One of the greatest vocalists of his generation and legendary songwriter Rufus Wainwright speaks with Chris Williams about Shakespeare, the Festival of Voice and creativity.
“I think my mother took me to see Richard II when I was four, of course I don’t remember any of it”.
Rufus Wainwright is something of a musical renaissance man. As well as his own pop music, he has recreated Judy Garland’s Carnegie Hall concert, written an opera and now he has taken on Shakespeare. His latest album Take All My Loves: 9 Shakespeare Sonnets is released Fri 22 April Apr, one day prior to the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. The seeds of this album were sown back in 2009 when Robert Wilson asked him to compose music for his Shakespeare’s Sonnets production. The production used 24 of the sonnets, meaning Wainwright didn’t have the huge task of narrowing down the sonnets to just nine for this album: “I had to only pick from 24. I picked the ones I like and so it wasn’t that difficult actually… the truth is you could take any nine sonnets and put them in any order and they’d be great, so there’s really actually no narrowing down because they’re all great.”
As you might expect with someone as erudite as Wainwright, his relationship with Shakespeare didn’t falter at school like many people: “I think when I really got it was when my father took me to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Regent’s Park in London when I was about eight, and I remember that’s when it clicked.” However, his idea of getting people to like Shakespeare’s works could be described as unconventional: “I think it is worth kind of stuffing it down people’s throats,” he laughs. “I think you have to be really exposed to it, and it has to be kind of forced upon you, but it works eventually. Shakespeare is just for everybody.”
With his parents being the folk musicians Loudon Wainwright III and the late Kate McGarrigle, Shakespeare wasn’t all he was exposed to from the beginning. “Songs are a kind of language that I learnt very early, especially since my relatives are and were songwriters, so it was a way of communicating. When I got to other projects, like the sonnets or writing my opera, it suddenly became about writing music for other people and that was a little outside myself. That’s why with this album it’s great that there are so many guests… it’s really about sharing, when you get out of the song-writing thing, seeing what would suit other voices and other personalities.”
The album could be viewed as the meeting of Wainwright’s musical genres, his pop albums and his classical work; Take All My Loves features both pop-like performances of the sonnets, as well as operatic vocals provided by the Austrian soprano Anna Prohaska. It also marks the first time Wainwright and producer Marius de Vries have collaborated since they co-produced the highly successful Want albums (Want One and Want Two), as well as de Vries also mixing Release the Stars.
Wainwright himself only sings a couple of songs on Take All My Loves, and musical guests include his sister Martha Wainwright, Florence Welch and Prohaska. Also featured are guest actors giving recitations, including Helena Bonham Carter, Carrie Fisher and William Shatner, and none other than Rufus’s good friend Dame Siân Phillips.
“The great Welsh actress,” he ruminated. “Siân has been a dear friend since Release the Stars”, he referring to when Phillips provided a spoken word section for the end of the track Between My Legs on Wainwright’s 2007 album, “And we’ve even done a couple of shows in the meantime together, she’s kindly gotten up onstage and recited this and that. But to have her opening the album so beautifully and in such good form is a great honour.”
The affection for, and friendship he has with Phillips is reciprocated and reflected in her affections for him, and he is also impressed by her “wonderful vitality”.
“I hate to say it, but there’s a couple of older actors on the album later on, the German ones – one of them has just had a heart attack and the other is on her death bed – and the last time I saw Siân she was going to a ten-day retreat, so she’s doing just fine, which is great. You Welsh people live a long time,” he adds, happily.
This summer sees Wainwright being invited to perform at a new international arts festival, the Festival of Voice, taking place in Cardiff and organised and produced by the Wales Millennium Centre.
I asked him how he felt being asked to take part in the beginnings of a brand new festival, especially one centred on the voice.
“It feels great. I’m just honoured that the Welsh think I can actually sing. I know how tricky that can be, if they think I can sing then I really know I can sing,” he jokingly replies. “I’m very excited. This’ll be my third big concert in Wales recently. I did a choir festival at one point, in Llangollen,” which he pronounces almost perfectly, “and another show, the WMC in 2007. So Wales seems to be turning out as sort of a centre-point for my career in general; and in fact I mixed my opera, Prima Donna, in Wales as well and worked with a great Welsh producer (Andrew Keener, from Barry), so whenever I come to Wales now, even though I don’t have much Welsh blood, it feels like I’m coming home, in a sense. It’s possible I have some Welsh ancestry. I think I’m more Irish and English and maybe some Scottish… but I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some Welsh in there.”
Wainwright plays the Wales Millennium Centre again, as part of the Festival of Voice, in June, and you might be lucky enough to see him in Cardiff afterwards. “If I do have a day off there’s a good chance you’ll see me out and about, hanging out, because it is a crazy town and I love to be inspired.”
You’d think someone as versatile as Wainwright would be thinking about taking a break next, but it seems like he’s always thinking ahead. “I’m doing the Judy shows again in New York, some Broadway stuff. I’d love to make a French record, as I’m learning French. I would also love to do an album of my mother’s songs with my sister Martha. Yeah, I’m full of ideas, sadly, I wish I could just focus on writing a pop hit so I could actually make some money, unfortunately I have to write operas and do French albums,” he jokes.
He’s worked with Dames Phillips and Bassey, and he’ll be sharing the stage with Dame Judi Dench for a Shakespeare celebration, beamed live from Stratford-upon-Avon on Sat 23 Apr. He obviously likes working with a Dame, so is he going to work with anymore Dames?
“I’ve worked with three Dames, you’re right. Always. Once a Dame always a Dame, bring Dame on!”
Take All My Loves: 9 Shakespeare Sonnets, Fri 22 Apr. Price: £13.80. Info: www.rufuswainwright.com
