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Words, sounds and the art of listening with Aja Monet

NPR

A few hours before we filmed this conversation, I got a call from Aja Monet’s manager. Aja was running a bit late; her grandmother had passed away that morning. I immediately offered to reschedule, but Aja wanted to keep our appointment. When she arrived, a little frazzled and shaken, I invited her to sit and relax for a minute in the NPR green room.

My mom had died just four months earlier, and I was also deep in a vortex of fresh grief. And so we talked, quietly and a little haltingly, about loss, especially the untethering feeling of losing the women who brought us into the world and guided us through it — the strong women who helped us and challenged us to develop our own strength.

I had recently come to a new understanding in my own grieving process. Something about our relationships with the dead — the reshaping of things, the time travel that becomes possible, the unbreakable power of lineage that we can only experience with those who are no longer with us on this earth. I was in the process of finding a new way to be together with my mother, and understanding how much I am her.

Lara Downes is among the foremost American pianists of her generation, a trailblazer both on and off the stage, whose musical roadmap seeks inspiration from the legacies of history, family and collective memory. As a chart-topping recording artist, a powerfully charismatic performer, a curator and tastemaker, Downes is recognized as a cultural visionary on the national arts scene.