber. Some people fall and stay there. Some people use that opportunity to get themselves up and for that to encourage them and say, no, I am going to go through with this and I am absolutely not going to allow that to set me back, as it were. I have been in both instances, I would say, in my life. Sometimes I have fallen and stayed down and I climb right on top of the cross and say, “Oh my gosh, why me?” and all of this sort of thing.

There are other moments that I have been quite energized by what is happening and say that is exactly—I don’t think that there is any successful person, if you want to define that as success, that couldn’t tell you that they didn’t have somebody in their lives that told them, you will never do this, this will not happen. You know, everybody has had that voice come up to them and say, maybe you should just continue to sing in the church with your family and just do that on the side, or, you will never be an opera singer, or, this is not what you were made for, why is it that you are doing this, why don’t you do something that is better suited for your kind of people—everything, you name it and I have heard it all.

I would say that, for anyone who finds themselves in that position, first of all to give a prayer of thanks for that experience, and to ask that their eyes be open and their hearts be open to whatever it is that they can learn from that experience having happened. Just know that tomorrow is going to be a different day. The sun is going to come up, and it is going to be a different experience. We have the opportunity with each one of those little setbacks to use it to our advantage. I do not think that anybody walking around on the planet earth escapes heartache and disappointment, as it is part of the game of being here. It is not that those things happen; it is how we react around it that is important.

Question #2: Hello, I have got a couple of daughters who are in college, and one of them is getting close to graduating and wanting to get into the acting field, which is, as a father, rather troublesome to my brain. The question that comes to my mind as I listen to some of your experiences is how, as, obviously, a very committed Christian, do you keep the secular entertainment craziness that goes on from totally messing up your life and your mind, but yet stay firm with your commitment to the Lord.

Graves: Yeah, I hear what you say. First of all, congratulations that your daughter has gotten as far as she has, you know, in the acting world and in school, with her development. So congratulations to you and the family of support that has obviously helped her through all of that. It is not easy, that is for sure, for anyone out there, and certainly the performing arts and the acting field is one that is tremendously saturated, and there is a great amount of negative stimuli out there to sort of pull your attention and pull your eye off of the prize.

I work a lot with young singers, and people write to me all the time about the stories and their children and young singers who want to make it, as it were, and I always ask, “What is it that drives you? What do you have to do? What is it that you want to do? If you want to sing, you can sing. If you want to be famous, that is something else. If you want to make a lot of money, that is something else.” But I think in my case it was something that I had to do, and that I would do no matter what. Even if I were selling shoes, I would still be doing it for my own pleasure.

I think that it is important for everybody to begin some sort of evaluation and to look at what it is that they really want. What is it about acting that excites her? Can that be found perhaps somewhere else? Is it being heard? Is it an outlet that allows her to express? I do not know what the answers are, but is this the only way that whatever it is that drives her, whatever the hunger is that she has, that says to her, this is what I want to do. Does she find that sort of satisfaction or gratification anywhere else?

If it is something she has to do, and if her soul is called to do that, then she will do that. Whether she is a box office name or not is something else, but I think that it has to be personal. In other words, I think that has to be something that you have to do, because it is something that was planted in your soul from the time that you were born, and you cannot not do this thing. But I am just curious as to what it is that gives her that feeling of fulfillment, perhaps, and that the vehicle is just through acting, or what does the experience of acting make her feel? Does she feel that she is able to be more herself or express something that she is unable to express any other way, or is it something that she has to do?

I do not know what those answers are, but I think that if it is something that she just has to do, then I am sorry four you, my dearest, then she will have to do that. I do understand that, what you are saying, the practical side of that. I believe that if she is living her life passionately and honestly, the other things will fall into place. But I think that it is really important to define for yourself why it is that you have to have that thing.

Question #3: Very pleased to hear how your personal faith is so essential to the way you use your gifts in your art form, and considering where we are, I am sure I speak for many of us to see how important that is. That is very easy perhaps to see in particularly religious music. What I would like to have you comment on, if you would, is how your personal faith manifests itself more in the secular music area, particularly opera.

Graves: Particularly opera. I see when I am learning music, as I am now, and I have to take it apart and sit down with it at the piano for weeks, I see what incredible talent was in place to first of all create the composition, whatever it is that I am looking at. And I am on my knees, I am in awe at the amount of work, the amount of work and the inspiration that had to be in place for the composers to be able to put this great manuscript or masterpiece together, number one. So I am in great appreciation of that to me for me that is God at work, just through them, and then, when I put my part to it, and then we come together, and then the director puts his part to it, and the conductor, dancers, the lighting designers and all of these people, I see it as a beautiful collaborative effort.

Most of the people that I have worked with are very, very passionate people in this field, and they feel that they have been driven to do this from the very beginning of their lives, and to me, I acknowledge that these people saw that they had talents and gifts for something, and I believe that taking responsibility for that is honoring God. That is what I think. That is what I believe. That is what I see.

I certainly come from an experience where I was taught that there were certain types of music that was wrong, in other words. And still to this day, when my mother comes to my house, she is, like, turn to the gospel station, you know. I grew up with that in my belief system, but since that time, my early years, I would say that since that time, my early years, I would say I have taken the core of that and just opened myself up more with my own work. And I see that everybody may not minister in the same way, and we do not have to take the path.

It is like that joke of the person taking the elephant’s foot and saying that this is the elephant, and somebody else taking the trunk and saying, no, this is the elephant, and somebody else taking the tail. It is all the elephant. and I think that it is all God. I think that it is all good.

Lloyd: Could I ask you a quick follow-up question about opera as an art form itself? I would not want to take a poll on how many people are regular opera goers here. It is an intimidating art form to lots of people. Would you say something about why you think that opera is such a powerful thing and why people who maybe have not explored it much ought to give it a try?

Graves: I know that it has this stereotype around it as being an elitist art form and something you are not going to understand, but fortunately, now, all across the world, they have the surtitles, which I think have made a huge difference. They have the English translation above the stage or on the side stage or wherever, and we have seen the effects of that on the other side of the stage, because never before has there been so much laughter in the opera house. People really understand word for word what is going on, so that has helped a lot and aided a lot in terms of people feeling like you have to have some sort of musicology degree in order to go to the opera.

So the comprehension is deeper, and it is much more of a fuller experience, I would say, even for the husbands that are dragged there by their wives, you know, so that is that. I also think the art form itself is probably one of the last pure art forms as we talked about earlier. There is no enhancement whatsoever, and it is all about the perfection, where singing is concerned, it’s the quest the constant search for the perfection, in the beautiful singing voice, into making every note as round and as beautiful, voluptuous and as loving as you can make it, and that is what we are all in pursuit of, and so I think that is exciting.

I also think that it is about life. It is not foreign to anybody. Human beings wrote these stories and composed this music, and it is all about the human experience and what it is to be here. I think that, all around the world, no matter who you are and no matter what it is you do, we all know what it is to love. We all know what it is to have lost something. We all understand what grief is. We all understand what exuberance is. We understand what heartache and heartbreak is. We understand what betrayal is. So it is about the human experience, and I think that everybody who enjoys reading a book, or enjoys going to the movies, or enjoys hearing stories could find themselves at the theater and enjoying opera just as much. I think that it is augmented life in some cases. They pull up a section out which they choose to highlight and concentrate on, but we are still talking about human emotions.

Lloyd: Create these amazing sounds to enrich the story.

Graves: Exactly,

Question #5: Hi, I grew up in a family where I was raised to sort of be in the limelight with modeling and photography and things like that and I have raised my daughter Kira differently, where she has a gift in music, and singing especially, and dancing. She has had the opportunity to be on a TV commercial potentially, and she chose not to, because she said I do not want people to look at the outside, I want them to look at the inside, and she has been blessed to have an 80-year-old woman who is a Christian, a very strong Christian, who has played the piano for 75 years, training her in voice, one on one, and in music. And I am wondering, is there an age that is too young to do that? Because all she wants to do is sing and dance for the Lord. It is sometimes hard for her concentrate in school if there is music in the background that is godly music. She just wants to be part of that instead of what they are doing in the classroom, because she is so in tune.

Lloyd: Is there an age too young. That is a good question.

Graves: How old is your daughter?

Question #5: She is almost nine years old.

Graves: I think that at this point, what is important is that she be allowed to (this is just my opinion) express herself and celebrate in the joy and the love that she has for making music, dancing, and for all of those things. I am not sure that I would begin actual voice lessons at that age, because the voice still has so much growing and maturing. The voice does not really mature or begin to start to settle for a young woman until about 18 or 19.

I think that, while she can be surrounded in music and be encouraged in her love for music, that could be the focus, rather than to focus so much on the perfection or the right and wrong way of singing. I think that what is important is to sing with an open heart and with a free spirit, and those things will come later, but I do not think that we want to do anything that inhibits her natural tendency to just express herself in this way, not to start to look back at it and examine it and pick it apart and become critical of her work so that takes away from the joy. I think what is important at this stage of the game is to just be joyful and enjoy all of those things that she does in the name of God, or just for the love of doing it for herself.

Lloyd: One more quick question and then we have to close.

Question #6: I was just curious because you have been an inspiration to so many of us, and looking at our education system, what role did the Duke Ellington School of Performing Arts play in the development of your art?

Graves: Oh my gosh, it was absolutely everything—

Lloyd: You went to Duke Ellington School?

Graves: I did, right here in Washington. I grew up here and so I did all of my education here. I will tell you a wonderful story. I went to W. B. Patterson School in Southwest Washington, and I was a very, very shy, uncomfortable, and awkward kid. I was very, very attached to my mother, and I remember very clearly the first day of kindergarten, and I was petrified, and I did not want to go, and cried and cried and cried until they took me to music class.

And then there was a wonderful woman who was singing at the piano and playing it and teaching us songs and I just fell in love. I loved going to this class and she saw that I was very interested and very enthusiastic about making music, and sometimes she would give me little solos in the choir. Anyway, when I graduated elementary school to go to junior high school, she became the music teacher at that same junior high school, so we were together again. She got me involved here in Washington, D.C., with All City Chorus, and that is when students from all over the city get together and form one big giant chorus. She would come and pick me up on Saturdays, take me to the class and back.

When I graduated junior high school, I ran into her one day in the hall, and she said, you know, there is a performing arts high school called the Duke Ellington School, and you have a pretty voice and I think that you should audition for them and maybe study voice. So together we got the application. We filled it out and I applied. I was accepted and she became the principal of the school, of the Duke Ellington School.

When I graduated to go to Oberlin College, I went to her office and said, I don’t want to see you any more, that’s it. (Laughter) But absolutely it was there that I started taking voice lessons. It was there that a girlfriend had found a recording of Leontine Price and said, “Denyce, I just heard the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard in my life, you’ve gotta come listen to this.” I say, I can’t, I am late for class, and she said, no, you’ve gotta come listen to this. And we cut our classes that day—sorry for the mom with the little girl, don’t do that.

We stayed in the listening library all day. We did not go to the bathroom. We did not eat. We played this recording of Leontine Price over and over and over and over and over until they locked down the school and we said, that’s it. That’s what we want to do with our lives. She is still singing today. So being there at the school was everything for me. Being there is what introduced me to classical music. I have never heard anything like that in my life. I had never heard anything so exquisitely beautiful, and I fell in love instantaneously.

Lloyd: I am afraid that we have to stop this wonderful conversation. I hope you will join us next week when we have with us James Carroll, the very distinguished writer who has written a book called Constantine’s Sword and has just produced a film called Constantine’s Sword, about the way that religion is being used to create intolerance in society, looking especially at the long Christian record of maltreatment of the Jews through history. He will be with us for the Forum next week. His very important and very thoughtful new documentary film will be shown a week from this Monday night after we have had conversation with him on Sunday.

We hope you will linger for the service at 11:15 today. Everyone is invited. For now there is coffee available in the entrance end of the Cathedral and over to the left, and Denyce Graves will join us for a few minutes for coffee.

Please join me in thanking Ms. Graves for her time.