Spare, transparent, and penetratingly beautiful, The Book of Longing, the latest release from Brazilian vocalist Luciana Souza, transports the listener into the heart of 10 poems, four from Leonard Cohen’s book of the same name; one each from Edna St. Vincent Millay, Emily Dickinson, and Christina Rossetti; and three from Souza herself. Souza, who composed the music, does not attempt to interpret the poems. Rather, with the help of the exceptionally sympathetic Chico Pinheiro on guitar, Scott Colley on bass, and producer Larry Klein, Souza’s husband and multiple GRAMMY winner, she creates a setting in which the words of the poets resonate freely.

On Wednesday, November 28, Souza, Pinheiro, and Colley will bring those songs and others to the Outpost. I had the opportunity to speak with her by phone a few weeks ago. The interview, lightly edited for brevity, is transcribed below.

MM: This is an extraordinary piece of work. I’m just kind of stunned by this album. It’s quite an accomplishment.

LS: Aw, thank you. It’s just a bunch of songs. But I really really appreciate—

MM: Wait a minute. Wait a minute. It’s a lot more than just a bunch of songs. Come on.

LS: No, I love it. Are you kidding me? It takes a long time to put a record. It’s a very difficult thing nowadays to make a record, to put a record out. You know, to spend the time. So it means enormously to me when somebody says that it’s meaningful. It’s everything to me, but at the end, it’s just a bunch of songs.

MM: Your notes to this album are really quite remarkable, as well, and right at the very beginning of your notes, you talk about the kind of concentration required for a good poem. You know, I think the very same kind of concentration is required not only to create a good poem but to absorb a good poem.

LS: I agree. I think the concentration is required of the reader. That’s kind of what Jane [Jane Hirshfield in her book Nine Gates] is saying. The poet writes the poem and does his or her work, but it’s up to us to actually go to the words.

MM: I think that’s the most remarkable thing about the album and about the music that you’ve written and about your vocalization. You help create that concentration. You help create an environment where that concentration is easy.

LS: You know, I think you’ve just nailed everything that I’ve wanted to do with this record, which is really to create that, to shed everything that was noise and untrue and posture, and just go to the most basic— I mean, I’ve been trying to do that in every record I make, whether it’s louder or softer, with more instruments or less instruments. I’ve been searching for this truth about my work, myself, how I live. And I think it took hitting 50 to get there, and I’m so happy and proud of it because I feel so comfortable now, with so many things about my life. But this work is a work that put me in that room, in that place. I love the quiet of it. I love the simplicity of it. I love the players, with the communication. And as you said, trying to create this environment for the listener, where’s there’s no barriers, no layers of anything, just it. This is the song, these are the words, this is the voice. You got that about me.

MM: Here are poems by Mr. Cohen. He’s a songwriter. He didn’t put these words to music, but at least two people I know of—you and Philip Glass—felt compelled to put these words to music. What was it that drove you to do that?

LS: I don’t know. I have a relationship to Leonard’s poetry that I find is very personal and possessive in a way. I think some poets do that to me. I just feel like the book is mine. I carry it with me. The poems are mine, and they were written for me. They’re my voice. That’s how we identify with music, I feel also. Those words are mine. The story is mine. Or this movie that means so much to me is mine. It’s my story, even though it’s not literally your story. I feel no one can stop me. That’s what Larry says sometimes. That I’ve become obsessed. Then they’re mine, and I can’t help myself.
It starts really as an exercise. I haven’t written anything in a while. God, I don’t have anything inside. Let me read a poem. I read a poem. I fall in love, madly in love, and then I become obsessed like with a lover, where I have to have it. I have to play it in my head. Then I have to memorize it, and I have to own it, and I have to work through everything, like with a lover. A mysterious thing. And it’s unstoppable.
And with Leonard, I really feel . . . he is so direct and so unadorned in his poetry, although it is so deeply refined. I meet him at that level of directness but also at the refinement because I know to get to that simplicity, to get to that directness, he has had to shed so many layers. Some poems did take him years to write. Some come more easily. I identify with his poems.
There’s a poem that was originally called “The Paris Sky.” In my opinion, it’s a couple that’s in a room in an apartment in Paris. I mean, I see these things when he’s talking about it. The poem is six lines long or something like that. I actually see the room, and I smell the room, and I see the clothes hanging on a chair, even though he hasn’t described any of that. I am placed in this place because of him. I smell the smells. There’s imagery. There’s everything in his poetry that comes to me. There’s rhythm. It’s so evocative, and therefore, it becomes music. I not only see these images, but I start hearing rhythm and melody. I go to the piano, and my hands just fall in the right place.
That is true for Edna St. Vincent Millay, and it’s true for Christina Rossetti—any poem that I really fall in love, and I mark it in a book. I curve a little corner, or I put a Post-It or a sheet of paper or something, and it goes into a pile. That is my poem. That’s my poetry. It becomes mine. Thank God they’re all dead—they can’t say anything about it. [Laughter.]

MM: I had never heard of Christina Rossetti prior to your album, and I am just blown away by that poem, “Remember.”

LS: And she has others. That one, I love the simplicity of it and the theme of it: How difficult it is to talk about when you’re gone, when things are gone. What do you do with them? How do you want to be remembered? It’s about a relationship. It’s about a life. But it’s also about the curve of this record, and music coming to an end. Like, how do I want to close? I know people don’t listen to a record from front to back anymore, but if they were to listen to a record, when they get to the end, how do you want to be left?

MM: It’s interesting to me how still this album is. There’s nothing to disturb the attention. You really have focused the ear and mind on these words in a wonderful way. There’s a transparency in the music and in your voice that serves the words.

LS: Poetry, of course, is something that can be done in a room, reciting poetry with someone. For me, it’s always been an act of solitude, of introspection, right? This is between myself and this page, this writer and these words and these images. It goes back to my upbringing. I lived in a loud house. I’m the youngest of five children. A lot of people coming through, and a lot of friends sleeping over. Joy. There was also my mother always reading. My father always playing the guitar. They were doing the thing that they loved, intimately and individually. That was important to me to see that. Amidst all of the chaos of five children, my mother could still go to a book and get lost, and my day would get lost learning a song on the guitar. Even though balls were flying, and kids were screaming, and fighting going on, they could still remain still.
And again, bossa nova is sort of that thing, too, which is the soundtrack of my life. Everything is happening, but there’s this soft guitar, this lulling kind of rhythm happening, and this photograph being described. It’s not a story. It doesn’t have a narrative that goes through time, and big actions happen. No, it’s very quiet. There’s a corner. There’s a guitar. I’m singing the song for you. The sun is setting slowly on the horizon. It’s a very still kind of thing.
I’m attracted to that, and I’ve always been. But I think this record again gets to the core of something of my own experience and my life. Of loss, but also of joy. There’s hope, even though it deals at times with things that are, you know, hardship or breakup or loss or love.

MM: The Edna St. Vincent Millay poem, “Alms”—there’s hope and despair twinned together in that poem.

LS: She has written others, but if she had written just that in a lifetime. It is a masterpiece. So you can imagine for a singer who wants to write music, to find this material. Oh, my God, this is the source of everything. You know, Leonard was a source, and Christina Rossetti’s a source, and Emily Dickinson is a source. It’s place where I go and drink and get completely drunk.

MM: Was Leonard still alive when you started on this, Luciana?

LS: He was still alive, and I had set seven of his poems to music, and I wanted to make a record of all Leonard poetry. He was still alive and doing very well, not ill at all. We would see him from time to time. He’s a friend of Larry’s. So I set seven of his pieces to music, and I think at the time I told him I wanted to make a record. But it wasn’t officially. It was just a conversation, and he said, “Oh, you know, I have other people working on my poetry right now.” Out of respect for him and myself, I said, “OK, I won’t do it right now.” Then, when I was about to record Speaking in Tongues,which is my previous record— It came out in 2015. I had these two poems of Leonard’s, and I thought, OK, I’m going to ask Lenny if I can do them. And after a few times asking, he finally succumbed and said yes. I sent him over the demo, and he approved to it. So those two poems he heard, and I gathered that he liked them. So when it came to do this recording, he had already passed. I had already set seven, and I picked two for Speaking in Tongues,so I was left with five. We went to his son, Adam, and asked him, and he asked me to demo them. Four out of the five because I had shed one of them because I didn’t think it was necessary. So I sent him the four poems, and he approved it, and they made it to the record, thank God.

MM: I’m curious about Larry’s contribution as a producer on this. What did he bring to this that maybe nobody else could?

LS: Oh, it’s intangible, it’s invisible, and it’s incredible. It’s all these three things. You know, he’s a partner because he sits and listens to me and encourages me. He knows better than I do because of his experience and his age and his life experience. He’s able to be very honest with me and say, “It feels repetitive,” or “It feels redundant,” or “It feels weak. There’s something better. Go look for it.” It’s hard to find real friends and supporters and people who can go to you and tell you the truth. He doesn’t say it lightly, and there’s no meanness. It’s just love, it’s out of love. He says it so kindly: “Maybe there’s something else out there. Maybe this needs a little more. You need to sleep on this a minute.” And I sleep on it, and I come to my own epiphanies about it. That’s on the level of writing, what songs I’m going to put together or poems. So there’s that. Then, when it comes to the actual recording, he is essential about form. You know, how long is this going to be? What is the message told? How many solos should we have? Is this in the right key? Should we transpose this? Does it sound too soft? Does it need more energy? What range of the guitar should Chico play? Then, in terms of bass player Scott Colley, where is he playing on the bass? What octave is he playing? How many notes is he playing? I mean, Mel, I can do a record without Larry. I’ve done it, and any person can. But when you are in that kind of company—that kind of level, so full yet so strong and so deeply creative—you’re in good hands. There’s no fighting. There’s no arguing. There’s just acceptance. This is a collaboration that I cherish. This is a testament. You know, Larry has many artists that have done multiple records with him. They don’t just do a one-off and run away. A lot of artsists come back to Larry because they find something in the work they do with him, which I find, which is a level of collaboration that is so deep and so respectful that I don’t want anything else. I married the right man.

Luciana Souza: The Book of Longing
with Scott Colley & Chico Pinheiro
An Outpost Jazz Club Style Benefit Event
Wednesday, November 28, 6:30 p.m./Doors: 6:00 p.m.
Weil Hall at the Outpost Performance Space
210 Yale SE, Albuquerque
Tickets: $75 (member/student); $100 (general)
For tickets or more information, click here, or call 505-268-0044.

© 2018 Mel Minter