“We need to stop cosplaying as elites” w. Mari Esabel Valverde

Mari Esabel Valverde is an award-winning composer of choral music and among the leading voices in American choral composition today.  In addition to instructing high schoolers in classical voice, she has specialized in working with transgender vocalists like herself.  In this episode, you'll hear Mari tell host Khadija Mbowe about how she learned to overcome self-doubt, why "respect" is a trap, and why she loves icy people as much as she loves icy weather.

Chapters:

[01:53] Identifying opportunities for progress
[04:31] Unpacking the term "Latinx," and low representation in the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA)
[07:45] Early musical influences: Gameboy, Linda Ronstadt, and Debussy, oh my!
[11:40] The correlation between weather and personality 
[15:10] Teaching herself and others to unlearn shame 
[21:25] Why Mari doesn't care for the word “respect"
[24:15] Building and breaking trust
[27:53]  Parting advice
[30:58] Lightning round 

Music from this episode:

"Winter Ride" (2018)
"A Winter Ride" by Amy Lowell.
Performed by the International Orange Chorale of San Francisco (iocsf.org), conducted by Zane Fiala (premiere recording).

"El triste león" (2019) from Canciones del pasado
Traditional/Folk text from the San Luis Valley, Colorado and New Mexico compiled in Canciones del pasado Copyright © 1967 by Ruth Marie Colville. Used with permission of the author.
Performed by tenor Matthew Valverde, pianist Randy Macy, and violinist Sarah Off.

"Our Phoenix" (2015)
Excerpts from "Our Dangerous Sweetness" © 2012 Amir Rabiyah (https://www.amirrabiyah.com/). Used with permission of the author.

Disclaimer: This audio is courtesy of St. Olaf College and is used by permission. Performed by St. Olaf Chapel Choir, conducted by Tesfa Wondemagegnehu (https://www.tesfawon.com/) assisted by pianist Will Rand and trumpeter Nathan Lyle.

Links from this episode:
Mari's website: https://marivalverde.com/

American Choral Directors Association: https://acda.org/

Kat Blaque: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxFWzKZa74SyAqpJyVlG5Ew

St. Olaf College: https://wp.stolaf.edu/

 Dr. Anton Armstrong: https://www.stolaf.edu/profile/armstron

"Canciones de mi padre" (yes, Linda Ronstadt has Mexican heritage): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAk7IkKs5T4

Golden Sun soundtrack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLd6EKWjRZM

Bob the Drag Queen: https://www.instagram.com/bobthedragqueen/?hl=en

The Philadelphia Orchestra’s HearTOGETHER series is generously supported by lead corporate sponsor Accordant Advisors. Additional major support has been provided by the Otto Haas Charitable Trust.

Transcript

"Winter Ride" (2018)

"A Winter Ride" by Amy Lowell.

Performed by the International Orange Chorale of San Francisco (iocsf.org), conducted by Zane Fiala (premiere recording).

KHADIJA MBOWE VOICEOVER:

Hello, hi, and welcome back to the HearTOGETHER podcast from The Philadelphia Orchestra and Kimmel Center, Inc. This is a space where we hope you'll find a home in this art we all love. I'm your host, Khadija Mbowe, and I describe myself as a sociocultural content creator, classically trained soprano and loving provocateur. And I'm here to facilitate some heartfelt, engaging, disruptive conversations with artists, activists, and everyone in between. That’s you!

You just heard part of a piece called Winter Ride, composed by our guest today Mari Esabel Valade, a vocalist who specializes in coral and vocal music. And believe it or not, that's one of several pieces Muddy has written about winter. 

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE (00:47):

I love the snow. I love winter. I could live in the Arctic. I really don't like, I never complain about cold weather. Just put some clothes on. Listen, it's cute, anyway. It's so good and everything dies and it's just like the air smells different and I'm just like, “this is like a spiritual time for me”. I feel connected to the earth during the winter, in the summer I feel assaulted by the earth And I live in Texas. It's really unhappy. 

KHADIJA MBOWE VOICEOVER:

Mari also grew up in Texas— in a household with both parents (who by the way are still married after more than 35 years) and her brother, Matthew. The siblings both fell in love with singing as kids, and he also went on to pursue music. Today, they often compare notes from the field. 

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE There’s so much to unpack

KHADIJA MBOWE:

What are, could you name some of your, I, I don't wanna just call them gripes because that, I don't wanna mitigate the actual like, importance of what the issues are for you, but can you speak a bit more to that weekly conversations that you're having with your siblings or with your brother, sorry. And anyone else that you work with.

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE:

Yeah, so I'm trying to think of my conversation with him last time, but I think off the top of my head, like the low hanging fruit is when I go to a concert, especially if it's like one of the really bougie, celebrated ensembles performing and less than 50% of the composers are women or non-binary or like if they just don't have any living composers on their concert, they're too far gone. Like, don't talk to me

KHADIJA MBOWE:

That. So yes, <laugh>, sorry, just yes, <laugh> continue. Just yes, just yes. <laugh>.

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE:

I don't know, I feel like whenever I talk to millennials or younger, we all kind of get it because these are the people I've grown up with and so many of them are like really awesome musicians or they could have been, or they, maybe they are, but they don't want to be in the career anymore, which whatever, there's a whole whole bunch of people in my field that have inferiority complex or like they're itching badly for validation or they're just like completely disenchanted, alienated, they're done. Those people deserve to be celebrated. We need to adjust the definition of success and excellence to meet those people where they have been because they have been serving it. So people have asked me like, “how do we highlight or um, center indigenous voices,” you know, for example. And I'm like, “well, you have to go to their concert”.

It's not even like I caught myself saying the word “discover the work that they've been doing”. And I was like, “that's the 40% like European part of me saying that” <laugh>. And I'm like, “no, no, it's not discovered”. They've been doing it just white people with money haven't been attending their concerts, you know, or whatever communal music they create. And like this convention that's happening, it's the American Choral Directors Association. And the first word that I say is American. And I think this organization is less than 2%. The membership that was surveyed less than 2% Latinx or Latin or Latino or whatever. People just, people don't like that term. Yeah. People are gonna be upset either way. I say,

KHADIJA MBOWE:

 I got dragged online,

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE:

I say Latino, Latina or Latina. Yeah, for the, for the white folks. It's Latinx <laugh>.

KHADIJA MBOWE:

Yeah. I I—

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE:

I’m gonna get canceled

KHADIJA MBOWE:

<laugh>. I educated myself cuz I said Latinx once and people were like, “what the heck?” And I was like, “you know what, let me, lemme go do some googles, let me, lemme cipher through some things”.

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE:

<laugh>, it's understandable because the word before that people used the regular use of that word was “Latino” for a long time, or “Latinos,” which is an English word that is actually Spanish. So that's why there's all this controversy because “Latinx” is just like virtually unpronounceable, but to like trans people in America, it feels like, “well if you don't use Latinx then you are being transphobic”. And it's like, “look, I'm Mexican and <laugh> and trans, just calm down everybody. <laugh> just calm down.

KHADIJA MBOWE:

But you were saying though, it's the ACDA is 2% of their, uh, membership. Membership, is that what you're saying?

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE:

Well, they, they surveyed, it wasn't the whole membership. I mean it, it had to be a voluntary thing to be a part of the survey. 

KHADIJA MBOWE: Mm-hmm. <affirmative> 

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE: But of the survey, but of their survey it was like less than 2% Latino, latina, Latiné. So yeah, that was just striking to me because that's the category that I most identify with. But I just, I'll, I'll say it this way— the more success I've had in my career, the less I see myself

KHADIJA MBOWE:

Mm. Fell, felt, felt that very hard. And I I wanted to add extra context of like, if you look at the United States demographics, <laugh>, Latino, Latin,

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE:

Latiné, 

KHADIJA MBOWE:

Latiné folks, uh, don't make up just 2% of the population. <laugh> Oh, it's a large, large, large demographic.

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE:

I live in Texas

KHADIJA MBOWE:

Many, but <laugh>. Yes, exactly like <laugh>. So that's to add context for the audience, but I think what you said of the more quote unquote success you find or or all that, the less you see yourself and how isolating that can feel?

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE:

I, I've come to the realization that we're not taught our history. I, I mean the only reason I know of the percentages is because I, I spat in the tube and did the DNA thing, but I'm 50% indigenous Mexican and I don't know anything about that. But it's just like, I wasn't taught that and you know, I don't really blame my parents or my family. It's just that was not a priority for them to survive this economic system.

KHADIJA MBOWE:

In terms of your choral works and just the way you compose, even the stuff that you sing, was it influenced a lot by the music that you had growing up?

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE:

Oh, it's a mix of things. It's a mix of, I don't know if you know Kat Blaque but I've been following Kat Blaque for a long time and she has this little, she's doing shorts of like, “these are the albums that influenced me” cuz she and I are like the same age and yeah. Anyway, I I was thinking about “what would be my albums” and one of them is <foreign> Canciones de mi Padre by a artist named Linda Ronstadt. I don't know if she's Mexican. Exactly. She might be, she should be. I mean the, the album is very Mexican. I think the style would be considered, uh, like mariachi or similar to that it has orchestra in it. And my parents would play that all the time. So I think that is a sound that is from my childhood that lives with me that I have never seen really celebrated until very recently. And I don't identify much with it because, I mean, the story of my Mexican heritage is that like, like my, my dad was not supposed to speak Spanish in the home because he was in a of an era that like they were trying to whitewash themselves. Having a Spanish accent would make you marginalized— a Mexican accent in of Spanish. So that's one. I'm going off on a tangent already. I'm sorry.

KHADIJA MBOWE:

<laugh>. No, it's okay. It's okay.

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE:

Yeah, when I think about like my childhood, which I have forgotten a lot of it cuz I'm trans and that's just part of being trans. Also like video game music. I call myself a gamer, but I'm like a, a “normy gamer”. I love Pokemon, but there's a, there's a game from the Game Boy advance era called Golden Sun. I dunno how many bits don't come for me. It's like 60 bit, 64 bit. I don't know, it's something, I don't know the technology, but I know that it's just like the music that lived inside that little box was super memorable to me. And, um, what else? I like to tell people I had a very white education and so it was the German 

KHADIJA MBOWE:

Say more about that.

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE:

<laugh>, it was the German leider. It was, uh, French melodie— I love, love that light romantic era of French composers. I am self-taught in some facets of music, like music theory and piano. Like I wanted to compose music when I was in eighth grade. That's when I started. And so probably the best gift I ever got was this piano from my parents, ever. I had piano lessons eventually, but when I was starting out I was just kind of doodling. I went to the music store and I bought a book of Claude Debussy piano music and I, I sightread through it very poorly, but that was my first composition teacher. Really? Yeah. Those, those are also early influences. I would say.

KHADIJA MBOWE VOICEOVER:

Here's some of Mari's el triste leon from canciones del pasado performed by tenor Matthew Valverde, pianist, Randy Macy and violinist Sarah off. 

-MUSIC- 

["El triste león" (2019) from Canciones del pasado

Traditional/Folk text from the San Luis Valley, Colorado and New Mexico compiled in Canciones del pasado Copyright © 1967 by Ruth Marie Colville. Used with permission of the author.

Performed by tenor Matthew Valverde, pianist Randy Macy, and violinist Sarah Off.]

KHADIJA MBOWE VOICEOVER:

Mari indulged her yearning for frigid weather when, for undergrad, she went to St. Olaf's College in Minnesota. There was no warm welcome, which turned out to be exactly what she needed to feel comfortable.

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE:

I chose the right school. It was the best decision for me. It's not a perfect place. They have a lot of reckoning happening all the time. It is a Norwegian Lutheran school in the Midwest <laugh> and it's very cold there and winter is like six months there. I absolutely loved it. I felt that I could explore being fully myself for the first time and it didn't really have to do with like people advocating for me, which would've been nice. Being trans in 29, 2009 out in trans in 2009, people don't know. People didn't really know what to, to do or say, which in some ways is, is better than what's going on now. But—

KHADIJA MBOWE:

 I was about to say it, low key sounds like it might have been a blessing,

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE:

But at the same time I didn't have people fight me. And I think that's just the difference. I was in the Midwest and culturally in the Midwest, people are very quiet and they speak more softly and more intently. And it's that Nordic culture. If you ever go to like Norway, Sweden or Finland, like it's rude for you to say hello on the street. 

KHADIJA MBOWE:

Oh. 

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE:

Like they are very like icy and they also don't get sarcasm and I don't get sarcasm. So we get along great <laugh>. Um, but what I, the only reason I bring it up is that like the white people that live there, a lot of them are descendants from Nordic people and they are, there's this word they he used called Minnesota Nice. And it's really, really just Minnesota passive aggressive. But because of that passivity, I was allowed to be heard. Like I could get away with things, I could just be myself and people might have judged me, but I didn't care because I was just able to, to be present.

And yeah, I, I took that. Whenever I'm in Texas, it's, it's not a passive aggressive, it's just aggressive. So, that was like a culture shift. 

I think the weather has a lot to do with how people are. That's also why I like rain and cloudy. Seattle's my favorite city I've ever visited. People like, they're very like real, but they don't talk to each other. And the thing about this, about being like standoffish or like icy— intimacy. Connection. Those things happen when people really want them to happen. And that's how I, it comes off as honest to me. 

KHADIJA MBOWE:

Ah-huh. <affirmative>. So I get it. Mm. 

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE:

Yeah. I, I like that people are a little like depressed and like, edgy and like city, city life, but it's like cloudy all the time. It's cold all the time. Like I love that because people are just, uh, are they keep to themselves and when they don't, they're very honest.

KHADIJA MBOWE:

They're just honest about how they feel. Even when they are keeping to themselves, they're like, “it's cold. I'm angry and I don't wanna talk to people”.

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE:

“Thank you for like being present”. Like thank you <laugh> <laugh>

KHADIJA MBOWE:

Because what I get from you and in general it seems is that you are not afraid to just say things how you see it.

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE:

Sometimes I am, but, 

KHADIJA MBOWE:

Hmm. 

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE:

I try not to be.

KHADIJA MBOWE:

When are those times?

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE:

You know, this the, the whole tea. We're talking about being trans a lot. I started my transition months after an near death experience. And when you almost die from something, you really start to question what you want out of your life. But you also like start to identify priorities and act on those priorities. And like when you zoom out, you've had the experience and you zoom out, you're like, “yeah, I can be honest”.

KHADIJA MBOWE:

Because what else do you have to be afraid of at that point?

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE:

Honestly, when you're not honest, you're just delaying the truth coming out. 

KHADIJA MBOWE:

Mm. 

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE:

Lies is just wasting people's time.

KHADIJA MBOWE:

I needed that to sit in the air for a second. <laugh>

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE:

<laugh>,

KHADIJA MBOWE:

It does what's done in the dark will always come to light. It's true. It, it, it, yes, yes, yes. <laugh>. I just keep saying yes. But cause seems like you have not just taken these experiences like you, it doesn't, it doesn't seem like you're the kind of person that takes anything for granted. You're a lifelong student from what I'm getting. You are open and you care about honesty more than, well not more than anything, but you care about honesty a lot. How do those sets of values inform your teaching when you're working with singers especially?

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE:

So that takes me to shame. Mm. And whew, I have to like, I I need to breathe mm-hmm. <affirmative> after saying that, just because I feel like, and it comes out in my music too, especially when I get to write about sex or the body in any way. It's like liberating me because I grew up in the nineties and the early two thousands learning only shame about my body because I'm a trans woman and I'm not skinny either <laugh> and I'm not white. So like I'm, we're not taught ever that we're beautiful even at home really <laugh>. So it's not something that I take for granted. But, and I also question it readily <laugh>, but it's the shame. It's the it, that's what I think about first when you ask that question, is unlearning shame. And I take that as my responsibility when, especially when working with young musicians, especially AFAB people especially, and I say AFAB (Assigned Female at Birth) because I think that, I mean, I, I started my transition when I was 19.

I've only known— people in the world have only known me as a woman. But when I was a student, I was not socialized female. And so when I, when I started teaching high school students and I had, you know, young cis women or just AFAB students, I was like, “the things that people tell you are not true”. They're like, it's like bullshit. You get to decide who you are, you get to decide how you want to be. And I did it last night. I had somebody say sorry to me and like a reflex, a short singer in the treble choir. And she was like, “oh, I'm sorry.” Cuz cuz I, I think I got too close to her and she was coming from the other direction, she apo— and I looked at her in the face, I said, “don't apologize, you didn't do anything wrong”.

And I don't care who my student is. I don't care. You know, your skin complexion, how tall you are, if you're gay or straight, whatever, I don't care who you are. If you are my student, you're gonna unlearn shame because it is a detriment to learning. And like we all deserve to be our full selves. And in music you want to be intimate, you want to be expressive, you want to be raw. We're taught from a young age, at least in the Americas, in the Western hemisphere, that like— I mean it starts early. “Be ashamed about this. Be ashamed about that. Be”— it doesn't matter what gender you are. “Be ashamed about this”. And it's just like, I can't, I can't. And you can't either. Throw it away. It's like the death card in tarot, just the removal of excess. Something that does not serve you. Throw it away. Bye-bye now. Let's try that again.

KHADIJA MBOWE: 

This is “Our Phoenix” performed by St. Olaf Chapel Choir.

["Our Phoenix" (2015)

Excerpts from "Our Dangerous Sweetness" © 2012 Amir Rabiyah (https://www.amirrabiyah.com/). Used with permission of the author.

Disclaimer: This audio is courtesy of St. Olaf College and is used by permission. Performed by St. Olaf Chapel Choir, conducted by Tesfa Wondemagegnehu (https://www.tesfawon.com/) assisted by pianist Will Rand and trumpeter Nathan Lyle.]

KHADIJA MBOWE:

The last thing I wanted to talk with you about, because you were talking about trust and love and there's a quote that I have from you here that I just wanted to read. You can let me know if this still sounds like you as an ever-evolving person, not the p sigh <laugh>

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE:

You. Nice <laugh>. It's good.

KHADIJA MBOWE:

It's good. It's good. Love is not possible without trust and what we're trying to accomplish in choir, whether it's with covid or in isolation or not, it's really important that people feel connected. Unfortunately there's a lot of trust that's been broken. It requires us to lead difficult conversations. It requires us to be vulnerable and it requires us to be accountable for what we've done. And it can't just be an apology statement thing. This is something that has to become a regular practice as we learn to be better human beings together. So I agree with the power of quo music and the importance of love. I just don't think love is possible without trust.

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE:

A thousand percent. And I, I want to add onto to that because ACDAA asked me to write an article about belonging, which is the whole theme of our convention. Not only is belonging a Maslow's hierarchy of needs need, it's a human need. It's a psychological need. We have to have trust first to feel like we belong. That's the main point. The addendum is when we talk about respect or kindness, I want to do something violent to those words because they are a vacuum. They suck up the conversation and they're like, “well I was just being respectful” or “I was being very kind”. And it just deters the possibility of accountability. And I really don't want people to be respectful or kind, you know, “politess”, as I like to say, “politess” is for elites and we need to stop cosplaying as elites so that we can just like actually be present with each other and make good music.

KHADIJA MBOWE:

Mm. And have honest conversations like you're saying. Oof. Last little tidbit. Then do you want to, uh, do you have any example of a time where trust was broken? Maybe it's something that you did where you had to learn to repair trust or vice versa. Cuz I think a lot of times people hear those things and it sounds beautiful, but they don't know like real stories that they can take from to be like, “Hey, I'm not saying this is someone above you, but someone that's working through this too”.

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE:

There's two things, if I may—I want to shout out somebody who inspired me and made me like I trusted from day one and who just like took that trust and just like embellished it. And in, in some way is really responsible for a lot of my success in that. He showed me to the world. And that's Dr. Anton Armstrong, the conductor of the St. Olaf Choir. I think as a student I was just kind of a goofball. I would laugh at his jokes louder than anybody else in the room cuz I mean, he's a large black man and he would say funny things. And I'm from Texas and I'm trying to unlearn shame, so I'm just gonna laugh really loud at his jokes because they're funny. But I felt like I was being too loud all the time in Minnesota. I felt like I was being too loud.

And the point of it is that he, he's the model for me for what is correct, earning the ability to be there, but also letting me be in his choir, letting, letting me be myself in his choir. And then after the fact doing my music literally all over the world. And I'm, I'm indebted to him for the success that I've had and the exposure because he is a celebrated, he was celebrated and I can say anything and he will back me up. So that's, that's the big thing is that I've experienced that validation with him time and time and time again as a student and then in my career. And so that's the model for what's right. Now. On the other hand, <laugh>, I literally had somebody ask me to donate a piece of music as in, they didn't wanna pay me for a commission. And he suggested that I just marry a rich man. And the tone deafness of that was loud. So I, when you talk about like, models of creating trust versus model of, of destroying trust, that's the first thing that comes to my mind in my career. Like, look, I can be excellent, but I I I'm not really an elite. I think sometimes I try to cosplay as that. I think a lot of classical musicians are coplaying as elites. But you know, Bach pooped <laugh>, Mozart pooped Debussy pooped.

It's okay. We just like, let's just just say it out loud and then move on.

KHADIJA MBOWE:

Yeah. They're humans. They're people. We all are all worthy of trust, respect, not respect <laugh>, but respect. But you know what I mean. Not the way, you know the word that you hated the vacuum of it.

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE:

I, I hate respect 

KHADIJA MBOWE:

But, but like, we're all just worthy of you just being like, “okay, cool. Even if I don't understand, it's you. That's your life. Cool.”

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE:

Respect is like gender. It doesn't really, it means something, but only in the context that exists. So when you, when you go to a foreign country, respect looks different. And like you can say that you are principled and you hold that as a value, but that just, it's not helpful. That's, that's the real problem I have with it. I don't mean to be impolite or rude, it's just, it's not helpful to connection. Human connection.

KHADIJA MBOWE:

I get that. It's not specific enough. Do you have any parting words of wisdom for us?

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE:

No. <laugh>. I'm tired. I'm just tired.

KHADIJA MBOWE:

 And you're allowed to be,

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE:

Drink lots of water. And when you catch yourself saying the word “lazy”, even if that's calling yourself lazy, like lazy doesn't exist. That's passé. That's white supremacy, we're beyond that. People deserve to rest, be hydrated and be present when they're asked to show up in public.

KHADIJA MBOWE:

Thank you so, so much. Thank you for this convo. Thank you for your honesty. Thank you for your words of wisdom. And thank you for just being beautiful ah! 

KHADIJA MBOWE VOICEOVER:

And that’s a wrap on this month’s HearTOGETHER episode from The Philadelphia Orchestra and Kimmel Center Inc. If you want to keep up with Mari or perUSE the detailed credits for all the recordings you heard today, check out the show notes in our description. And while you’re over there, maybe take another moment to subscribe, rate, or leave a review. I’m not the boss of you, these are just ideas, but…you…. Should?

Stick around after the musical outro for our in-depth lightning round where we ask guests a standard set of nosy questions. But first, here’s some more of Mari’s “Our Phoenix”. 

["Our Phoenix" (2015)

Excerpts from "Our Dangerous Sweetness" © 2012 Amir Rabiyah (https://www.amirrabiyah.com/). Used with permission of the author.

Disclaimer: This audio is courtesy of St. Olaf College and is used by permission. Performed by St. Olaf Chapel Choir, conducted by Tesfa Wondemagegnehu (https://www.tesfawon.com/) assisted by pianist Will Rand and trumpeter Nathan Lyle.]

KHADIJA MBOWE:

Are you prepared for this lightning round?

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE:

I don't think I could possibly be, but that's

KHADIJA MBOWE:

Good. <laugh> <laugh>. First question. Who makes you laugh?

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE:

Uh, people on drag Race. I watch Drag Race. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>.

KHADIJA MBOWE:

Oh, me too. We can talk season 15 after

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE:

<laugh>. There's a lot to laugh about.

KHADIJA MBOWE:

There's a lot. <laugh>. Okay. Which one of the drag queens, if you had to give me a top three of drag queens that make you laugh.

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE:

Oh, Bob.

KHADIJA MBOWE:

Oh, love Bob.

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE:

Bob is just the best personality.

KHADIJA MBOWE:

Oh, so great.

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE:

Who else is funny? Jinx. Sometimes

KHADIJA MBOWE:

Switching gears completely then I'm gonna ask you a cataclysm sentence now. This is, if the entire world, entire world was to, uh, all the humans on the world were to be completely extinct because of a giant cataclysm, and you had to give advice to the new batch of humans that would maybe inhabit the earth. I know, I know. We went from Who makes you laugh to this? Listen <laugh>. I, I contain multitudes and so do we at the HearTOGETHER podcast. But what would your cataclysm sentence be?

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE:

Um, well, it won't, wouldn't have anything to do with being nice to each other.

KHADIJA MBOWE:

<laugh> Okay.

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE:

I'm, I think, I think learning how to live with the earth is like the smartest thing for me to say. Mm. Which is not something that I know a lot about, but indigenous people do.

KHADIJA MBOWE:

I think that's very honest. Thank you. What is a skill that you wish you had?

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE:

A skill that I wish I had

KHADIJA MBOWE:

That you don't currently

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE:

Pick? I mean, just because it's in front of me. I wish I was a better pianist. Like if I was actually a pianist to the caliber that people would hire me to play piano, that would be pretty awesome. I'm a vocalist,

KHADIJA MBOWE:

But vocalist and composer. You're already <laugh>. Not that there's a hierarchy, but you're already one notch above us. Regular vocalists who just sing <laugh> <laugh>.

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE:

I disagree. There's many ways to be. Excellent.

KHADIJA MBOWE:

Thank you. Thank you. Next question. What is a song that you wish you had written?

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE:

Ooh. Again, first thing that comes to my mind, uh, probably because it's, it's not right in front of me, but the composer's right in front of me. Um, and that's a, a song called [inaudible] by [inaudible]. It's usually sung by a Gabriel Faure. I attempted to sing it in the past, but it is just delicious.

KHADIJA MBOWE:

Next thing. Worst advice you've ever gotten?

MARI ESABEL VALVERDE:

Worst advice. Oh, I don't, I don't know. My first, my first answer that comes in my head is this. Things I've told myself that are just not true. Like thinking that I was unworthy what I specifically, what I composed as a student, not feeling good enough and, and feeling like nobody would wanted to perform my music when those pieces are being kind of discovered now and people are programming them like in the United States and beyond. And it's just weird to me because it's like the whole coral world has caught up to where I have been. And so things that I wrote 10 years ago are like new and exciting and I, it's, it's confusing to me, but I think I wish I had not told myself that I was not worthy. 

KHADIJA MBOWE: 

Mm.

KHADIJA MBOWE VOICEOVER: 

Until next time. I'm Khadija Mbowe. And this has been the HearTOGETHER podcast from The Philadelphia Orchestra and Kimmel Center, Inc.