Mezzo-soprano J'Nai Bridges opens the 2023 Great Artists Series at Washington University this weekend

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J'Nai Bridges. Courtesy of Dario Acosta.

Mezzo-soprano J'Nai Bridges

The Washington University Department of Music kicks off their 2023 Great Artist Series with a performance by celebrated mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges and pianist Mark Markham at the E. Desmond Lee Concert Hall in the 560 Music Center on January 29 at 7 p.m. 

Co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity & Equity (CRE2), Bridges’ appearance will include another event at the Pillsbury Theatre in the 560 Music Center on January 27 at 5 p.m—Conversation and Cocktails with J'Nai Bridges—which will be free and open to the public. Bridges will be joined by Opera Theatre of St. Louis (OTSL) New Works Collective featured artist Melissa Joseph, along with host Sarah Price from Washington University.

“We have faculty and students across all disciplines that are blazing new paths of discovery every single day, and this series is essentially musical discovery in action,” says Jennifer Gartley, director of programming and applied music. “Beyond the university, we are really intentional about developing corollary programming for these mainstage concerts that breaks down barriers that often surround classical music.”

Following Bridges, the 2023 Great Artist Series will continue on March 4 with Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, featuring cellist Gary Hoffman. Internationally acclaimed pianist Emanuel Ax will perform on March 26, and violinist Augustin Hadelich will conclude the Series on April 16.

“We have over 1100 students participating in music in some form through the department’s academic and performance offerings, and these students have wildly exciting opportunities to work with some of the best performers on the planet,” says Gartley. “I think the Series reflects the commitment to excellence and distinction that we hold so close here at Wash. U. while demonstrating the University’s commitment of ‘in St. Louis, for St. Louis.’”

Ahead of Bridges’ performance, we chatted with the Tacoma-area native, who made her long-awaited Seattle Opera debut last weekend in Saint-Saens’ Samson and Delilah.

You’ve spoken at length before about growing up in the African Methodist Episcopal tradition, having sung in the church choir since you were a child. How would you trace the source of your passion for music in your early life?

My passion for music started at a very young age, and it actually started with the piano around age 4. My parents stuck me in piano lessons because they saw that I was banging on the piano we had in our house. I would wake up in the mornings and bang away, and my mom said she eventually thought it sounded like music…that’s what she says. So I started in private piano lessons , nd then I also joined the children’s choir at Allen AME Church around age 5 or 6, so music has always been in my world and in my ear.

I actually sang in the church choir all the way through high school, and my dad is really the one who gave me the “gift of music” because he has a beautiful voice, so I also grew up listening to him singing in the choir, and just being surrounded by music in the church. And at home my family would always be playing music—not necessarily classical music but Motown, jazz, gospel, blues—so music was always being infused in me, even when I didn’t realize it.

Who were some of your first operatic influences?

I have so many operatic influences, but there are two that particularly come to my mind. Ms. Kathleen Battle—when I first started singing classically, I remember going down the rabbit hole and I stumbled upon her album with Wynton Marsalis. And I just thought, "Oh, my gosh, how can a voice make those sounds?" And I became what you might call obsessed with her. I even tried to emulate her sound, which is clearly very different from mine. But I was young and I had a much lighter voice. But, yes, Kathleen Battle for sure. And she's actually become somewhat of a mentor to me today, which is really, really an amazing full-circle moment. 

And the next singer is Madam Jessye Norman, Queen Jessye Norman, I like to call her. She just sang such a vast variety of music and had a huge repertoire and mastered them all in a way that is really unmatched, in my opinion. So it's really amazing to go back and listen to her works and sing some of the repertoire that she sings and to collaborate with Mark Markham, pianist, who also played very extensively and toured with Jessye Norman for 20 years.

It’s been a delight to follow your recent work with Damien Sneed, the polymath composer and conductor, with whom you’ve notably appeared on the stage of Carnegie Hall and online for NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Concert series. As it happens, OTSL is bringing his performance “Our Song, Our Story” to The Sheldon next month. Could you talk about your collaborations with artists like Sneed, who showcase musical styles from the African-American diaspora?

Collaboration is, for me, the most exciting part about being a musician, whether it be collaborating with composers that are no longer here or composers that are here, like Damien Sneed. It's really fun because we get to discover things in real time. And when he writes a piece, I can ask him questions about his vision and his intentions behind that line of music or that phrase and really kind of figure it out and build something together in real time, which is really a luxury, I think.

The African-American musical diaspora is so vast. It's just never-ending, the interest and possibilities that are at hand. So I'm always discovering with Damian and with Carlos Simon and African-American composers that are living today. That, for me, is really exciting—to just keep discovering, and creating, and telling stories that perhaps haven't been told or reimagining them in another way that is honest and truthful and accessible.

Alongside sopranos Melissa Joseph and Sarah Price, you’ll be discussing your career and your activism on Friday evening. In the past, you’ve remarked that “the opera house has to look more like America.” What are some initiatives underway that have you hopeful about getting younger people into seats and onto the stage?

Well, I can't speak for every institution, but I do know that there are many institutions in this country that have taken efforts towards diversity, equity, and inclusion. And one of those efforts is hiring diversity, equity, and inclusion staff, people that are scholars in that department to come up with initiatives in ways to diversify the concert halls and the opera houses on and off stage.

So I know that that is happening for sure. And I have seen an influx of new works telling stories that have never been told before, which is also great and a hopeful thing. And just generally discussions about inequities in classical music and opera. I'm hopeful, you know, that there is change, lasting change, and I'm grateful that the LA Opera talk that I moderated seemed to kind of catapult this reckoning.

Audiences who aren’t familiar with your wide repertoire might be surprised to see the range of compositions you’ve prepared for Sunday’s performance, from a few selected songs by Johannes Brahms to the soulful Cantata for voice and piano (1964) by St. Louis-born composer John Carter. What inspired your selections for the program?

What's inspired my program is basically wanting to tap into all human emotions. So we have obviously love and despair in the Brahms, spirituality and hope in the Carter and striving for a better place, and “Scheherazade,” about transporting people into this kind of fantasy world.

I know that recently I've just had to kind of transport myself, as in the last few years since COVID. Transportation has really been heavy on my conscience just because life is a lot. And so we're tapping into human emotions, elements of our emotions, in a way that is just so beautiful in each segment. Each composer that I'm singing really does that so gorgeously and differently. I really wanted to showcase all that I can do because I feel personally, I've never been one to be put in a box. And so I wanted to show people all that I can do and all that I'm passionate about while expressing these human emotions that we go through every day.

Tickets are available through the Edison Theatre Box Office, 314-935-6543, or at music.wustl.edu/events.