Grammy Award-winning Jessye Norman flies to Rochester
this week to sing a benefit concert for Action for a Better Community, a
non-profit agency which helps local people in poverty. (It’s headed by her
brother, James Norman.) In an interview, Ms. Norman reflected on the Grammys, her family, and Saturday chores with the
Metropolitan Opera.

City:Congratulations
on receiving The Lifetime Achievement Award for Classical Music at the Grammys last month. You’re in rarified air with only three
other opera singers: Enrico Caruso, Marian Anderson,
and Leontyne Price. Where will you keep your
statuette?

Norman: Of course, I am so
very proud to be in such illustrious company in having been awarded this
special Grammy. It lives, with the other four that I have been awarded for
various recordings, on a shelf in the library of my home.

City:Rochester‘s Ying Quartet also won a Grammy this
year. Unfortunately, Philip Ying complained, organizers kept the celebrities
safely separated from the classical riffraff. Were you able to rub shoulders
with Kelly Clarkson?

Norman: I am not sure that
you wish, truly, to use the word riffraff here, even in jest. I was able to
greet several popular music personalities whom I know and adore, as Ashford and
Simpson, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Sir Paul McCartney, and
Sting. I was also so happy to greet Reba McIntyre, particularly as she had lost
her father, whom I had also had the pleasure of meeting with her on an
occasion, in New York.

City:Your
brother James, who lives in Rochester, said that when you were a teenager,
your father refused permission for you to make a record for a kind of
mini-American idol TV show in Augusta, Georgia. I suppose you have no regrets.

Norman: Our parents were wise
beyond their years, and were amazingly insightful as to what was useful and
good for their children. Indeed, I have no regrets that my father did not so
much as entertain the idea of my being involved in what could have become a diversion
and exploitation of what was, at the time, simply a child’s voice. An enthusiastic child, but nonetheless, an adolescent.

City:How
did you become an opera lover?

Norman: When I was very
young, I was given my very own radio and loved to listen to the Metropolitan
Opera broadcasts on Saturdays as a kind of accompaniment to my chores. I was
not bothered at all that I was not familiar with the languages in which the
operas were sung, as Milton Cross explained everything down to the last detail,
and my imagination took over all the rest. It was a great time of learning for
me. I enjoyed the music completely and even came to participate more
enthusiastically in my Saturday chores with such magic pouring into my bedroom
through my little radio.

City:Which
was most influential in your development as a singer: family, church, or
school?

Norman: It truly does take a
village to raise a child. My siblings and I are where we are in our lives due
to influences beginning in our own home, of course, but through the interest of
neighbors, our school teachers, our church and the self-motivation that we
acquired through the happiness that it seemed to give our parents from our
doing well.

City:What
is your best tip for caring for one’s singing voice?

Norman: Unlike other instruments, as the voice
resides in one’s own body, one has to take care of the body, to be nourished
properly, not only with proper food, but with the support of good friends and
family with continuous curiosity and study, with a good understanding of the
anatomy of singing, as well as the technical and musical knowledge that are
essential components of a healthy and satisfying performance life.

City:The
late singer Marian Anderson was well loved in Rochester. What are your feelings about her?

Norman: My feelings about
Marian Anderson are much too broad and deep to be given full expression here.
The grace and majesty of this great singer, the voice of one in a hundred
years, as stated by Toscanni, will live in our hearts
forever. And thanks to the recordings of this singular voice, generations yet
to come will be able to experience her extraordinary art.

City:In
1984 the NationalMuseum of Natural History in Paris named an orchid for you. What color is
it?

Norman: The orchid named for
me in France
is of the phalaeonopsis variety and is white with a
hint of pink at the base of the flower petal. A real beauty that took seven
years to develop!

City:Besides
singing and seeing your younger brother, James, what are you looking forward to
doing in Rochester?

Norman: Our siblings and some
of our nephews will also be in Rochester, so again, there will time for hugs
and laughter, major components of our family get-togethers!

Singer Jessye Norman performs, with pianist Mark Markham, music by Handel, Bach,
Gershwin, R. Strauss, and others Sunday, March 12, in the Eastman Theatre, 60
Gibbs Street, at 5 p.m. $25-$100. www.abcinfo.org, www.rpo.org, or any Wegmans
video department.All ages.

Radio
producer Brenda Tremblay reports on the arts for WXXI and hosts broadcast
concerts by the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra on Classical 91.5.

This article appears in Mar 8-14, 2006.