By Jim Servin
PURIST: In May, you premiered Dream Requiem with Jane Fonda as narrator at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, merging your fascination with Lord Byron’s poem “Darkness,” depicting global upheaval after the 1815 Mount Tambora eruption, with the requiems of Verdi, Berlioz and Britten. You performed it last June in Paris, with Meryl Streep as narrator. What can we learn from the past to get the world back on track?
RUFUS WAINWRIGHT: As the composer, you are very anxious when you hear a piece for the first time. I was surprised how captured the audience was by the piece. The director of Radio France told me that he had rarely seen an audience this enthusiastic. I do think that people need to grieve publicly about so many things that we have lost or are about to lose, and somehow this piece captures a lot of that.
Barcelona was more intense, as I jumped in for Sharon Stone, who had to cancel due to the fires in LA. Our conductor had actually lost his house two days before rehearsals started. I got very emotional and cried while I recited the poem. When I read it for the first time, I was struck by how much this text from 1816 talks about our time. To me, the piece has also almost become a requiem for the American dream.
Where is your musical dial currently tuned? In the fall, you will be back in the studio recording a pop album.
I am still writing a lot of songs, and am starting to go into the studio to record demos. In the fall, I will begin working on the new album. I want to self-produce it. I self-produced Release the Stars, which came out about 20 years ago, and was actually commercially my most successful album. I want to make this album in Los Angeles, and really dig deep into that talent here. Who knows, maybe it will be my last pop album. I listened to Perfume Genius’ latest album, and really loved that. Jessica Pratt is someone I really enjoy at the moment. Jake Wesley Rogers is a friend, and I love what he does.
The song dictates where it wants to go. I write all the time. I am not the person who goes into the studio and decides to write a song. I am inspired at the most inopportune times—when I am at the gym, driving the car, or in the middle of the night. I usually then get out my phone and hum my idea as a voice memo and continue working on it.
Singing Judy Garland’s songs as you have, in tribute to her Carnegie Hall concert, was there anything you learned while connecting to her music and spirit?
The Judy Garland material made me the singer I am today, or at least started that journey. That concert for a performer really is like climbing Mount Everest. It is so difficult, and I prepared months for it. The fact that I got through it without losing my voice for two consecutive nights at Carnegie Hall in 2006 still amazes me. You really cannot lose your concentration and grip on the song for a second. Otherwise, you are completely lost. I have continued singing the material and grown with it.
And of course I can relate to Judy and the demons that haunted her, and how that can actually propel your performance to incredible heights. I have felt that sometimes I do the best shows when something really bad happens. Once I did a show in New York and a friend called me five minutes before I got on stage and basically ended our friendship, and I have never sung better in my life. I thought, I am going to show it to her that I am amazing.
Your tour itinerary this year includes many international concert dates. What are your travel essentials to make flights and hotel room stays more comfortable?
I wish I had more. I am a terrible packer. My suitcase basically explodes when you open it. I like to bring good headphones, as I love listening to music. I always bring a pair of very comfy pants. My husband and I love knit pants by Claudia Skoda, a Berlin designer who had Bowie do the music for her fashion shows in the ’70s. They are amazing, beautiful and dressy, but also super-comfy.
You will be performing at the Grand Ballroom at Canoe Place Inn and Cottages in Hampton Bays this August. What makes Hamptons audiences special? What are your favorite things to do when you’re here?
My husband and I have a place in Montauk that we love. We got married there, and spend every summer there. Our life in Montauk is very simple. We go to the beach three or four times a day with our dog Siegfried. It is only a three-minute walk. We barbecue most evenings and have delicious fresh fish and raw scallops. A lot of good friends have homes out there, and unlike New York City, people have time, and so we see them often for dinner. I like to do a show once every summer, so we can gather all our friends. I am super-excited to play a new venue this year. It is amazing how many great places for music there are. My favorite is the Montauk Point Lighthouse, where we celebrated my husband’s and my 50th birthdays in 2023 with a benefit concert for the Montauk Historical Society.
Your daughter, Viva Katherine Wainwright Cohen, is 14. How are you experiencing being a parent of a teenager? Is it apparent yet if she is taking after her Wainwright side or her Cohen side, given that her mother is Lorca Cohen, Leonard Cohen’s daughter?
We are raising Viva with her mother, and share custody. She has a unique personality, and I think the teenage years are not easy for anyone, especially for the one undergoing it. She reminds me very much of my mother, Kate [McGarrigle]. She is very strong-willed. You just have to step back a little bit, and keep them safe, and let them know that you love them, but mainly give them space.
How does being a parent affect the way you’re processing the current turmoil the world is in? Do you have any practices that help you re-center?
I very much concentrate on writing music, but there are definitely times where I fall into a news abyss and overconsume media and get very depressed. I am generally a positive person, and feel like we are really living in a pivotal time. How we deal with this is going to have such an impact on future generations. I do not envy Viva for having to grow up in this world, and obviously you very much think about the world we are delivering to our children. Social media has such a huge impact on this generation. I grew up without it, so it is really a big unknown.
The last time you spoke with Purist, you were pursuing visual art. Have you continued that, or tried any other satisfying art forms?
I am still making drawings all the time. I mainly do drawings that are based on my songs. It is definitely an artistic outlet that I love, and is very therapeutic. I am singing at the gala for the Royal Drawing School in London in July. King Charles III is the patron of the school, and will be there. It is accompanied by a big exhibition of drawings from their alumni and supporters, and they asked to exhibit two of my drawings as well. So I will be hanging next to David Hockney and Tracey Emin, which is kind of mindblowing.
If you had a time machine, where would you like to visit?
I would love to go to the 1920s, and maybe hang out with Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya, sing some of Weill’s songs for the first time ever, and understand what happened there that all this artistic, sexual and social freedom and liberty could go totally sour and end in fascism.
What makes you happiest now?
A family dinner with my daughter and husband, cooked by my husband.