Polina Shepherd: Transcript Conversations with Musicians with Leah Roseman
Polina Shepherd:
Be yourself, trust yourself, study like crazy, never stop learning. I think my strong point when I teach is encouraging people to let go of their own limitations here and musically. And then we can talk about how to build one's career, how to play music so it grabs the audience. It's not just something in your head, but it kind of relates to everyone. Then we do all these other things. But I find that a lot of people are restricted by their own mind. I'm just good at that. I'm just good at just giving people a kick and just going, open up, shine.
Leah Roseman:
I was honoured to speak with the inspiring singer, composer, choir leader, pianist and cultural activist Polina Shepherd. In this episode you’ll hear Polina’s stories from growing up in Tartarstan, finding a bridge to her Jewish identity through Klezmer music, collaborating with her mentors, founding Yiddish and Russian choirs in the U.K., and many other creative projects. During the episode she sings songs from different traditions, including one of her compositions, and is such a warm and engaging speaker I trust a wide audience will find inspiration and food for thought in her perspectives on education, mentorship, creativity, health, identity, connection and collaboration. The link for both the podcast and video is linked with the full transcript in the description along with Polina’s website.Hi, Polina Shepherd. Thanks so much for joining me.
Polina Shepherd:
Hi Leah, wonderful to be here.
Leah Roseman:
I actually discovered you through Josh Dolgin when I was researching him last year. I came upon a video you'd done together and I was just amazed to discover your work.
Polina Shepherd:
That's very pleasing. I love Josh. I love his work. I love what he does. I love his diversity and his modern thinking, and the fact that you got to me through him is very validating. Thank you.
Leah Roseman:
I was just telling you before we started recording, last night I just happened to hear Psoy Korolenko live in my city, Ottawa. And the klezmer world is very small. It seems like a very international ...
Polina Shepherd:
It's interesting because it's a world that is very, very wide. It's basically wherever you go in the world, you'll see people who either know you in person, you know them in person, or they know somebody who is a close friend of theirs. It's a small thin layer, but around the whole world and I love it. Yeah, that's true.
Leah Roseman:
One of the things that strikes me about you is, during the lockdowns of the pandemic you were one of the most successful people I think in the world of creating a wonderful sense of community. Do you want to start by talking about that project, the Sing With Me sessions?
Polina Shepherd:
That was something really new to me. Since then I've been doing things online, but that was a first. Basically I teach choirs and I usually work with people, with groups of people a lot. Several times a week I teach big workshops and I realized that I'd miss all that. And when I came to that realization, I was also sick with COVID myself. I remember just lying in bed and just coming back to kind of conscious, being able to think, I need to do something because everything will be shut down for months I realized. So I thought, well, what can I do? So I started thinking about Skype, and then I saw people doing something on Zoom. It was the end of March. I think everything closed down here on the 13th or something of March, and I started my sessions on the 20th of March. It was quite quick. So I think part of my kind of success, that so many people came to me, was because I was one of the first people to do it. I remember being almost not able to sit upright, but still teaching that first session. And suddenly there were 60, 70 people in my session. And despite all the challenges ... it was very, very basic Zoom, cheap, free Zoom for 30, 40 minutes.
I didn't know what to press. I didn't know how to share screen. I didn't know what to do. But I was there, the people were there. I recognized some of the faces, some people from my choir, some people from America and Iceland and Brazil, which was amazing. There was still a sense of community, a sense of connection, and the sense of actually energy changing through the session. There was a huge sense of giving and taking and exchanging, and that was amazing. We ended every session almost in tears because of that profound sense of connection despite what was happening in the world. And then there was another project of mine, that I collaborated with Efim Chorny from Moldova. We did this whole big festival of Yiddish singers from all over the world online. That was over two and a half months, twice a week, concerts and discussions. That was also huge. So I found myself really, really busy and I think it was therapeutic for me, not just for these people who came and they said, "Yeah, that's therapeutic to be somewhere, to have an anchor, to learn new songs, to engage your brain."
But also for me, because I felt I was doing something good, something good. We still carry on, not as often, but yeah, there's still a group. There's still people whom I wouldn't otherwise see. So we still carry on.
Leah Roseman:
And that resource is up on your YouTube. You have hundreds of videos people can see.
Polina Shepherd:
Oh yeah. All the sessions were then on YouTube. The sheet music is on my website. So now I ended up with an archive of all these songs with sheet music, with some explanations, a paragraph or two. So it works for me in terms of gaining material as well.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. And you grew up with a lot of singing in your childhood. Do you want to speak to that experience, what it was like that?
Polina Shepherd:
I just thought everyone was like this, but apparently not. In Russia, people do sing more, even now. And certainly in my time, in mid '70s, late '70s when I was growing up, this was one of the most common things to do when a family would gather or a group of friends would gather. We'd gather, we eat, adults would drink, and my aunt and my mother would sing in harmonies and my grandfather would play piano. My father and my uncle would join in with their singing, which would be not very much in tune, but they still would do it in a very enthusiastic way. We just had this way of connecting, again connecting, through singing together. My brother learned to play piano and guitar, elder brother. He's four years older than me. And then eventually when I was seven, eight, I was able to play three notes here, two notes there. I loved just joining as much as I could. Eventually I became the family accompanist by the age of 11. My mother sung as a semi-professional at some local concerts, and she needed an accompanist, so I learned how to accompany my mother. It was in my family before it became my profession. Even though I was going to the music school from the age of seven, still this was my musical outlet.
This was where I learned how to relate to people through music, how to communicate through music. How to collaborate, how to listen, how to either lead or accompany. It was a great way of ... It's just a great joy to sing together. It's still there, whether it's professional. Whichever circumstances I find myself singing in, it's just always something special.
Leah Roseman:
I should have asked you, often my guests if they're going to share music, they like to play music at the beginning of the episode when they're warmed up. Would you like to share some music now?
Polina Shepherd:
Okay. Well, in that case, maybe I should sing a little bit of something that my family used to sing. How about the Russian art song, Russian Romance?
Leah Roseman:
Beautiful. Thanks.
Polina Shepherd:
Do you want me to play the whole thing, just maybe a couple of verses to demonstrate?
Leah Roseman:
The whole thing is great. If you want, it's up to you, because I don't know the Russian.
Polina Shepherd:
See if I remember it by heart. This is one of my favorite poems by Mikhail Lermontov, who is, everyone knows Pushkin and Lermontov is, they call him the Russian Byron. It's a beautiful poem about the journey going into the field. The first site is at the field, and then we're looking at the forest. We're looking at the skies and the stars talking to each other. And then the Earth being all majestic and its blue shine. So we're looking at planet Earth from above. And then we talk about, why do I feel so sad and lonely? So it's a wonderful cosmic and personal picture. I've been in love with this since I was maybe 10, since I first heard it. So there we go. I'll stop here because it's all about lyrics. Isn't this a beautiful, dah-dah-dah-dah, a huge range? That's what I grew up with, Russian art songs primarily, Romances they're called.
Leah Roseman:
So from the 19th century, I presume?
Polina Shepherd:
Yeah. This was, the music is by Shashina who is not very famous. We only know a couple of art songs by her. But Lermontov's poem has been set to music. This particular one a couple of times and other poems have been around in songs a lot. Yeah, 19th century, beginning of the 20th, end of the 1800s, mid 1800s and even earlier, all the way back to Glinka, Rimsky Korsakov, Tchaikovsky, and then later coming into Rachmaninoff and all that.
Leah Roseman:
I know that you have a very big vocal range, unusually large. Did your mom help you develop that, was it that training?
Polina Shepherd:
No, no. She wanted to make a classical singer out of me because she was classically trained herself. So when I was studying in something like music college, it's a secondary school in Russia, I was a pianist and I studied history and theory of music primarily. Piano was my kind of secondary specialization. I went to vocal classes, we call these facultative, something that you can attend if you wanted to. And this teacher, although repeating my mother's thoughts, said, "Oh, you should be a coloratura soprano," because I had this high range. She tried to teach me how to sing classically and I just hated it. I wish I stuck to it, but I couldn't understand when she was saying to me, "Sing it like this. You own this high palate," this and that. I could not apply the words of how it should feel, to how it felt inside my body. So I actually never developed that. And the way I sing high notes is not something I actually learned from anyone. I just felt it in my voice. I have these whistle range things, and I have really low notes just somehow in my voice.
It's great that I don't have to follow a system, to be honest. Being in folk music primarily allows me to experiment with vocal production, the quality of the voice.
Leah Roseman: Hi, just a quick break from the episode. I’m an independant podcaster who does all the many jobs required to produce this series, and there are a lot of costs I bear as well. Please consider either buying me a virtual coffee as a tip or becoming a monthly supporter starting at 3 dollars Canadian (which is close to 2 dollars US or 2 Euros) and getting access to unique perks! The link is in the description. Now back to the episode!
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. So you grew up in Tomsk, your childhood. Is that how you would say it?
Polina Shepherd:
Tomsk, but only three years and then my family moved to Tatarstan, to Central Russia, which is kind of above Turkey on the map. Tatarstan is a big republic, the size of France. It's huge. The capital city is Kazan, one million 200,000 people. This is where I studied. So I spent from three till 13 in Tatarstan. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
I was curious about the Jewish community in Tomsk because it was dated back to the 1630s, which really amazed me. I was curious, does your family go back that far or not? Do you know when they ...
Polina Shepherd:
You know what? My parents only studied in Siberia. That's where they met. That's where they had children. But then we moved to Tatarstan so I don't really have a big connection with Siberia anymore. I have an aunt who lives in Omsk, which is next to only 200 kilometers from Tomsk, which is nothing by Siberian standards. But we lived in Tatarstan where the Jewish community was not as old. The main population of Jews went there just before the Second World War, between the wars basically. There was a synagogue from the beginning of the 1900s, so there must have been an earlier wave of Jewish immigration there. My father was born in Kyiv, and his parents were born in Odessa and around Kyiv. So there's Ukrainian roots for my family, Ukrainian Jewish roots. But in terms of Siberian communities, I don't really know much, to be honest.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. I knew people had been sent there at different times during the Stalin purges, but I was curious to read that very old history. Anyway, so when you were in Kazan, from what I understand there was a supportive environment for minority art and music there, did you feel like? I'm curious what you were exposed to.
Polina Shepherd:
Yeah. It wasn't just the place, it was the time as well. Because it's perestroika. It's everything new, the iron curtain falling. So we had this kind of freedom to express, freedom to explore our roots and it wasn't just the Jewish people. It was, as you said, many different groups had suddenly that door opened for them. So the Jewish community just began to explore. There was a hidden tiny little underground, religious little shtibl, little house where people still, all the way through the Soviet times, practiced all the rituals. But it was a tiny, tiny little thing. But the Jewish community as such was built on music in Kazan, was built on music, and then they got their synagogue back. I was very much part of that. I was right in the middle of that process because it was at the time when I was a student. I was young. I just joined the community as it was opening, as it was growing, as it was preparing programs, including music programs for the rest of Tatarstani wide audiences. It was an amazing time when we had maybe 20, 30% of Jews coming to our concerts, but the rest were just white public just coming to see, what is this music? We had these klezmer concerts that were, now I realize, not quite authentically sounding. But still it was something, yeah. And Tatars suddenly went into Islam. Lots of mosques were built at that time.
We had all the Volga region republics and ethnic groups rediscovering their culture at the same time. There was a lot of exchange. There was a jazz festival that incorporated all these ethnic elements also in Kazan. It was a big international center. It was great and inspiring to be inside this whole movement and be just growing up as a professional listening to all these things. It was amazing.
Leah Roseman:
Let's talk about Yiddish song, because you've written so much music based on poems. I don't know, have you written lyrics as well in Yiddish? Or you just use other-
Polina Shepherd:
Tiny, tiny little simple things, but nothing complicated. And because there are so many beautiful poems, I'd rather stick to these because my Yiddish is primitive, simple.
Leah Roseman:
Do you want to share one of those songs with us now?
Polina Shepherd:
Now, this is one of the earlier songs that I've written. It was maybe 20 something, more than 20 years ago. It's about a fresh wind and going out of the house, and experiencing and smelling the beautiful blossom of rye in the fields. Let me just sing it.
Leah Roseman:
Beautiful. Thank you so much. You know what's strange? This morning I wanted to show my family who I was going to be talking to today. I chose that song because it's one of my favorites on your albums. I just happened to choose that and played it for them at breakfast.
Polina Shepherd:
Oh, interesting, of all the songs. Okay. Well, it's a beautiful poem by Dovid Hofshsteyn, who is a big figure. I love learning about these Yiddish poets because you see, this is my connection. And by writing music to a poem, I feel that I'm connecting with a big part of my history, a big part of my identity. So for me, I wouldn't say it's therapeutic, but it's certainly identity defining doing that. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
Now you didn't grow up hearing Yiddish?
Polina Shepherd:
No. We all spoke Russian. I first heard Yiddish properly when I was 16, 17 when I went to a klezmer concert in that Jewish community in Kazan. It was one of the first concerts. I suddenly hear this weird music and everyone plays in octaves and sings in octaves and unison. Why aren't they harmonizing? Oh, because that's authentic. Weird. Interesting though. And that's when I heard Yiddish, and then I heard it firstly being sung and then being spoken, and then I went to study it. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Your dad had taken you to that concert, correct?
Polina Shepherd:
Yeah, that's true.
Leah Roseman:
And he had heard some Yiddish as a child?
Polina Shepherd:
Yes, he did. Yes, he did. In his family they spoke a little bit of Yiddish. His grandparents spoke Yiddish, but not his parents, which is quite a common story. I know that for people in the West that's a common story because people immigrated. Parents didn't want to teach their children Yiddish because it was the old world. It was the same for Soviet citizens because they were all part of the Soviet Union. Everyone spoke Russian and before it became kind of frowned upon. It was not just a cool thing to do, not a cool thing to do, to speak Yiddish. We're all part of one country and speak Russian.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. I've been studying Yiddish for a couple of years. It's really helped bring me back to my Jewish identity, I think, in a very meaningful way. A lot of people don't realize what a rich secular culture it is. I know some of the songs you've set were actually erotic Yiddish poems. By that woman, what's her name, Troim Katz Handler?
Polina Shepherd:
Yes. She was 90 something four when the Yiddish Book Center published that book. I was doing an interview for the BBC World, I don't know, one of the BBC programs. And Aaron Lansky, who is the director ... I don't know what the actual status is, but he's the founder of the Yiddish Book Center. He was on the show and he mentioned that book. And as I was speaking about my composition and everything, I thought, oh Aaron, thanks for that. So then I contacted her children because I wanted the book and I wanted permission to write songs to these poems. And then I got the book and oh my, it's not just erotic poems. It's like proper really, it's more than erotic, some of them. It's quite descriptive, but it's also emotional. I thought, okay, can I do this tastefully? So I've chosen a few poems. It was actually part of this festival of Yiddish song that I mentioned to you earlier, that international Zoom festival that Efim Chorny and I organized, everyone performed. It was one of the shtick about this festival that everyone had to perform a new song or a new arrangement at least. So I challenged myself to write this new cycle. It was a 20-minute cycle that I presented at that festival. And that unfortunately has been one of very few opportunities for me to sing it.
It needs a big grand piano and it needs a lot of adrenaline to actually perform that cycle. Because it has all the ups and downs and huge range, kind of these squeaky things. That was fun to write. There's no rhymes in the poems. Rhythmically, it's all over the place. It was interesting,
Leah Roseman:
It's so interesting that a woman in her 90s is publishing this kind of volume.
Polina Shepherd:
I think she wrote it earlier in her life and it's two volumes. So this was the second one I think. I think the first one had been published earlier. I'm not sure when. But it took all that time for a book like this to get published. But hey, we have it now though. That's great, and Yiddish has everything.
Leah Roseman:
So your husband, Merlin Shepherd, also your musical collaborator, how did you guys meet?
Polina Shepherd:
Oh, he's the reason why I'm in Britain. I was a student. As I was getting into this music, I felt that I needed to study it a little bit more because we didn't have enough sources. I went to a klezmer festival in St. Petersburg, and then in Crimea, 1999 and then 2000, where Merlin was teaching. He was brought as one of the professionals from the West to teach us back our culture that we had lost. So then it all happened and it was quite a story. But there was a big musical excitement and telepathy between us from the very beginning, which kind of hit us. We had to think about, oh, what do we do with this all? So yeah, through music, through Yiddish culture, through klezmer.
Leah Roseman:
What was it like ... I mean, you went through the Cold War and then perestroika and then immigrating to England. That must have been such a culture shock. What was that like for you?
Polina Shepherd:
Oh yes. Well, being younger helps. I'm thinking if I were to move now, I don't know. But I was 30. Right, I was 30, and I just had to follow my heart. It was difficult. My language wasn't that free. I got lost in conversations, especially in pubs where there'd be like two or three conversations and loud music happening at the same time. Culturally, I didn't know many things obviously, because I hadn't traveled outside Russia. I think I'd only been to America once and Czech Republic once and Germany once. So that was it. I didn't really know much about, certainly about British culture. So strange experiences like, you turn up and people offer you a cup of tea, and it is a cup of tea. In Russia, if somebody offers you a cup of tea, it's tea and biscuits and sugar and lemon. And maybe some, I don't know, something to go with, like chocolates and pancakes. It's a whole meal. And also certain ways to express oneself. When somebody says a concert was interesting, read between the lines and things like this. Yeah. I think I'm okay now. I can understand. I can read between the lines. I also think that moving from one culture to another, one gets perspective that's not just this and that. It's above two cultures.
So being able to go outside one box, I think makes me able to look at these boxes from above and then see what they're about. And see similarities from what people's intentions are, what a song's intention is through the filter of its musical language, through the filter of its language-language, verbal expression. So what's behind that? I think that's what I like to focus on, especially dealing with different cultures, different musical cultures too.
Leah Roseman:
And some of the songs you've written, you've combined languages as well.
Polina Shepherd:
Especially with Psoy Korolenko, when we create these programs, he's very much into linguistics and linguistic twists. He would mix languages and root of the words and prefix and suffix and all that, and all these word plays. So when we perform together ... By the way, we are hoping to perform again in 2023 in America and maybe in Britain too, in London. He kind of encouraged me to do that and I think, oh yeah, okay. You don't have to be purist about these things. You can actually play with these things. That's postmodern somehow but I think it's good. Your audience limits, of course, but then maybe sometimes it's not that important to know what the words mean. Because again, you read between the lines.
Leah Roseman:
You'd mentioned your first trip to the US. I saw on YouTube, there is an old video of when the Quartet Ashkenazim went to New York. You were I think at the YIVO, and someone said, "Oh, I can introduce you to Lorin Sklamberg," who you now are friends with and collaborate with.
Polina Shepherd:
Yeah, that was 2002 I think. Our trip was planned for to be flying on 9/11.
Leah Roseman:
Wow.
Polina Shepherd:
Yes, and one of our quartet singers didn't get a visa. Out of the four of us, one didn't get the visa. So we postponed our trip to 2002 to April next year. And that was interesting. And then we turned up, there was America in that state. That was interesting. But in terms of these Yiddish experiences and getting to know people, getting to meet people who were heroes for us, it was also very inspiring, very encouraging. We also gave a concert at Arbeter, at The Workers Circle, where our great teachers, our heroes, Adrienne Cooper and Zalmen Mlotek ... who had taught us these songs back in Russia at these klezmer festivals, they put this concert on for us. And everyone was in the audience, everyone we could think of. All the, I don't know, Itzik Gottesman was there, giving us a book of his mother who was a composer. Jeff Warschauer was there, the beautiful musician. Michael Alpert was there, the star of authentic Yiddish music, and everyone was there. And meeting these people was, I think it gave us a great ... certainly it gave me a great start, a great boost of self-esteem, should I say, as a musician, that doing this was worth something. I think it was also when I realized that this music is wider than just these little festivals where we study our culture.
It's more. It has a meaning. It's historic. It has a historic meaning. But yes, Lorin Sklamberg, when Nikolai Borodullin said to us, "Do you want to meet Lorin Sklamberg?" It's like, do you want to meet Tchaikovsky? Lorin was one of the reasons why I sing Yiddish songs, because I had these Klezmatics recordings and I just loved his voice. It was a visceral response. I felt turned inside out when I heard him singing, and then suddenly he's there. Yeah. So imagine my joy now being able to sing with him.
Leah Roseman:
This would be a good moment to talk about a 1000 Voices Project with him.
Polina Shepherd:
Yeah, not 1,000 quite.
Leah Roseman:
No, 100 and fifty. Sorry.
Polina Shepherd:
I wish. I wish. Yeah, 150 Voices. We managed to get it done just before the pandemic. Yes. So 150 Voices is a choral project where I brought my four choirs. Then I had four choirs in Britain, two Yiddish choirs and two Russian choirs, two in London, two in Brighton. So I brought these four choirs together. Lorin Sklamberg came here, and we recorded with them. We had two hours to rehearse something and we had one day to record it. And then I flew to America and we recorded it with a wonderful community choir, A Besere Velt Yiddish Chorus in Boston, Yiddish choir, with whom I'd had a long ... and Lorin as well. We had this great relationship. We also spent two hours rehearsing and then we went into the studio and we recorded a few songs. It's a mixture of Russian and Yiddish songs that we either wrote for this project or we picked from various sources. And the intention of this project, should I say, is to bring people together. It's about bringing people together. It's about creating something maybe not perfect musically because of who we are, because of how it was done, amateur choirs. But a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of connection, a lot of love for these musics. Mind you, in my Russian choirs maybe a fifth of people speak Russian.
In the Yiddish choirs, three or four people spoke Yiddish. In the Boston choir they do, but not so many. It's people connecting to each other, to culture, to music through these songs. So we got this done and then the pandemic hit, and we finished the actual process of putting it together as a CD during the pandemic. The plan was to go to various groups and choirs and teach that repertoire and have concerts. So me and Lorin would go and do it, and would sing our duo material and then sing this stuff with the choirs. But then the pandemic interrupted it all, but I'm so glad we did it. I'm so glad it's there. There's recorded material.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, it's beautiful. I saw your episode of The Crown with one of your Russian choirs.
Polina Shepherd:
Oh, just now. Yeah, just now. That was fun.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, it's amazing. They used too little of your beautiful music, but it really enriched the scene so much. It just deepened it to have that authentic sound in there.
Polina Shepherd:
I'm pleased that we did this. We only sang two minutes. They used one and a half minutes in The Crown, which is excellent. There's a group of children there. It's us singing almost the full half of the song and then there's this little bit that children sing on top of that. They had a session over a whole day, bless them, and they ended up with five seconds. We still have quite a big, quite an important I think musically bit there in The Crown. Even though people can't really see us, but it doesn't matter because our singing is more important. I had to take the solo. It's written for a bass and the choir. Yeah, it's for a bass voice, but I didn't have a bass. I didn't have ... It happened so spontaneously. In February, they contacted me. I was in Russia visiting my family and in March we were already filming. So we had to learn this, the score, and they sent me just the name of the song and some YouTube link to someone who wasn't singing the complete piece. So I had to research what it was, to find the score, to adjust it for our choir, to teach my choirs. And remember, they're not all music readers. They're amateur choirs, so we had to work on that.
So it's quite pleasing to be in The Crown. But what I also find quite kind of funny is that I got so much attention by even just putting that little thing on Facebook, we are in The Crown. And compared to all my work with Yiddish music, with Russian music, this has been the biggest draw-in. Fine, if it works, it works.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Had you watched The Crown before that?
Polina Shepherd:
No, and I haven't watched it since. I haven't seen the whole episode. I just watched that bit. I hope it's good.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, it's interesting. I wanted to talk about teaching choral improvisation and some of the projects you've done with youth. I was really amazed to see that, is it called Caravan?
Polina Shepherd:
Caravan, yeah. It's The Caravan Orchestra & Choir. It's the project by, it's three organizations who put it together, Yiddish Summer Weimar, the music high school in Weimar and University of Haifa. They bring together young people from the age of 18 to 25 from Germany, Israel, Palestine. So it's three different ... and whoever else wants to participate. We study different musics there with them and we mix them together. There are usually several teachers working with them from different musical backgrounds and different cultures. I've only been involved in it twice, but it's been running for maybe six years. The original music director, Ilya Shneyvyes, is now in America. He wanted to move on, and I just got there. I'm so happy because working with young people, young professionals or people who are aiming to be professionals, is a different kind of energy to working with amateur adults in choirs. It's a completely different thinking process, a different way to relate to a group of people. Lots of, they criticize you. They don't like that. They don't want that, and can we write it down? No, we can't. They're bold and they bring creative ideas into the process. It's excellent. It's hopefully happening next year. So it's a great project.
It's not just exchange in terms of culture. It's exchange in terms of - we do everything there. We talk about life. We talk about building one's career. We talk about music affecting us, and how can one live through life just doing that? It's a tough business and all that. Plus, there are always these conversations about political things, obviously. Israel, Palestine, Germany, Jews in Germany. It's so much more than just making music together and I love that approach. Generally we have music, it does something to us. It brings us together on a deep level. But then we have all that other stuff that we can discuss, we can embrace, but on that solid platform of making music together.
Leah Roseman:
A couple of the videos I'd seen of that showed you leading an improvisation, with both the instrumentalists and the singers. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Polina Shepherd:
Yes. They rebelled it first, but then they got used to it. Yeah. Basically there is a piece, we all know the tune, sometimes. Sometimes we don't. We just about know it. And there are functions that I would throw at people. I would say, there are certain signals that will have A section of the tune, B section of the tune, three section of the tune, C section. Sometimes I do this, go around that section again, take a chunk and sing round and round. As I'm indicating, for example, this, that, and that to one side of the group. Then I would say, this to the other side of the group. Do it again and again and again, the B section. And then I would say, "Stop," and I would say, "Improvise." That's my special gesture for improvise. Sometimes we agree on the general structure. Usually we agree on the general structure. For example, we think through the arranged piece and then we keep the D chord going. And then I would pick an instrument and say, "Improvise," Mi Shebeirach, and they'll do something. And then I'll point at the vocalist and say, "Improvise," as everyone keeps going. And then we go one instrumentalist, a vocalist, another one, the whole group all improvise at the same time. It's very much, it happens at the moment right there. It's about trust firstly.
And secondly, it's about the musical abilities of the particular instrumentalists and singers to just throw themselves into it, sometimes not knowing the style, sometimes singing a jazz solo over a Yiddish hora, but it all kind of works together somehow. We do talk about these elements in our studying sessions first and then we explore. So every performance is different and it's great fun. It's seriously great fun.
Leah Roseman:
And then in Tatarstan, you would have been exposed to many different modes. Do you incorporate some of that into your improvisation? I know you do different kinds of improv.
Polina Shepherd:
You know what? The Tartar music was mostly in pentatonic when I was growing up. I have this pentatonics in my head, and I've written one specific song, Baym Taykh, that's in pentatonics, but it's slightly jazzy as well. I think that the general way to build material on modes and thinking linear, horizontally rather than vertically, is something I probably picked up from Tartar music and from other folk. We studied Russian folk music as well. I didn't hear it that much because in the villages in Tatarstan, there wasn't much of it. There was Tartar music, but not Russian folklore. But we studied it. We listened to recordings. And then Yiddish music also is not vertical. A lot of it is very much horizontal. So there is heterophony. There is all these little discrepancies on the tune. It's more about phrasing and ornamentation, rather than putting harmonies to the tune. So I guess that did affect me, but I studied classical music. So detaching myself from classical music, moving towards folklore is something that I found quite interesting and challenging as well.
Leah Roseman:
And this advice that you would give these students about the business ... We have to be entrepreneurs as musicians mostly. What kind of advice do you give them?
Polina Shepherd:
Oh, be yourself, trust yourself, study like crazy. Never stop learning. I think my strong point when I teach is encouraging people to let go of their own limitations here and musically. And then we can talk about how to build one's career, how to play music so it grabs the audience. It's not just something in your head, but it kind of relates to everyone. Then we do all these other things. But I find that a lot of people are restricted by their own mind. I'm just good at that. I'm just good at just giving people a kick and just going, open up, shine. And then we discuss all the other things. Use social media. Don't use social media. How to record, how to create a new project. Should you, should you not? And it's tough. It's a tough business. It's not easy, especially if you just only want to make music.
Leah Roseman:
How about collaboration? I was hearing you talk in another interview, and some of the things you were saying I found very interesting. Because you were saying, in terms of seeing other people's point of view or when you're collaborating with people, you may not agree with their aesthetic or their way of doing things, but you have to go along or be more like water. I was thinking, when I was younger I think I was much less of a good collaborator. I would just be too stuck in the way I wanted to play things in chamber music. But now I'm more open. How about yourself? Do you think that's changed over the years?
Polina Shepherd:
Oh, very much so. Yeah, very much so. Certainly coming from classical music and Russian art songs, I was quite stuck in that. I also played Mozart, Schumann concertos so that was in my fingers, in my head. I think that I like challenge, which is why I grabbed that other way of thinking. I grabbed that linear thinking of oh, that would be interesting. That would be good. So when I started playing with a band, first of all, I had my own little youth band, and then I joined a professional klezmer band. So I had to adjust to all these different people with different levels of musical skill, different aesthetic values. And the study of what music is for, do you want to be a star or do you want to actually say something? All these things. I found that if I want to just say what I want to say, firstly, fewer people will listen. Secondly, it'll be a weak message because I'm not learning. I'm not listening. I'm not really embracing as much as I could. It's like the multiple of the ... What's the saying? The multiple, the sum of what's ...
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. It sounds like, the total's greater than its parts.
Polina Shepherd:
Yeah. It's like three people, it's times one, times two, times three. It multiplies the message, even though it may be not exactly the message you want to say. But it multiplies the message, and it does have my message in that powerful general message that the band would be giving. So I kind of learned, and also, I was a young person. I was 17 when I first joined that professional band and we started touring. I learned to keep my head down and voice down because I was with professional players. And only then I thought, well, maybe I can raise my voice a little bit more. But that's a great skill also. I think that learning to appreciate, learning to see goodness in other aesthetic, in other people's taste challenges, again, challenges, my worldview expands it. So if somebody can see goodness in schmaltzy chords to an authentic folk Yiddish tune, it's a weird combination. Why would you? But then so many people love it. Maybe I should learn to appreciate something understandable, something that relates to people through that kind of music. I don't know. I like learning. I like learning.
It doesn't mean that I will play jazzy chords to an authentic tune, but hey, why not sometimes? Maybe I'll use one or two as well. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. I'm curious about memorizing, because you came from this classical background. You seem to be able to memorize chords, play by ear, memorize lyrics very easily. How does that work for you?
Polina Shepherd:
Lyrics is not so easy. I'm actually a little bit afraid of singing in Yiddish because it's not my native language, and because I'm afraid to sing the wrong words. I like to have a backup. I like to have something to look at, but I prefer to play by ear. I actually much prefer to play by ear. If I know a song, I can play it in pretty much any key, any tempo, anything. If I have sheet music in front of me, I can only play it in that key. And if it's complex, I won't be able to read it all the way through perfectly. So I'm an audio person. I learned to play tunes before I learned to read music, which is why I probably didn't, I never learned how to follow a page that well. I'm terrible at following what's written. And when I teach Rachmaninoff to my choirs, oh, there is a mezzo piano here. I miss that. I have to bring myself back to being accurate with classical scores.
But it's much easier for me to just play how I feel, to invent tunes as I go along right here, right now. Yeah, I like that spontaneity. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. I was wondering about keeping your voice healthy. You've toured a lot in the past, and hopefully now more that things have been lifting. Do you have any advice for singers or things that you watch out for?
Polina Shepherd:
Oh, the main advice is to keep yourself in good mood, healthy mentally and emotionally and physically, and sleep enough, eat well. I go running and maybe sometimes it feels tough. Like today, I went running and it was raining. I got soaking wet, completely soaking wet. Today it's difficult but overall, my energy level since I started running has gone higher. And now that I have a big tour coming in America and then Europe with Apollo's Fire ... I don't know if you know them. They're a Cleveland-based baroque orchestra, and that'll be over a month and a half. And then I have a theater project in the middle in New York. I have to learn things. It's a long stretch of work and having to sing sometimes five, six hours a day, I must do something for keeping my energy up. I can't just function normally. There needs to be an extra something. So I think that doing something on a regular basis like running ... like, I don't know, Wim Hof. There are all these physical things we can do, is excellent. It's great. I used to have a sore throat all the time as a young person. I used to lose my voice all the time. I could not sing for 20 minutes without then having a sore throat. So I had to think about it.
And also alcohol. Especially when touring, it's tempting to chill out after a concert and just have a glass of this or that. Sometimes to give yourself a boost before a concert if you feel low energy. But I've realized it's like with running. It's good for that particular day. It feels good for that particular day, but in the long run, it's not good. In the long run, it takes your energy down. So I've stopped drinking now altogether. And there was something else I thought about. Yeah. There are all this technical things, like not drinking sour, like lemon or anything like this. Not drinking milk before a performance. Obviously not smoking and all these other tiny little things, but taking care of yourself. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
Have you done any of those Wim Hof breathing exercises or cold exposure?
Polina Shepherd:
No. I've heard about it and I've read about it. A friend of mine does it, but it seems too intense for me. I just can't bring myself to doing it. I used to take cold showers as a young person. I think I've overdone it. I am very bad with temperatures. I'm very sensitive to temperature. I can tell if the water running in the tap and I'm two meters away from it, I can tell if it's hot or cold. So not Wim Hof, but they say it's really good. Running is what I do. Running is quite ... I'm quite proud of myself. It's 10 kilometers. It's not just nothing. It's good and thanks to Lorin Sklamberg, who was a runner. He encouraged me to do that and we even run together when we're on tour. Let's go for a run before a concert. Yeah, let's do that.
Leah Roseman:
Fantastic. You've done some, it's funny, so many of the musicians I've talked to recently have accompanied silent films. And that's one of the projects you've done with Merlin, right?
Polina Shepherd:
Yes, true. Yeah. That's also quite different to everything else I do. It's a special way of thinking. It's a way of connecting to something visual, right? It's relating to a film through music. It's amazing because we mostly improvised through the whole thing. So in 2005, when Merlin and I were at Klezfest Kyiv in Ukraine, the director of Klezfest, Yana Yanover and her husband, I think they had a friend, Alex Morozov, who worked at the National Cinema Studio and they were just throwing these films away. He said to these directors of Klezfest, Hey, do you have any use for these? These are Jewish films. There's Jewish context in them, content." And they said, "Yeah, great. Wonderful. We'll have them." So we were chatting and they said, oh, we have these films and they're on these old ... What are they called, acetates? Do you want to use them somehow? Do you want to show them in Britain? And Merlin said, "Why don't we play music to these films?" It felt interesting. Let's try. Yeah. So we did it. We had a tour in Britain in 2005. We showed our films in Kyiv, maybe 2006.
Actually, Marilyn Lerner was there in the audience, and Adrienne Cooper was there watching these films. They are from Ukraine and generally Soviet Union, from 1910, Russia, Ukraine to 1926, Soviet Union. Personal stories, community stories, building of collective farms in Crimea. A documentary, anti-Polish Jewish propaganda film. Lots of propaganda obviously in these years. Very interesting. Some of them are known films, some of them are less known. Some of them are not full, not complete. So we have something like I think 17 films, but we've played only 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 films so far. So what we do, we translate them into English if there are subtitles, and certainly we want to relate to the year when the film was done. So if it's 1913 and there is a traditional Jewish wedding, we play music from a traditional Jewish wedding that would have been played at that time in that place. And then if there is a Soviet tune, if there's these little pioneers, youth marching in the fields in the Soviet collective farm, we play something that relates to that. And there is some original material, and we have this general thread of what suits which scene. We have that general kind of scheme, but then we improvise. And because Merlin also loves improvisation, we can just throw things at each other.
Sometimes we, after a film, will say, "Oh, why did you play it in that key?" Oh, why did you ... Oh, but that worked and that didn't work. Let's play it like this next time." Every time it's different. But it's amazing how when we play these films, every time a film turns a slightly different face to us, and we decide to play in a slightly different way. It colorizes the film musically every time. It's great fun. And they're amazing films. It's amazing cinema. The last project we did was during the pandemic, Five Brides. There is no last reel, so we assume that the Red Army guys saved these poor little ladies from a Jewish shtetl. But we don't know. We just see them with their red banners and their horses, but we don't know. And then it says, the end. So we play positive music thinking there is a positive ending. But we would love to one day have a theater performance, like a mixed media project, that we would have several people performing the final scene as we are continuing to play.
So the film stops and then people go on stage and perform it, and we play. That would be so great. It's a fantastic ... Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
Have you done collaborations with dancers?
Polina Shepherd:
No. My only collaboration with a dancer was a teaching project, not a performance project when we mixed Jewish niggun mainly, wordless tunes and Afro Brazilian dancing. I have a fantastic friend who is originally Spanish. She lives here and she studied Afro Brazilian dancing. She's a dancer. We put these things together for people who have no access otherwise to any kinds of culture, apart from their own mainstream television and radio culture. We worked in women's centers. We worked for groups with mental health issues. We worked for elderly people. We just taught them something different, just to take them outside of what they know. Sometimes we would mix things. I would sing and she would dance. They would copy us and they would sing with me because it was easy to sing without words. So nigunim are great for that. And sometimes it would be just the movement and then just the singing. But it worked really well. It wasn't culturally specific so we weren't teaching people about the culture. But we were using these cultures to give something different to people, to get them outside of their box.
So that was the only thing, and I miss it. It was fantastic.
Leah Roseman:
That's really good.
Polina Shepherd:
It was quite a long time ago. Yeah. It was one of the first projects I did here in Britain, 2006 or so.
Leah Roseman:
I'm curious, Polina, do you have an idea journal for things you'd like to do?
Polina Shepherd:
Here.
Leah Roseman:
It's all in your head?
Polina Shepherd:
I like to manifest things. I have an idea and then I sometimes write it down. I used to write them down, and then I've stopped writing them down. What I do, I have an idea and I have a vision of how it should be. I sometimes have a visual of a stage and particular people on the stage, a specific town, city, where this would be performed, for example. And then I put it in my timeline, that this is going to happen. In about a year or two, it's going to happen. I just like to assume that somehow. If it doesn't happen, it's not a big deal, but I'd like that to happen. I keep it somewhere there. I keep it somewhere there. I like to play with all these intentions, visualizations and all these mind techniques. At least, I don't know if it's, do you say wishy-washy? I think that if anything, it allows me to focus on something. It allows me to do certain things that would be steps towards this project. Like 150 Voices, I had it in my head and I just thought, I want to bring my choirs together. Lorin, we're working together and he loves choirs, and it would be great to do this material. And in the years time it all happened. But what happens is that I get little signals from the universe, from my outside world.
Oh, we have a free day and Lorin is going to be here, and my choirs are available. Oh, that's a coincidence, isn't it? I have this project in my head somewhere there. Oh, that'll work for the project. A lot of things happen like this. They just happen because I think about them. I put them somewhere there, I manifest them.
Leah Roseman:
When you started your choirs, was it all like ... Because to even start one choir is a huge project, but you have four. How did that come about? How did you make that happen?
Polina Shepherd:
It's funny, I never taught choirs in Russia. I collaborated. I co-taught a community choir in the Jewish community in Kazan, but I didn't consider myself a choir leader at all. I was actually excused from choir sessions in the music school because I had this chronic throat thing. So I never actually, I never considered myself a choir person. But I think Merlin said to me, "Why don't you try and organize a singing group or something like this?" I thought, well, okay, maybe I actually would love to do it. And sometimes when somebody says something and it just really, there's an internal response; I'd love to do that. Just something rings the right sound there, I'd love to do that. So I contacted the local synagogue, reformed progressive synagogue, and I had three people turning up for my first session. But then one of the ladies there liked what I did. She just happened to be a fantastic person to know everyone, all the communities, all the academia. She knew all the community people, this community and that community, venues. And she still is a fantastic support and help for me, Jackie Fuller. She will be watching the interview. She's like my Jewish mother. She's my Russian choir administrator. She helped with the Yiddish choir here in Brighton. She gives fantastic ideas, where to put a gig, who to contact.
So I guess in terms of building up, it's a bit of luck and intention in place, and planning long-term as well. Yeah. But that's also hard work because it has to be always here. I wake up in the middle of the night, what's with this choir? What's with that choir? What do we sing for that? I need to send them that. There's a JPG I need to prepare. There's a song I need to write an arrangement for. And everything is in my head all the time and everything has its own little place. I have to filter. I have to go through every single unit all the time and put something as priority, put something as; I'm coming to this next week. But it's a lot of calculating here in the head.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. That's wonderful. I'm curious, you've worked with all these community musicians who don't read music. I don't know how they manage to memorize all that choir music. What have you learned through teaching them?
Polina Shepherd:
Honestly, I learned that I want to teach with sheet music, which is what I do now. Yeah. I started teaching as a natural voice practitioner. There is a whole movement here, Natural Voice Practitioners Network. I was part of that network and one of the principles there is to, first of all, teach anyone. Anyone can sing. And secondly, no sheet music, which is fantastic, that sense of freedom. I still teach folk songs like that. I prefer to teach them like that. But when it comes to classical or something in the middle, I like to have sheet music. What it taught me is, a switch from visual to audio perception is a huge switch. And when people are not looking at their sheet, they're much more committed to the music. They're much more in the moment. They are listening to themselves and to everyone else in the group, much, much more. It really gives such freedom. I love that. On the other hand, if I want to teach something more complex and to speed it up, I do use sheet music. And then I still prefer it when people know their material by heart. It's much nicer. It's much nicer, but it's not always doable. Plus, we've started singing complex arrangements, dissonant arrangements, 20th century Russian classics, sometimes with Yiddish choirs.
With Yiddish choirs we sang Der Katerinshchik in Yiddish in four parts, Schubert, six pages. You can't imagine that people would learn that six-page material by heart. So for these, it's nicer to use sheet music, of course. But it's a completely different way of relating to music and performing it and presenting it. Yeah. I think I like a mixture of everything. All the questions you're asking me about styles, about young people, professionals, amateurs, everything, culture this, culture that, I like to mix things. I like to mix and I like maybe to be resourceful, to use this from that, and that from that, and use the best of all the worlds.
Leah Roseman:
You had mentioned some of your early mentors like Adrienne Cooper. What kind of lessons do you remember learning from that time?
Polina Shepherd:
With Adrienne the main lesson, first of all, she just showed me how Yiddish song should be. She showed it by making it very deeply personal. She would never just sing a song. She would always sing a song as if it was her own, as if she was really opening her heart wide and presenting her heart like this to you. It felt like it was directly personal to each one listening to her, and that, I got goosebumps every time. And that way of singing was new to me, especially with the Yiddish song, because Yiddish songs were ... I liked Israeli tunes. I liked Hebrew stuff at that time and suddenly I hear Adrienne. So I learned that Yiddish song can be still relevant, can be personal and can be modern sounding, can be right here today, expressing me right now. So that's one thing. She taught lots of vocal things. She taught lots of just professional skills to us. But that I think is the biggest thing that I learned from Adrian. This personal complete commitment to a song, full commitment, homework, to get into the song, to give it your own voice. You should never perform a song like others. It will always be something different. It would become a different song when she'd sing it.
So that was really, really important and I think I like songs to be personal, to be emotional. Zalmen Mlotek, who is the Folksbiene music director ... I'm going to see him hopefully in March because we're doing something for Folksbiene. He was just a brilliant teacher in terms of how to accompany, how not to play over the vocalist, how to support them. Even little things like, if you play a melody in the higher register, it will acoustically be ... you don't need to play it loud, but it will be there for people to pick up the tune. If you need to give them the tune you're helping by playing in a high range, not in the same range as people are singing. So these tiny little motifs, these tiny little things were really, really useful. And he's a brilliant accompanist. I also was learning how to accompany as well as sing myself. Actually, I think some of my first class Klezfest, I was accompanist to vocalists who would come in front of the class and sing any song, whatever they wanted to sing. I would hear the song for the first time, not knowing it, and I'd have to figure out how to accompany it. And that was Zalmen's ideas and his teaching that helped me to do it. So these were the direct teachers right there.
And of course, Lorin Sklamberg. I think I mentioned Frank London, I mentioned Merlin as my teachers. Each of them gave me some other angle of this general professional attitude and just being a musician.
Leah Roseman:
Merlin's clarinet playing. I guess he plays sax. Does he play other instruments?
Polina Shepherd:
Yeah. He plays guitar really well, electric guitar, his other side. Yeah, but saxophone and flute.
Leah Roseman:
Has it taught you collaborating so much with a wind player, he's very free with his music. Has that helped you?
Polina Shepherd:
Oh yeah, very much so. Because I sometimes sing as if it's an instrument. I treat my voice as an instrument. I think that I've learned some things from Merlin. There are two ways to play a note on the clarinet, and he uses it as an ornament. Not just him, but clarinetists use it. He plays with that sound a lot. And maybe because of that, I learned to sing a note with changing the color of the note, still holding a note, kind of going in and out of this. He does that too. So all these little ornaments, I think I picked up a lot of it from Merlin. And just sometimes screaming with your instruments, rather than playing it nicely. He has this few saxophone solos on some of the early CDs that we recorded together and it's really screaming. I dare, screaming sometimes with ... We have the song ..., Psoy Korolenko and I have a song in which I'm supposed to make people uncomfortable by singing really high and in a kind of very piercing way, because of the effect. The effect is to make people shiver. I think that without listening to Merlin, just going for that sound, daring, I wouldn't dare myself to do this.
But I like that. I like that exchange. Again, going outside of the box of just the voice, the voice as an instrument.
Leah Roseman:
I'm curious, what are you doing with Apollo's Fire? What kind of repertoire?
Polina Shepherd:
Yiddish. Yiddish. So they have a program called Exile with four different vocalists. It's a mixture of different cultures, and each of them will be bringing their own culture into the project and they're arranging it. We will sing a few songs together. It's not yet decided which songs, but they'll be from different, it's a mixture of cultures. I'm bringing Yiddish songs to the project. I'm really, really looking forward to it because it's a fantastic orchestra. They're beautiful, and singing Yiddish songs with a baroque orchestra, it'll be interesting. It's kind of contrasting in a way, this folk way of thinking and then more formal, more arranged classical sounds. I'm really looking forward to how it'll turn out in the end. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
I was wondering if you'd be willing to consider performing a niggun?
Polina Shepherd:
Oh yeah. Okay. Let's do this one. It's called Koyach which means, power, inner strength.
Leah Roseman:
Thank you. It's a real privilege for me to have what feels like a private concert, but everyone in the world can enjoy your performance. Thank you.
Polina Shepherd:
Thank you.
Leah Roseman:
It's been a real pleasure hearing all your history and your stories today. I'm just wondering, to finish up, you've gone through such changes in your life when you moved to Kazan and went through all this, the opening of the Iron Curtain. You couldn't have imagined your future now. Is there anything you might have said to yourself at that time in terms of the future that would have helped, or maybe you didn't need help?
Polina Shepherd:
Oh yeah, I did. A lot of things were tough. Yeah, a lot of things were tough. I just think if I met myself when I was 17, I would just hug myself. I would say, everything will turn out okay because there were so many challenges. There was a lot of uncertainty. What was around me, what I had to ... I wouldn't say fight against. I don't like that word. I would say, I had to overcome a lot of things. I would say, keep going step by step, step by step. Rely on the positive human nature. There are good people everywhere you go. There will be support, there will be love. There will be music, good music, and people who love music everywhere you go. Because finding your own audience, finding your own voice and relate to that audience, I think has been the biggest challenge professionally speaking. And if I'd known that ... if somebody had told me when I was 20 that I would have a project with Lorin Sklamberg, that I'll be playing with Merlin Shepherd. All that. That Adrienne Cooper would record my own song that I'd composed. If somebody said that to me back then, I would be over the moon. But I am over the moon now that I've done all these things. So I think trusting myself is something that I probably had, but I wish I had more of that.
I think that it's just generally something that we need to do. We just need to trust ourselves, trust the heart. Follow intuition, follow ... I don't know. Follow some kind of soul connection. I don't know how to word this. It's something deep. It's something that just feels right, something that should feel right. And that's like a moral little indicator, that moral little catalyst, this feels right. Whatever feels right here will happen, will manifest, will be in reality. And if I have an idea that seems crazy and impossible and not realistic, if it feels right, then it will manifest. And that knowledge, I wish I had it back then and I have it now. I think that's something I have to hold onto. Because obviously with all the political crazy things now happening in my country, actually my three countries, I have to have some kind of ground. I guess that's the ground. That's the ground, and the people all over the world. The people whom I meet over Zooms, over programs like this. And thank you very much because meeting you and even the fact that you wanted to interview me, is huge support.
It means a lot. Thank you.
Leah Roseman:
Well, it's been my honor. I hope that people will check out, of course, in the link, they can hear your albums and see what you're up to currently.
Polina Shepherd:
Thank you very much.
Leah Roseman:
I hope you enjoyed this episode with Polina. I was so moved so have this opportunity to have this conversation with her, and Season 3 of this series continues with a wide variety of musicians worldwide, sharing their perspectives on a life so enriched by music. For less than the cost of a monthly cup of tea you can support this series and have access to a range of unique perks tailored to your interests, the link is in the description. Please help this series find new listeners by sharing this episode, and rating and reviewing the podcast on Apple podcasts. If you sign up for my newsletter through my website Leahroseman dot com you will receive lots of sneak peeks for upcoming episodes. Have a good week!
