WEBVTT 00:00:09.029 --> 00:00:13.310 I would like to write music that is a signal 00:00:13.310 --> 00:00:15.990 of my love for humanity and for my audiences. 00:00:16.030 --> 00:00:19.710 So I try to write music that uplifts and educates, 00:00:19.710 --> 00:00:23.969 but also soothes people and makes them feel loved 00:00:23.969 --> 00:00:26.149 and makes them feel that the world is in fact 00:00:26.149 --> 00:00:27.949 going to be a better place than it sometimes 00:00:27.949 --> 00:00:31.070 seems. The way I try to describe my music, my 00:00:31.070 --> 00:00:33.909 shorthand for it is it's an act of love, an act 00:00:33.909 --> 00:00:36.869 of honor and respect and love for my audiences. 00:00:38.829 --> 00:00:42.469 I would just like to think that my music points 00:00:42.469 --> 00:00:46.530 a way forward for people, that I can bridge the 00:00:46.530 --> 00:00:49.869 gap between a more distant past and a future 00:00:49.869 --> 00:00:53.189 that speaks to, you know, generations to come. 00:00:58.289 --> 00:01:00.630 Hello, friends, and welcome back to The Piano 00:01:00.630 --> 00:01:04.590 Pod. As we close out 2025, I'm excited to bring 00:01:04.590 --> 00:01:07.849 you a year -end bonus episode with composer Stefania 00:01:07.849 --> 00:01:11.019 De Kinesi. Earlier this season, we talked about 00:01:11.019 --> 00:01:14.500 one of her biggest projects, Mikrovitz, a world 00:01:14.500 --> 00:01:17.219 that began in miniatures and grew into something 00:01:17.219 --> 00:01:20.780 expansive. But today, Stefania takes us behind 00:01:20.780 --> 00:01:23.739 the curtain of another groundbreaking work, her 00:01:23.739 --> 00:01:27.640 opera, The Bonfire of the Vanities. She shares 00:01:27.640 --> 00:01:31.060 how she secured the rights to adapt Tom Wolfe's 00:01:31.060 --> 00:01:34.599 novel and reveals some of the surprising secrets 00:01:34.599 --> 00:01:37.920 behind writing for opera. What better way to 00:01:37.920 --> 00:01:41.239 wrap up the year than with a story about risk, 00:01:41.340 --> 00:01:44.480 creativity, and bringing literature to life through 00:01:44.480 --> 00:01:47.500 music. So please enjoy this extra episode with 00:01:47.500 --> 00:01:50.900 composer and advocate for women composers, Stefania 00:01:50.900 --> 00:01:58.819 De Chinesi. Let's talk about your opera. So in 00:01:58.819 --> 00:02:02.280 the car, you know, on the way to Nyack, I mentioned 00:02:02.280 --> 00:02:05.579 you. we talked about your work and one of them 00:02:05.579 --> 00:02:07.400 was opera. I was like, wow, you wrote opera. 00:02:07.780 --> 00:02:10.520 Tell me more about it. And then later you said, 00:02:10.699 --> 00:02:14.099 oh, it was, it's called The Bonfire of the Vanities 00:02:14.099 --> 00:02:17.500 and based on a novel. So, and you have this, 00:02:17.599 --> 00:02:20.620 you told me about this very interesting story, 00:02:20.740 --> 00:02:27.419 how you got the rights to this novel. So I would 00:02:27.419 --> 00:02:31.370 like to know. Sure. So The Bonfire of the Vanities 00:02:31.370 --> 00:02:35.710 was a best selling novel in 1987 by Tom Wolfe. 00:02:35.770 --> 00:02:41.169 And it is the story of a very wealthy Yale bred 00:02:41.169 --> 00:02:45.189 Eastside stockbroker, basically, Wall Street 00:02:45.189 --> 00:02:49.909 guy who is. extremely wealthy and very successful 00:02:49.909 --> 00:02:52.169 with a wife and a kid in an east side park side 00:02:52.169 --> 00:02:55.330 park avenue apartment etc etc and is driving 00:02:55.330 --> 00:02:59.250 his uh mistress home from jfk one day and this 00:02:59.250 --> 00:03:02.310 is in 1987 and he takes a wrong turn by mistake 00:03:02.310 --> 00:03:06.090 it's at night and gets lost in the bronx and 00:03:06.090 --> 00:03:10.189 it's dark and he is his car runs over something 00:03:10.189 --> 00:03:13.150 and he is accosted or he thinks he's accosted 00:03:13.150 --> 00:03:17.479 by two young black teenagers and in their haste 00:03:17.479 --> 00:03:19.740 to get away they run over one of the black teenagers 00:03:19.740 --> 00:03:22.159 by mistake but they run him over nonetheless 00:03:22.159 --> 00:03:25.580 and the story is basically the story of how his 00:03:25.580 --> 00:03:29.939 life unravels bit by bit as a result of this 00:03:29.939 --> 00:03:34.219 this crime coming to light and it's a really 00:03:34.219 --> 00:03:39.080 really searing indictment of of New York life 00:03:39.080 --> 00:03:43.139 and New York excesses. And it takes a very, very 00:03:43.139 --> 00:03:46.919 harsh look at all aspects of New York life and 00:03:46.919 --> 00:03:50.300 all echelons of New York life and all races and 00:03:50.300 --> 00:03:53.939 genders. And it's kind of a real takedown of 00:03:53.939 --> 00:03:57.419 everything about American capitalism. But it's 00:03:57.419 --> 00:04:00.479 a comic piece. I mean, it's a very, very dark 00:04:00.479 --> 00:04:04.020 comedy, but it reminded me always of The Marriage 00:04:04.020 --> 00:04:07.020 of Figaro, which is a quote unquote comedy. But 00:04:07.020 --> 00:04:09.099 also, if you think about it for a moment, is 00:04:09.099 --> 00:04:11.860 is an absolute deconstruction of gender norms 00:04:11.860 --> 00:04:15.300 and social norms and and a terrible indictment 00:04:15.300 --> 00:04:18.860 of the aristocracy. And I mean, it's just it's 00:04:18.860 --> 00:04:22.000 just a brilliant, brilliant piece. So I love 00:04:22.000 --> 00:04:23.980 the book. I mean, it made me laugh out loud from 00:04:23.980 --> 00:04:27.970 start to finish. It's a huge piece. And I met 00:04:27.970 --> 00:04:31.790 Tom Wolfe in a couple of settings. I met him 00:04:31.790 --> 00:04:37.029 first in an organization that I founded humorously 00:04:37.029 --> 00:04:40.529 called the Derriere Guard because I wanted to 00:04:40.529 --> 00:04:44.730 unite artists, not just musicians, but also poets, 00:04:44.850 --> 00:04:48.329 architects, and painters who were interested 00:04:48.329 --> 00:04:53.790 in kind of reviving classical techniques, but 00:04:53.790 --> 00:04:56.620 in a very... forward -going, forward -moving 00:04:56.620 --> 00:04:59.939 way. And I invited Tom Wolfe to be my keynote 00:04:59.939 --> 00:05:02.639 speaker, and he gave a hilarious speech for free. 00:05:03.500 --> 00:05:05.600 That's how I first met him. But I really got 00:05:05.600 --> 00:05:08.459 to know him a little bit better when I was composer 00:05:08.459 --> 00:05:11.939 in residence at the Bridgehampton Music Festival. 00:05:12.319 --> 00:05:16.620 And the festival opened one summer. with a performance 00:05:16.620 --> 00:05:19.180 of my flute concerto, a piece for fluten and 00:05:19.180 --> 00:05:21.519 strings, with Maria Martin brilliantly playing 00:05:21.519 --> 00:05:24.620 the flute part. And Tom just fell in love with 00:05:24.620 --> 00:05:27.439 the piece. Unfortunately, the computer to which 00:05:27.439 --> 00:05:31.339 he wrote some incredible note crashed soon thereafter, 00:05:31.560 --> 00:05:33.800 so I don't have a copy of it. But he really, 00:05:33.819 --> 00:05:35.620 really loved the music. He was just bowled away 00:05:35.620 --> 00:05:40.180 by it. So we stayed kind of in touch on the phone. 00:05:40.240 --> 00:05:42.139 And one day I was saying to him, you know, you're 00:05:42.139 --> 00:05:44.439 a novelist. I'm a composer. Let's collaborate. 00:05:45.120 --> 00:05:47.620 He said, great. And I said, well, the only way 00:05:47.620 --> 00:05:49.560 we can really collaborate that I can think of 00:05:49.560 --> 00:05:52.579 is by working on an opera together. And he thought 00:05:52.579 --> 00:05:55.000 about it for a moment. He said, you know, Stefania, 00:05:55.160 --> 00:05:59.480 I don't know much about opera. My tastes only 00:05:59.480 --> 00:06:02.180 run as highbrow as GNS, Gilbert and Sullivan. 00:06:02.939 --> 00:06:05.779 And I don't know anything about libretti or how 00:06:05.779 --> 00:06:08.819 to write one. So I could be really bad at it. 00:06:10.910 --> 00:06:13.029 And I'm thinking, OK, if somebody tells you they're 00:06:13.029 --> 00:06:15.589 going to be bad at something, maybe you listen. 00:06:16.310 --> 00:06:19.910 So I said to Tom, I said, well, why don't you 00:06:19.910 --> 00:06:23.110 just give me the rights to Bonfire and I'll find 00:06:23.110 --> 00:06:24.689 a librettist and I'll take care of it and turn 00:06:24.689 --> 00:06:26.629 it into an opera. He said, fine, it's yours. 00:06:28.009 --> 00:06:29.810 And that was the extent of the conversation. 00:06:29.910 --> 00:06:32.649 You know, it's yours. And that was, to me, a 00:06:32.649 --> 00:06:35.589 huge gift, because by the time this conversation 00:06:35.589 --> 00:06:38.930 took place. He had sold the rights to the novel 00:06:38.930 --> 00:06:42.410 to Warner Brothers, who wanted to make a movie 00:06:42.410 --> 00:06:46.769 out of it. And he sold it to them both, you know, 00:06:46.769 --> 00:06:51.970 to make movies out of it. But in any form that 00:06:51.970 --> 00:06:54.230 currently exists, and in any form, I have a copy 00:06:54.230 --> 00:06:58.149 of his contract, in any form is yet to be invented. 00:06:59.070 --> 00:07:01.930 So it's a blanket contract. You know, every everything 00:07:01.930 --> 00:07:05.670 about the novel is is owned by Warner Brothers. 00:07:06.170 --> 00:07:09.110 And so I thought, how am I going to get the music? 00:07:09.129 --> 00:07:10.829 I mean, I can't compete with Warner Brothers 00:07:10.829 --> 00:07:13.069 if they ask for any kind of money to Warner Brothers. 00:07:13.149 --> 00:07:15.029 You know, one hundred thousand dollars would 00:07:15.029 --> 00:07:18.230 be nothing. And I'm not, you know. And the gift 00:07:18.230 --> 00:07:20.470 from Tom was that he pulled the music rights 00:07:20.470 --> 00:07:24.959 for me for free. And that was a genuine gift 00:07:24.959 --> 00:07:28.180 and a huge gift to me. And that was because he 00:07:28.180 --> 00:07:32.459 believed in my music. And from that moment on, 00:07:32.480 --> 00:07:35.040 we actually didn't work on the libretto together 00:07:35.040 --> 00:07:38.060 or on the opera together at all. He gave me carte 00:07:38.060 --> 00:07:41.639 blanche to do as I liked. I can show you a copy 00:07:41.639 --> 00:07:44.819 of my contract. The only thing it says in relation 00:07:44.819 --> 00:07:48.319 to Tom Wolfe, his name has to be mentioned in 00:07:48.319 --> 00:07:51.100 any publicity. regarding the opera so it has 00:07:51.100 --> 00:07:54.000 to say it's based on the novel by tom wolf and 00:07:54.000 --> 00:07:57.579 his name has to be in a font that is in size 00:07:57.579 --> 00:08:02.100 and in boldness equivalent to my name that's 00:08:02.100 --> 00:08:05.939 it other than that he let me do whatever i wanted 00:08:05.939 --> 00:08:07.800 to do with it i could have changed the story 00:08:07.800 --> 00:08:10.040 completely i could have turned it into porn i 00:08:10.040 --> 00:08:13.139 could have done anything he didn't he there's 00:08:13.139 --> 00:08:14.980 nothing in the contract and when i realized this 00:08:14.980 --> 00:08:16.939 i called my lawyer and i said you know there's 00:08:16.939 --> 00:08:19.850 nothing here that that restricts what I can do 00:08:19.850 --> 00:08:22.629 with this property beyond keeping the name and 00:08:22.629 --> 00:08:24.889 keeping Tom's name. He said, shh, just sign. 00:08:27.129 --> 00:08:32.110 So that was kind of the backstory of that. So 00:08:32.110 --> 00:08:34.870 I eventually found a brilliant librettist with 00:08:34.870 --> 00:08:38.309 whom I collaborated on this piece, Michael Bergman, 00:08:38.429 --> 00:08:42.879 who is also a film director by training. And 00:08:42.879 --> 00:08:46.519 he wrote the libretto. And we worked on the libretto 00:08:46.519 --> 00:08:50.759 for quite a while, partly because the novel is 00:08:50.759 --> 00:08:55.539 700 plus pages. And a libretto, as the term indicates, 00:08:55.799 --> 00:08:58.700 has to be a short book. It's not a big book. 00:08:58.820 --> 00:09:02.039 It's not a libro. It's a libretto. Because when 00:09:02.039 --> 00:09:05.120 you take speech and you turn it into music, you 00:09:05.120 --> 00:09:09.879 expand the time frame enormously, right? So if 00:09:09.879 --> 00:09:12.419 you take a Shakespearean play, which lasts three 00:09:12.419 --> 00:09:15.539 hours, if you just sang it, never mind added 00:09:15.539 --> 00:09:17.460 instrumental, it would take nine to ten hours 00:09:17.460 --> 00:09:21.019 easily, if not more. Really? I never thought. 00:09:21.039 --> 00:09:23.019 Yeah, yeah. No, once you start the singing, you 00:09:23.019 --> 00:09:25.639 need to take breaths and vowels get elongated. 00:09:25.659 --> 00:09:28.940 It's just you expand the time frame enormously. 00:09:29.559 --> 00:09:33.080 So for a two -hour opera, you don't need more 00:09:33.080 --> 00:09:38.659 than 50 pages of text. Really? Wow, that's fascinating. 00:09:39.240 --> 00:09:42.220 That's why it's a small book. You need a tiny 00:09:42.220 --> 00:09:44.539 little book. So how to take a 700 -page novel 00:09:44.539 --> 00:09:48.279 and condense it into a tiny little book is actually 00:09:48.279 --> 00:09:51.120 a huge undertaking. You have to decide what is 00:09:51.120 --> 00:09:53.139 essential about the story, what is not essential, 00:09:53.259 --> 00:09:54.879 and how do you tell that story dramatically. 00:09:56.480 --> 00:09:58.679 dispensing with a lot of details and a lot of 00:09:58.679 --> 00:10:01.519 the felicities of language so it was kind of 00:10:01.519 --> 00:10:04.159 in some ways you know a terrible thing that we 00:10:04.159 --> 00:10:05.940 did to the novel because it had to be cut down 00:10:05.940 --> 00:10:10.519 to size you know but luckily Tom knew what he 00:10:10.519 --> 00:10:12.860 was getting into and he didn't mind at all he 00:10:12.860 --> 00:10:14.740 was delighted when he was at the premiere of 00:10:14.740 --> 00:10:17.360 the piece absolutely taken with it thought it 00:10:17.360 --> 00:10:20.220 was you know And these these emails I did manage 00:10:20.220 --> 00:10:22.919 to save. He thought it was brilliant and couldn't 00:10:22.919 --> 00:10:25.559 have been more pleased with the outcome, even 00:10:25.559 --> 00:10:28.080 though I changed quite a few of the details. 00:10:28.720 --> 00:10:32.200 Yeah. Like making a black woman the defense attorney. 00:10:32.539 --> 00:10:35.580 Yeah. In the original, Sherman McCoy, who was 00:10:35.580 --> 00:10:38.820 the hapless protagonist, is defended by this 00:10:38.820 --> 00:10:42.460 Irish lawyer. And I thought, you know, I want 00:10:42.460 --> 00:10:45.620 more women in this opera and I want more women 00:10:45.620 --> 00:10:51.039 who have real. active power, you know, and I 00:10:51.039 --> 00:10:55.460 wanted to also make the racial angle more difficult 00:10:55.460 --> 00:11:00.840 and more cutting and more troubled than it is 00:11:00.840 --> 00:11:02.840 in the original, because after all, he runs over 00:11:02.840 --> 00:11:06.940 a Black kid, right? So to have him defended by 00:11:06.940 --> 00:11:10.019 a woman who's in the backstory, my mind is she's 00:11:10.019 --> 00:11:12.240 a Harvard educated Black female attorney. That's 00:11:12.240 --> 00:11:16.340 my backstory. but to have him defended by a Black 00:11:16.340 --> 00:11:19.179 woman who decides to defend him because he's 00:11:19.179 --> 00:11:21.500 actually not the one who ran over the kid. It's 00:11:21.500 --> 00:11:25.840 his mistress. And she is the only person actually 00:11:25.840 --> 00:11:30.240 in the opera who has a sense of genuine virtue 00:11:30.240 --> 00:11:33.759 and genuine justice. She does not want anyone 00:11:33.759 --> 00:11:38.240 wronged who deserves to have something. So she 00:11:38.240 --> 00:11:41.460 knows he's not guilty and she decides that she 00:11:41.460 --> 00:11:45.690 will get him exonerated. And she does. Wow. She's 00:11:45.690 --> 00:11:47.929 that smart and that, you know, so anyway, it's 00:11:47.929 --> 00:11:49.830 a long and complicated story. But that was also, 00:11:49.889 --> 00:11:52.730 you know, for me, very satisfying to create. 00:11:52.830 --> 00:11:55.250 She's not the heroine exactly of the story. There 00:11:55.250 --> 00:11:57.750 are no heroes in this story. It's kind of a little 00:11:57.750 --> 00:11:59.730 bit like Marriage of Figaro. It's a, you know, 00:11:59.730 --> 00:12:03.250 an ensemble piece. It really is. But it was very, 00:12:03.289 --> 00:12:06.029 very satisfying also to both create a female 00:12:06.029 --> 00:12:09.889 role that was so powerful and a female role that's 00:12:09.889 --> 00:12:13.179 inhabited by an African -American woman. who 00:12:13.179 --> 00:12:15.919 triumphs or, you know, manages to triumph over 00:12:15.919 --> 00:12:19.960 circumstances. And it was also a lot of fun. 00:12:20.039 --> 00:12:23.620 At the end of the book, which is much, much, 00:12:23.620 --> 00:12:26.179 so my opera ends much, much more darkly than 00:12:26.179 --> 00:12:28.519 the book itself, although relatively comically, 00:12:28.639 --> 00:12:31.519 all of Wall Street collapses. The Stock Exchange 00:12:31.519 --> 00:12:36.440 falls. And the last character in the opera looks 00:12:36.440 --> 00:12:38.480 at the audience and tells them to all go home. 00:12:38.779 --> 00:12:42.200 Get out of here. It's like everything has fallen 00:12:42.200 --> 00:12:45.659 apart. So I had a lot of fun with it. But all 00:12:45.659 --> 00:12:48.259 these deviations from the novel, which are quite 00:12:48.259 --> 00:12:51.480 substantial, Tom absolutely adored. He absolutely 00:12:51.480 --> 00:12:55.879 adored. So he was a real gentleman, a real prince 00:12:55.879 --> 00:12:59.019 about all of this stuff. And this is an interesting 00:12:59.019 --> 00:13:01.980 anecdote, perhaps. We had an earlier version 00:13:01.980 --> 00:13:04.419 of the piece in which we did some excerpts as 00:13:04.419 --> 00:13:07.879 a workshop. And we had a couple of arias for 00:13:07.879 --> 00:13:10.480 the female characters, for Sherman McCoy's wife 00:13:10.480 --> 00:13:14.379 and his mistress and et cetera. And afterwards, 00:13:14.440 --> 00:13:16.240 Tom came up to me and he said, you know, this 00:13:16.240 --> 00:13:19.220 beautiful music and so much, so much stuff for 00:13:19.220 --> 00:13:20.840 these women. He looked at me, he said, you know, 00:13:20.840 --> 00:13:24.360 honestly, I wasn't worried or I wasn't thinking 00:13:24.360 --> 00:13:26.080 about what the women were feeling when I was 00:13:26.080 --> 00:13:30.299 writing the novel. And that's a fairly, you know, 00:13:30.320 --> 00:13:34.899 that's a very. honest thing to say and very honorable, 00:13:35.080 --> 00:13:37.019 you know, that he really was focused on the men 00:13:37.019 --> 00:13:39.860 in the novel and the men are the movers and shakers 00:13:39.860 --> 00:13:41.860 in the novel. And arguably they are the movers 00:13:41.860 --> 00:13:44.580 and shakers of Wall Street. But one of the things 00:13:44.580 --> 00:13:47.860 I was able to do, I still had to inhabit the 00:13:47.860 --> 00:13:49.879 male characters. I still had to do, you know, 00:13:49.879 --> 00:13:53.379 Wall Street guys and moving money and all that 00:13:53.379 --> 00:13:55.820 stuff. But I was also able to animate the characters 00:13:55.820 --> 00:13:59.220 of the women in ways that Tom himself, you know, 00:13:59.220 --> 00:14:03.559 didn't. And that was also very, very satisfying. 00:14:03.820 --> 00:14:06.480 So it was just a lot of fun to write this opera. 00:14:07.059 --> 00:14:11.340 I had a great time. Stefania, I'm actually really 00:14:11.340 --> 00:14:18.580 overwhelmed of your, I don't know, depth of just 00:14:18.580 --> 00:14:22.059 understanding of things and because your mind 00:14:22.059 --> 00:14:25.340 works in such a way that it's very different 00:14:25.340 --> 00:14:29.240 from just, you know, I mean, I'm a musician, 00:14:29.340 --> 00:14:31.460 I play the piano, but Very different, you know, 00:14:31.460 --> 00:14:35.480 being a composer, you just have this, I don't 00:14:35.480 --> 00:14:38.139 know, the way your mind works is very different. 00:14:38.519 --> 00:14:40.600 Well, that's very kind, but I've heard you play 00:14:40.600 --> 00:14:43.120 piano and the way your fingers work is completely 00:14:43.120 --> 00:14:45.399 different and wonderful. And by the way, for 00:14:45.399 --> 00:14:48.259 our audiences, Yukimi is an extremely, extremely 00:14:48.259 --> 00:14:50.899 accomplished pianist. That performance was amazing. 00:14:51.639 --> 00:14:55.480 So I think we all have our talents. And like 00:14:55.480 --> 00:14:57.279 I said at the beginning, when we were talking, 00:14:57.419 --> 00:15:01.379 I can play piano. I'm not a pianist and I'm a 00:15:01.379 --> 00:15:03.799 terrible pianist, frankly, especially at this 00:15:03.799 --> 00:15:06.960 point in my life, because I don't practice. So 00:15:06.960 --> 00:15:09.259 we all have, you know, we all have things that 00:15:09.259 --> 00:15:13.419 that speak to our souls, you know, and to me, 00:15:13.440 --> 00:15:15.700 just envisioning things and hearing things in 00:15:15.700 --> 00:15:19.460 my head speaks to my soul in a way that practicing 00:15:19.460 --> 00:15:22.360 the piano just doesn't, you know, and as somebody 00:15:22.360 --> 00:15:24.240 who wrote my crickets, I shouldn't admit this 00:15:24.240 --> 00:15:26.460 out loud, but I don't really like practicing 00:15:26.460 --> 00:15:32.070 piano. That's okay. I don't either. I'm a pianist. 00:15:32.350 --> 00:15:34.710 I mean, when I was young, you know, luckily I 00:15:34.710 --> 00:15:37.909 could memorize music very, very quickly. So if 00:15:37.909 --> 00:15:39.730 my piano teacher assigned me, say, a movement 00:15:39.730 --> 00:15:41.570 of a Beethoven sonata, I'd play it a bunch of 00:15:41.570 --> 00:15:44.049 times on Monday. And then I'd have it memorized. 00:15:44.090 --> 00:15:46.090 And then I would play it once or twice through 00:15:46.090 --> 00:15:47.830 each day. And then I would just sit at the piano 00:15:47.830 --> 00:15:50.309 and improvise stuff. So I would sit at the keyboard 00:15:50.309 --> 00:15:53.820 and move my fingers. You know, so I would get 00:15:53.820 --> 00:15:55.779 practice, quote unquote, but I wouldn't actually 00:15:55.779 --> 00:15:58.460 be practicing the Beethoven sonata. And then 00:15:58.460 --> 00:16:00.700 next Monday, I could get away not quite with 00:16:00.700 --> 00:16:02.860 murder, but with something because I kind of 00:16:02.860 --> 00:16:04.460 knew the piece because I remember how it went. 00:16:04.700 --> 00:16:06.720 And I could kind of get through it because I'd 00:16:06.720 --> 00:16:09.659 been practicing my fingers. But I wasn't actually 00:16:09.659 --> 00:16:11.600 practicing the Beethoven sonata. And you can't 00:16:11.600 --> 00:16:13.799 really get good as a performer if you don't practice 00:16:13.799 --> 00:16:18.350 the piece. Right. So I really was cheating, cheating. 00:16:18.470 --> 00:16:20.769 But, you know, I always knew that I wanted to 00:16:20.769 --> 00:16:22.889 play piano so that I could use my fingers to 00:16:22.889 --> 00:16:27.809 imagine music rather than to play proper repertoire, 00:16:27.870 --> 00:16:30.610 which is my, you know, it's my downfall, but 00:16:30.610 --> 00:16:33.490 it's the way it's worked. But being able to bring 00:16:33.490 --> 00:16:37.730 all these together, story and words and even 00:16:37.730 --> 00:16:41.490 dance, you work with dance company and just, 00:16:41.610 --> 00:16:44.639 yeah, brilliant. I don't think music that way. 00:16:44.759 --> 00:16:48.240 So, you know. Well, it's a lot of fun. I mean, 00:16:48.259 --> 00:16:52.779 it, you know, it uses all parts of my brain, 00:16:52.899 --> 00:16:55.779 soul, musicality, ears, whatever you want to 00:16:55.779 --> 00:17:00.080 call it. So one of the ways in which I describe 00:17:00.080 --> 00:17:02.399 it is when this is all going well, it's like 00:17:02.399 --> 00:17:05.259 being in heaven. It is absolute paradise, you 00:17:05.259 --> 00:17:08.519 know, because every part of you is just soaring. 00:17:08.519 --> 00:17:10.819 Every, you know, intellectual, emotional, musical. 00:17:11.200 --> 00:17:17.640 When it's not. it is like being in hell, right? 00:17:18.359 --> 00:17:20.799 Because then you feel like, oh my goodness, nothing 00:17:20.799 --> 00:17:23.240 is working. My brain's not working. My emotions 00:17:23.240 --> 00:17:25.460 are not working. My musicality, where is it? 00:17:25.519 --> 00:17:29.640 I'm not thinking anything, right? So it's a mixed 00:17:29.640 --> 00:17:31.640 blessing, but most of the time it's a blessing. 00:17:32.359 --> 00:17:34.500 Thank you so much for joining me for this special 00:17:34.500 --> 00:17:37.259 year and bonus of the PianoPod with Stefania 00:17:37.259 --> 00:17:40.319 DeKennessey. I loved hearing how she transformed 00:17:40.319 --> 00:17:43.200 the bonfire of the vanities into an opera and 00:17:43.200 --> 00:17:46.119 shared her insights on the craft of writing for 00:17:46.119 --> 00:17:49.339 voice and theater. And of course, if you haven't 00:17:49.339 --> 00:17:51.859 yet caught our full conversation on micro -bits, 00:17:52.019 --> 00:17:56.130 be sure to check out Season 6, Episode 3. As 00:17:56.130 --> 00:17:59.950 we step into 2026, I want to take a moment to 00:17:59.950 --> 00:18:02.630 thank you for the incredible support this past 00:18:02.630 --> 00:18:05.690 year, especially for our very first live event. 00:18:05.869 --> 00:18:09.230 It was such a success, and I was so moved by 00:18:09.230 --> 00:18:11.950 all the encouraging words and energy you brought 00:18:11.950 --> 00:18:15.890 to the experience. Please like, subscribe, leave 00:18:15.890 --> 00:18:19.089 a review, or share this with a friend. It truly 00:18:19.089 --> 00:18:22.349 helps keep the show going. Here's to another 00:18:22.349 --> 00:18:25.809 year of music, discovery, and connection. Happy 00:18:25.809 --> 00:18:28.809 New Year, and I'll see you soon on the PianoPod.