Soprano / Conductor  Susan  Davenny  Wyner

A Conversation with Bruce Duffie



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Susan Davenny Wyner (born October 17, 1943* in New Haven, Connecticut) is a nationally-acclaimed American conductor based in Massachusetts. She had a promising career as a soprano, which was ended in April of 1983 by an automobile/bicycling accident that damaged her vocal cords.

Her father, pianist Ward Davenny, was professor of music at Yale University. She was originally trained as a violinist and violist. Following early studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Hartford School of Music, she graduated summa cum laude from Cornell University in 1965 with degrees in both comparative English literature and music. In 1967, she married composer and pianist Yehudi Wyner.  She entered into vocal studies with Herta Glaz from 1969 to 1975. She received a Fulbright scholarship and a grant from the Ford Foundation, and also won the Walter W. Naumberg Prize.

She made her solo debut as a vocalist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1974 under Michael Tilson Thomas. She was later a soloist in Handel's Messiah under Sir Colin Davis with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Symphony Hall and Carnegie Hall. She sang in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., under Leonard Bernstein, who invited her to perform his own Kaddish Symphony and Songfest. Wyner made her first New York City Opera appearance as Claudio Monteverdi's Poppea on October 23, 1977. She received critical acclaim as the lead role in Maurice Ravel's opera L'Enfant et les Sortileges with André Previn. She made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Woglinde in Das Rheingold under Erich Leinsdorf, on October 8, 1981, and also recorded Erwartung in 1981.

She had an international career, performing as a soprano soloist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra London Symphony Orchestra, Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, and many others. Besides those already mentioned, she sang engagements with notable conductors such as Lorin Maazel, Seiji Ozawa, and Robert Shaw. She was a successful as a performer of music in both historic and modern vernaculars. She regularly premiered works written especially for her, some of which were recorded for Columbia Masterworks, Angel Records/EMI, Composers Recordings, Inc., and Musical Heritage Society.

Following her accident, she studied conducting, leading to a subsequent career for which she has received critical acclaim. For this, she studied at Yale and Columbia University and received conducting fellowships for study at the Tanglewood Music Festival, the Aspen Music Festival, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute. She has had conducting positions at the New England Conservatory, the Cleveland Institute of Music, Wellesley College, Cornell University, and Brandeis University. In 1998, she was the assistant conductor at Chicago's Grant Park Music Festival, a position that was created especially for her.

Since 1999 Davenny Wyner has served as the Music Director and Conductor of the Warren Philharmonic Orchestra in Warren, Ohio. She also leads two opera companies as Music Director and Conductor: Opera Western Reserve in Youngstown, Ohio, since its creation in 2004, and the Boston Midsummer Opera since 2007.


*During our conversation, she insisted the year was 1945.

==  Names which are links in this box and below refer to my interviews elsewhere on my website.  BD  
==  Note that some of the recordings used as illustrations on this webpage, which were originally on LP, have been re-issued on CD.  



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In December of 1994, Susan Davenny Wyner was in Chicago to lead the annual Do-It-Yourself Messiah.  With an orchestra and soloists on the stage, the audience became the chorus.  As usual, the performance went very well, and a fine time was had by all.

I took advantage of the opportunity to meet and interview both Susan and her husband, composer Yehudi Wyner.  Two separate dates were set up so that each could concentrate on the individual artist.  The link in the box above goes to his interviews, and after using portions of this conversation on WNIB a couple of times, I am pleased to now [2025] present the entire encounter with Susan.

She had been a respected soprano before moving to conducting, so we spoke of both sides of her career . . . . .


Bruce Duffie:   You’ve sung old music and new music, but you seem to have gravitated to the new music, so I’d like to concentrate on that a bit, if we may.  You’re now doing some conducting.  Does this include new music?

Susan Davenny Wyner:   I have a chance to do some.  I enjoy exploring new music and what’s going on, and have been able to commission some works.  The groups that I’ve been working with on a regular basis have, to this point, been choral.  Finding the mix of rehearsal time and repertoire that I’ve been doing with them, means that I haven’t been able to do as much new music as I would like.

BD:   In your concerts, do you generally strive to add some new pieces as well the standard works?

Wyner:   Yes.  I try to do a whole mix of things.  That’s very important.  [Vis-à-vis the recording shown at left, see my interview with Robert Spano, and Jacob Druckman.]

BD:   How can we convince more of the audience that new music is important?

Wyner:   Partly it has to do with how one programs it.  I’ve enjoyed juxtaposing works that were not necessarily of the same century or epoch, and found that depending on the works, it would create a very stimulating way of hearing the music.  For example, I would sometimes choose to open a recital program with the Webern Op 25, a very alert and deliciously bright piece, and then sing some Purcell songs.  I would find that the placing the two worlds together would cause a kind of reflection to happen.  In a forward direction, one would hear the quietness of the pacing in the Purcell, and at the same time one would also be thinking back over what one had just heard in the Webern.  That’s something I enjoy doing in programming.

BD:   So, you have to be very careful in placing the right pieces with the right pieces.

Wyner:   Oh, absolutely!  I remember once I tried to put Stravinsky next to Strauss, and it was a disaster.  It just created and reflected the nature of the material in a way that did not enhance the Strauss.

BD:   Was it Stravinsky against Strauss, or was it just that particular piece of Stravinsky against that particular piece of Strauss?

Wyner:   I don’t think so.  Perhaps one could find two pieces that could sit next to one another, but the Stravinsky made the Strauss feel tawdry in some way.  It’s as if the spare purity of the material was versus the way the Strauss was using his material.  It did not create a good way of hearing the Strauss.

BD:   Now let’s talk a little bit about singing, and then we’ll come back to the conducting.  When you were singing recitals and concerts, you had even a bigger repertoire than most because you allowed more growth at both ends.  How did you decide which pieces you would accept and which piece you would not accept?

Wyner:   What a wonderful question!  That was always the problem.  I seemed to find that I wanted every day to last an extra six hours, and I certainly wanted every concert to last an extra six hours.  [Laughs]  Part of the joy of being able to do many recitals was finding ways to mix and match things.  It would partly be what was deeply fascinating to me at that time, and partly what would create the richest variety of worlds in a concert.

BD:   So, within your range there would be nothing that would be out of your vocal possibilities?

Wyner:   I really went at the singing with a quiet discipline.  At the beginning I had no thought of wanting any kind of career.  I was just fascinated to try to learn to sing.  The great singers that I admired were singing, and I was particularly struck by the early Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, as well as Elisabeth Schumann, and Bidu Sayão.  Singers like that knew how to spin a line, and they particularly interested me.  It also partly came out of my love of instrumental music, and of the colors and the density of meaning one could get out of spinning a pure line that didn’t fracture into generic vibratos and immediate gratifications.  They would create long spins and arches, and get to the poetry behind the words, and the meaning of the poetry behind the actual specific words.  All that fascinated me.

BD:   This leads to one of my favorite questions.  Within the piece of music, where’s the balance between the beautiful vocal line, and the text you are trying to project?

Wyner:   That was always fascinating to me, and had I continued to sing, or been able to continue singing, that would have been something I would have gotten more and more intrigued by.  It was the individual culture and texture of the language, because that’s something I am deeply sensitive to, as I am now working with other people.  I am excited by the different structures of language, and the actual sounds, and the grain of the voices.  We would talk about that balance of what music can carry as an abstract language, versus what music in combination with words does.  This is something that I find deeply stimulating.  One of the things I love doing as a conductor is combining the instrumental with the vocal and the choral.  I love working with individual singers in that sense of trying both to serve the nobility and the passion of the music, but at the same time to bringing out in whatever singer I’m working with what is most individual and specific about that particular singer’s vision.  That is something I’m very excited about, and would love to do more and more of as a conductor, because I know from the other end what it is to be on stage as a performer.  Therefore, I feel it allows me a special perspective as a conductor to enhance whatever the individual artist is doing.

BD:   Are you then a singer’s conductor?

Wyner:   I would hope I am!  [Laughs]  I am a singer’s conductor in that sense, but having started as an instrumentalist, I felt myself changing enormously as I learned how to sing.
 
BD:   How so?
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Wyner:   Even though I stopped playing the violin seriously, when I would come back to it for the purposes of bowing, or just because I missed it, I would find that I was playing it so differently.  There was such an intense variety of directions and shapes of lines because of what I had learned as a singer, and I found even in the little bit I’ve done now in working with orchestras, it’s all of that delving into dramatic shapes and meaning and color in the human voice.  That combination is something which allows me to go after a certain coloration in purely instrumental music that might bring out a quality of singing, as well as anything else in the instrumental sound.

BD:   Now would it be good for singers to take a semester of clarinet, or a year of violin?  [Vis-à-vis the recording shown at right, see my interviews with Harvey Sollberger, and Joan Tower.]

Wyner:   I’ve always felt that.  A singer should be a complete musician, and a deeply cultured human being, because as far as reading and poetry, and the deeper the musicianship, the more the voice serves the art rather than the other way round.
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BD:   You’re delving into this and that, and rehearsing, and getting as much out of it as you can.  Are you able to project some, or most, or all of this to the audience each night?

Wyner:   One hopes so!  Becoming a conductor, it was at first very strange to me because of what had become the most naturally expressive medium for me, which was the voice.  The eyes, and the face were in no way part of my communication to an audience as a conductor, because of course my back was to them.

BD:   You don’t feel that you are looking into a great big reflection which would then go out behind you?

Wyner:   No, but what one does is communicate with the musicians, because they are indeed the instrument.  As a conductor, one is merely a vehicle for the music.  In the purest sense of the term, that process of making a performance live in the moment is something I’ve always loved.  There is something deeply exciting about live performance, and living the danger of the moment is something that I have always loved.

BD:   It is a good kind of danger?

Wyner:   It is a wonderful kind of danger, where you know there’s no going back.  You’re playing with shapes, and things that are developing and will never happen again.  No matter how many times you do it, there’s always something different.  We all know that part of the joy of the music-making is that it’s never finished.  One never can completely plumb the depth of a work of art.

BD:   Without mentioning any specific names, are there perhaps pieces that you can get to the bottom of, and thus they are not as great as the masterpieces?

Wyner:   I think so.  There are pieces that one can find solutions to, and then manipulate in a certain way as vehicles because they are perhaps not as dense, or as deeply constructed, or out of such refined material.  But the very fact that it’s a living medium is part of its challenge and fascination.  It makes great demands on us as performers to be constantly delving into new ways of thinking about it.  There are times when you feel you have given a performance that really says what you want to say at that moment, or what you would conceive of.  There are those magic times, and then, having the experience of having to get out and do it again is sometimes deeply challenging, because you don’t get the same kind of intensity at the next performance.  You get a wonderful and often difficult challenge of not repeating, or not trying to repeat what you’ve done, but, at the same time, if there’s a certain integrity to what you’ve been building as an artist, you do feel committed to do it.

BD:   If you’re doing a group of three performances in a row, is the first one always going to be a little more exciting, or the last one more polished?

Wyner:   I didn’t find that there was an ‘always’ about it.  It safer to think that there is a series of goals that one is going after, and therefore there was so much to do, or so much to go after that there may be a raw excitement in the first one.  Or there may be a nervousness, or there may be an ‘oh, my goodness!’  This is what happens under performance adrenaline.  Thank God, I’ve got another performance, or thank God we can check this different idea!

BD:   If you’ve given a performance that might not be exactly right, does it ever surprise you when people come back and say it was wonderful?

Wyner:   Of course!  Any of us have had that wonderful experience where our imperfect gift has been received as something very precious, and we’ve all had the other experience where we feel we’ve given something very special and somehow it did not cross the footlights.  The recording medium itself is often very startling.  I’ve certainly found this while conducting and working with large forces in a big hall, where I, as an artist, am shaping according to what I’m hearing off the walls, and the echoes in the sense of the architecture of the building, which do affect how I think of the architecture of the music.  The actual physical aura of sound will affect subtle things in the phrasing and tempos that I will choose.  Then, hearing a recording of that performance will often be absolutely terrifying, because part of what the microphones have not done is to pick up the building sound and the reverberation.  I find that if the mikes have been close, the architecture, or the shaping of the phrases, didn’t read the way they would if I was playing to a listener, or hearing the piece that had a certain point of view.
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BD:   So, you need to know your audience?

Wyner:   I think so, and in some subtle ways it helps to have them there.  Perhaps one reaches such a refined perspective on certain pieces that there would be no difference where the music simply exists in a certain pacing that would work well on a recording as well as in the hall.

BD:   We’ve been dancing all around this, so let me hit the question straight on.  What is the purpose of music?

Wyner:   I don’t have a simple answer to it, but for me it delves into the most fascinating, and deepest richest resources of the human spirit.  I find the range of worlds that music allows us to explore, and to devote ourselves into, is an extraordinary gift.  I would wish that everybody had been given as children the possibility of reading the language of notation, so that they would feel it was part of something they could delve into.  I have always been fascinated by the range and the density of Debussy, Brahms, Monteverdi, Elliott Carter, Yehudi Wyner, and others.  Whatever the range, even within a composer’s work, what we are then able to explore is really staggering.  As I said, the combination of words and music I find deeply moving, from having been a solo singer who tried to express the soul of music through the singing voice, to learning to be a vehicle for other people to make music.  To learn to be a leader, in the best sense of the term, for me means inviting people into the process of the music itself, and joining together all the parts of the human spirit.  These include the pure play of intellect, the emotions, the spiritual aspirations, and whatever it is that causes us to want to be better than we are.  There is also the compassion, and grieving, and the ability to step into experiences that we have not had, but can live through the music because we’re living in real time.  All that allows us to stretch and grow as human beings, and it’s been a great honor for me to have been given the gift through the conducting and working with many people, and having them join together to serve a purpose.  It’s very, very moving, and demanding, and a never-ending process.

BD:   I assume it’s very special performing music of your husband?

Wyner:   Yes, very much so.  They were for me as a singer.  He wrote things for something he heard in my voice which deeply moved him, and that was so precious to feel that my voice was able to draw a kind of music out of him that I hadn’t heard from him before.  It was very, very special, and when I lost the ability to sing after the accident, one of the first things that I did when I had the wonderful chorus at Cornell, was to ask if he would write a piece for us to do.  So he wrote some wonderful choruses on poetry of Marianne Moore.  I have now conducted several of his works.

BD:   Have you heard works that he wrote for you sung by other singers?  [Vis-à-vis the LP shown at right, see my interviews with Pierre Boulez.]

Wyner:   I have indeed, and it’s a fascinating experience to hear.  That’s one of the joys of music.  When I was very early in my career, I had an opportunity to work with great conductors and wonderful musicians.  I kept wanting to find one conductor who would say it all.  That kind of opportunity was afforded to me by Leonard Bernstein, and the work with Colin Davis.  They had such an intense vision of things.  In some very childish way, I wanted to find one person who could be the total and complete musician, and it was wonderfully healthy for me to understand that music can’t be caged like that.  One has to allow artists the opportunity to be absolutely wonderful at something, and not so wonderful at something else.  I think sometimes we, as listeners or observers of our artists, are quite unforgiving of the process of exploration.  Sometimes they do not meet our expectations, but it’s part of the exploring, or the living, or the music.
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BD:   Now you were yourself a singer for a long time so you know all of the joys and pitfalls of this repertoire.  What advice do you have for those who would like to try and sing the same kinds of things you did?

Wyner:   One of the most important things is to really have a technique that will allow you to serve the range of things music has to say.  That is the purpose of your technique.  The more one has to say as an artist, the more one needs a technique that will simply allow a range of color, and density of expression.  Even if they have extraordinary natural gifts, the patient apprenticeship that all singers have gone through is something that is very important.  If one is a serious singer, the process involves getting the voice in order so that it is an instrument which is reliable, and will allow one to explore a range of things.  That means finding a good teacher, having the patience to learn and study, and not be impatient with the time it takes to get such things in order.  That’s not to say that the demands one needs to put on oneself as a musician shouldn’t be enormous, but the real disciplined art of learning in order to sing well is very, very important.  Otherwise, the instrument won’t serve the music without fracturing, and being able to create a specific color in various tessituras and parts of the voice.  You learn that you can’t sing a Brahms line that would differ greatly from a Handelian line.

BD:   Again, without mentioning names, are there some singers coming along who have taken the time and the trouble to work at this, and perfect their craft enough?

Wyner:   I’m sure there are.  One of the dilemmas in our culture is our tendency to want somebody who is young and very talented to be able to say it all right away.  We tend to push people into situations which ask them to produce before they are ready.  The singers who’ve had a chance to really mature and develop have often been the ones who’ve done a combined career in Europe.  For example, they’ve been able to sing in spaces like churches, which offer beautiful acoustical feedback, so that as one is singing, one has the pleasure of hearing the voice come back.  They do not always try to sing in opera houses the size of the Metropolitan in New York.  Also, there are singers who have been allowed to have the experience of doing a range of music that’s appropriate to their point in time.  There are people who really care, and who are nurturing young singers, but it’s hard because when there is a very talented person, it’s very easy for both managers and the public to demand a lot too soon.

BD:   We’re all greedy!

Wyner:   Yes, I think we are!  [Gales of laughter]

BD:   Because it’s in your own household, what advice do you have for someone who wants to write music for the voice, as we’re coming to the end of this millennium?

Wyner:   One of the most important things is to understand that the human voice is different from an instrument.

BD:   [With a gentle nudge]  You’re not a clarinet???  [More laughter]

Wyner:   No.  Unfortunately, we can’t open the box, and take it out and put it together.  The people who wrote beautifully for the singing voice are those who worked with voices, and understood the nature of vocal ranges.  They know where certain pitches would lie, and the demands that certain notes in the voice make on the voice.  They understand how to write a line, or shape lines that challenge a voice, but at the same time understanding the physical nature of the singing.  So, if somebody is interested in writing for the voice, it is useful to get involved in a voice studio, or opera workshop, or just being around singers who are seriously working.  That way they can learn some of the flukes and problems and joys of the singing voice.  That makes all the difference.  They need to understand that one can write things that would actually physically hurt a singing voice.
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BD:   And avoid those?

Wyner:   And avoid those, yes, exactly.  [More gales of laughter]

BD:   You’ve been working with choruses lately.  Are there major differences in the singing techniques of being a solo singer and being a choral singer?

Wyner:   I’ve been fascinated to try, and as part of the work with the chorus I’ve been absolutely convinced that what I learned through those years of disciplining the breath, and learning to spin the voice outside, that all of it could be taught in a choral situation.  In fact, the choral situation enhances a certain kind of courage to explore.  So I have had a wonderful time working with choruses.  Very often, it is just the terminology I will use, or the way I will physicalize a gesture.  I’ve had a wonderful time trying to show people how the breath gets used, or how one can think about certain vowel spins, or ways to enhance the chorister’s singing as individuals at the same time we are creating a sound as a group.  I’ve been very encouraged, and I’ve seen real results.  I do not do a kind of work with a chorus that in any way would cause a real singer in the chorus any grief.  In fact, in working with people who are studying individually and then singing in the chorus, I have found that they actually make enormous progress through that process of singing in the group, if, of course, the group is being asked to sing the way that is healthy, and imaginative, and on the breath.

BD:   Can we assume the progress would be just for a short time, and that they shouldn’t remain with the chorus too long if they want to be a solo singer?

Wyner:   Yes, for some people.  For example, there is a very good group of singers in Boston who simply sing Bach Cantatas together as a small chorus every week.  This is the Emmanuel group, and these are people who are out doing major international careers now.  They simply do not find that singing in a wonderful small chorus in any way does harm to their work as soloists.  However, it would depend very much on the individual involved.  If a tenor is working on the true ring in the voice, for example, it wouldn’t be appropriate to have that squashed in a choral situation.  But for the most part, I think it can often be a very positive experience.
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BD:   I don’t want to dwell on this, but I would just like a little background about the break in your life.  Briefly, what happened, and how did it affect your abilities?

Wyner:   I went through an experience that many people have gone through in life, where suddenly in the blink of an eye, your life changed.  It happened that I was on a bicycle with a helmet on, and I was hit by a hit-and-run driver.

BD:   Where was this?

Wyner:   I used to bicycle in Central Park in New York when it was closed to traffic.  This was about a six-mile loop that I loved to do.  It’s part of my need to be out in the natural world in the city.  So I was just coming out of the cross street on West 72nd, and was hit.  I was pretty badly injured, but made a miraculous recovery.  I had been thrown onto my head, so that all of the tissue in the throat and cords were deeply damaged.  I spent two or three or four years, trying to retrain the singing voice.  There was muscular trauma in the neck and throat that had been permanently damaged, and that didn’t heal.  That wonderful way the high soprano and classical singing demands that incredible precision of musculature and breath never healed.  Luckily, I got involved in the conducting.

BD:   At the point you realized that you wouldn’t sing in public anymore, how long did it take you to restart and become a conductor?

Wyner:   Luckily it happened almost simultaneously.  I had gotten involved in teaching at Cornell University while I was in the process of retraining the voice, and was quite sure that I’d be back out on stage.  It was just a temporary setback, and conducting was a delightful thing to be doing.  So the process of understanding that the damage was really permanent, happened just as I had already gotten involved in the experience of working with young people.  They had asked if I would help them give a concert, and conduct them in some pieces.  I was so excited at the idea of exposing them to a range of things from the 13th century to pieces which had just been written, that I said of course I would help them do it.  It was wonderful for me to live through the music again.  There was the danger of the moment, and I had to realize that I really understood something as a performer that would allow me to learn to conduct.  I felt well enough to be a vehicle for this.  I understood instinctively in that first concert where the group was in its excitement, but it meant that all of my physical gestures would need to be changed in a way that would respond to what was actually happening that moment.

BD:   So, you knew what you wanted to say, but now you had to learn how to communicate it?

Wyner:   Yes, but I’m not sure it was quite that simple, even though the process goes along simultaneously.  As one is communicating, one is learning, and as one is learning, one is communicating, so I found that the process went on simultaneously.  I know what I was trying to say was slightly different.  The musicians I find most stimulating and exciting are the ones who really live the moment as it is happening, and that’s what I understood about myself that gave me hope that I could really learn the art of conducting.  In the moment of performing as a conductor, I was able to respond to what was actually happening.  I wasn’t going on with a pre-conceived idea, or pre-conceived series of motions that had worked before.  I have worked with enough great conductors and great musicians to understand what that means.

BD:   Are you optimistic about the future of music and music-making?

Wyner:   I am optimistic in the sense that I believe it’s one of the most important things human beings can do together.  There will always be people who deeply care, and have an ability to teach and communicate, and draw others into that art.  The music itself exists, and is being written by talented people.  This is so important and deep that there will always be people who will delve into it.  So in that sense, I’m optimistic.  However, I’m concerned about things going on in our culture, and I am concerned about what the media are saying to our young people.  There is the urge for immediate gratification, and an urge that things happen quickly, while there is a certain passivity all the time in observing things.  There is an impatience that counts.  I don’t think our culture puts value on working at what takes tremendous time and quietness, and may take years to come to fruition.

BD:   The other side of the coin is that everything is disposable.

Wyner:   Exactly, and that deeply concerns any of us who are concerned about the values that are not easily sold, and need to be carefully tended by us as a culture.  We have to somehow convince people that these things are precious, and are parts of us as human beings.  The fact that they are not glitzy and attractive to multitudes does not mean that they do not have serious value to us.  We have to be optimistic doing what we’re doing, and part of what we know is that if you reach somebody or engage somebody, you have enriched a life, or shared something which is very precious.  I don’t think we can always measure things in numbers, but rather in the intensity of value, or time.  It can plant a seed for change that then gets nurtured in somebody else.  Anybody who is an educator, or an artist, deeply believes that, and I don’t see much difference between the two.  The great educators are artists in their way, and artists nowadays need to be wonderful educators.  People who really can teach make such a wonderful adventure out of it, that people don’t realize they’re being taught.  They’re being drawn into such a magical universe that they just want to know more and more, and more.  I think that’s the case for anyone trying to make music.  One of our deepest missions is to find a way to draw people into what’s so extraordinary about the process.

BD:   Thank you for all of your musicianship, and thank you for your courage.

Wyner:   Thank you.   
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See my interviews with Virgil Thomson, Arthur Berger, Harold Shapero, Lukas Foss, and Alexei Haieff

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See my interviews with Louise Talma, Barbara Martin, Paul Sperry, and Arthur Weisberg.
Also, see the Recollections of Stefan Wolpe by his student M. William Karlins.



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See my interviews with Donald Harris, Edwin London, Lucy Shelton, Gilbert Kalish, and Samuel Adler




© 1994 Bruce Duffie

This conversation was recorded in Chicago on December 15, 1994.  A copy of the unedited audio was placed in the Archive of Contemporary Music at Northwestern University.  Portions were broadcast on WNIB the following year, and again in 1998.  This transcription was made in 2025, and posted on this website at that time.  My thanks to British soprano Una Barry for her help in preparing this website presentation.

To see a full list (with links) of interviews which have been transcribed and posted on this website, click here.  To read my thoughts on editing these interviews for print, as well as a few other interesting observations, click here.

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Award - winning broadcaster Bruce Duffie was with WNIB, Classical 97 in Chicago from 1975 until its final moment as a classical station in February of 2001.  His interviews have also appeared in various magazines and journals since 1980, and he now continues his broadcast series on WNUR-FM, as well as on Contemporary Classical Internet Radio.

You are invited to visit his website for more information about his work, including selected transcripts of other interviews, plus a full list of his guests.  He would also like to call your attention to the photos and information about his grandfather, who was a pioneer in the automotive field more than a century ago.  You may also send him E-Mail with comments, questions and suggestions.