Nanette McGuinness 00:00
We recorded the following interview with multi-talented librettist, musicologist, and musician Kendra Preston Leonard in August 2025. Sadly, she passed away suddenly and much too young on August 19, 2026. We are so grateful to have had the opportunity to speak to her, and we dedicate the following episodes with her to her memory. [INTRO MUSIC] Welcome to For Good Measure, an interview series celebrating diverse composers and other creative artists. I'm Nanette McGuinness, Artistic Executive Director of Ensemble for These Times. In this week's episode, we continue our conversation with Kendra Preston Leonard.
Nanette McGuinness 00:53
What is it you teach now? Because you've got a teaching position.
Kendra Preston Leonard 00:57
I do. So I teach libretto writing for Guerrilla Opera. Guerrilla Opera is a new opera company. They are based in Boston...
Nanette McGuinness 01:08
Yes.
Kendra Preston Leonard 01:08
...and their ethos is that we should be punk about opera. And by being punk, I mean that we should be pushing back against authority. We should be rebelling against the standards. We should be feminist. We need to be inclusive, right? We need to create opera that speaks to people the way that opera in the past has not necessarily spoken to people, but also involves different kinds of casting, involves different kinds of productions. So I teach for them. I just finished two four week classes that I teach during the summer, and we are just about to start the nine-month writers collective, where we bring together librettists and people who want to be librettists for nine months. We meet twice a month...
Nanette McGuinness 01:52
Wow.
Kendra Preston Leonard 01:52
...and talk about issues in the industry. And we use creative response process by Liz Lerman to workshop our works at the end of the year, the end of the academic year, the idea is that everyone ends up with a complete libretto and is ready to move on to working with a composer.
Nanette McGuinness 02:08
That is great. Can you spell that name that you just threw out there?
Kendra Preston Leonard 02:13
Yes, Liz Lerman. L E R M A N.
Nanette McGuinness 02:17
Ah.
Kendra Preston Leonard 02:17
It's called Creative Response Process, and it is an author-centered format of critiquing writing. So often, when we think about writing critiques, people think about what's done has been done traditionally in the U.S. where the author hands over a manuscript and people read it, and then they just tear the author and the piece to shreds, right? And being critical, and it's good for you. And this is the the common common technique that has been used since the 1950s, Liz Lerman's program Critical Response Process gets rid of all that, so that the author can say, "Here's something I've written, and everybody in the room has to be has to be agreeable in that they are helping each other create the best the best writing that they can the best end result right instead of trying to tear it down or feel like that they're rivals or have to you know do all these things so so the way it works is that the author basically helps run the session with a facilitator the author asks questions of the people who have read their material, how do you think this character? Do you think this character is successful in communicating this idea, or in what ways do you think I should broaden this character, or you know, what details do I need to include about this character to make them more realistic? So the it's the author asking questions rather than just the audience giving feedback, and another step of that is that at a certain point the audience does get to ask the other questions as well, but they have to be neutral questions. So it can't be like, why do you have this character singing about her cat? Oh my god! It has to be, can you tell me the process that went into how you decided to give your character a cat and why you have her singing?
Nanette McGuinness 04:07
That makes sense.
Kendra Preston Leonard 04:07
So, so it's meant for an open conversation about what is working for people in in the material in the writing, without tearing it down. And so, I find it incredibly useful, and that's what I do with with all of my teaching teaching writing, basically.
Nanette McGuinness 04:25
You know, with writing specifically, but probably the creative arts too. I'm a big fan of the sandwich or Oreo cookie approach.
Kendra Preston Leonard 04:33
Is that the nice thing, the critical thing, and the nice thing?
Nanette McGuinness 04:35
Yeah, you start with what you like, and then if there's something you don't like, you point out what needs to be worked on, and then you end with what actually is working-something different, you know.
Kendra Preston Leonard 04:46
Right. Yeah, and I think that's that's... it's very similar.
Nanette McGuinness 04:50
Yeah, it sounds like it to me. Yeah.
Kendra Preston Leonard 04:52
Yeah.
Nanette McGuinness 04:52
Does your approach to writing poetry change in any way when you know it's going to be set to music?
Kendra Preston Leonard 04:59
A really good question. Yes, it does because I'm thinking about diction all the time. I want to make sure that what I'm writing is going to be easy for a singer to get out of their mouth. Thank you. I never want to write something that a singer comes to me and says, "Did you even read this out loud. I bet you can't even say this, right? I want I want it to be able to be clear. I want it to be relatively easy for the singer to sing, right? I am not in the business of writing tongue twisters just to challenge singers to see if they can do it.
Kendra Preston Leonard 05:36
Thank you.
Kendra Preston Leonard 05:37
That said, some of my work does use language that singers are not necessarily always prepared for, and that's why when I talk to singers about things, one of the great things about being alive and having your music done right now is that you can talk to the performers about things. Right, 100 years from now, maybe people will you know be looking at my stuff and go, "I have no idea why she would do this, but right now I can go to the singer individually and say, "Can you sing this line? Does this does this fall somewhere that is that is okay with your voice, or is it going to be some sort of problem point? Do we need to change things, right? Because I think that's it's super important, and even in the world where we have subtitles or super titles and everything else, and I know that there is always distortion between spoken language and sign language. I don't want that distortion to be so bad that you have no idea what the singer is trying to sing.
Nanette McGuinness 06:34
Right.
Kendra Preston Leonard 06:34
So I spend a lot of time. I read. I always read myself out loud over and over and over again. There are. If I can't say it, I'm not going to ask someone to sing it. I I think I'm really conscious frequently about how word endings and beginnings work, so I try not to put s's together. I try not to put "th" with another "th," right? So I don't put "throth" "th" because it's just what is that right? S's running together is another one. I you know if it's senses certain no no what are people going to hear they're going to hear right so I'll find another word to replace a word with. So I think about that a lot. I speak out loud a lot. I also have to think about when a singer is going to breathe. So a lot of the poetry that I write that's not going to be set for text often has sort of a stream of consciousness flow to it. It just goes and goes and goes. And sometimes there are no commas or periods or any other kind of punctuation where you would take an obvious breath, but when I'm writing something that's going to be sung, I have to think about that, and I have to make sure that it happens in places that make sense. So it's not just oh, I'll just make a line break here, and the singer can take a breath, and then they go on to the next line. Well, sometimes it doesn't quite add up, right? It it might be a line where you don't want to have a breath in the middle of it. You need to find other places for your singer to breathe. So I'm always thinking about what is going to work for the singer, and then when I start working with the composer on how they're setting it, we talk a lot about how it will work for what voice type we're writing for, or the individual singer, if it's been a commission, or if we know who's going to do the first performance, because we really want to write something that will make them shine. We don't want to write something that is going to make them, you know, have trouble with it or, you know, be difficult. You know, and then I think about performances down the line, and I think I want to make sure that the text is very clear for other performers, you know, for all performers, about what the meaning is and how it's being put together and when you can breathe and things like that. So Lisa Near, Lisa Near, who's a composer and mezzo-soprano in Portland, and I have a micro opera called Sense of Self, and it's about an athlete who is dealing with a diagnosis of breast cancer, and we wanted it to be very specific in terms of what the singer is going through and what the character, or rather, what the character is going through, and the decision she has to make about her treatment. So when we first when we first wrote it all out, the commissioning organization came to us, and one of the singers said, "I never thought I would be singing mastectomy on stage. And she said, "I thought that was going to be really hard, but Lisa and I worked it out so that it's not all that hard to get out, so that it comes out in sort of a natural way. She says, "These are words I never thought I would sing in opera, you know. But the situation called for it, and it was appropriate for us to use that terminology. And so we found ways to make sure it would work for singers.
Nanette McGuinness 09:53
That's great. And frankly, because you've been a musician, you're doing some of the composer's work. What would. Normally, be considered the composer's work up front before it gets to them, because normally, you know, you hand, let's say, you hand the libretto over to them, and then it's their job to make sure they set it so that it's in the range and the tessitura of the singer where it can be understood. But if you're already thinking about the breadth and the parsing of the meaning, and is this word singable? That really does help a good deal. And I mean, since singers are, we're working on the vowels, so I can mastectomy is it's got this thing in in the middle, so that it's definitely a challenge of a word.
Kendra Preston Leonard 10:41
You can kind of swallow the middle of of the consonants, though. Mass, that, to me. But yeah, I can. Yeah, there was there was a there was a time when um when Jessica Redmond and I were writing Marie Curie learns to swim, and I used the word Roentgen, R O E N T G E N, which is a measurement, a measurement of of radioactivity...
Nanette McGuinness 11:04
Yeah,
Kendra Preston Leonard 11:04
...and she took one look at it, and Jessica said, "You can't ask anybody to sing that. And I thought, "But it's a nice, solid German word, right? It's not that hard. And she's like, "What part of it are they supposed to hold? And I agreed with her, and so we got rid of it. But it's a great example for something that it could be singable. Sure.
Nanette McGuinness 11:27
Right, it could.
Kendra Preston Leonard 11:29
Could it be replaced with something that is more singable and prettier, a nicer sound? Yes. So that's what we did.
Nanette McGuinness 11:36
That's probably smart. I mean, I think there are different regional pronunciations of that word that make it more singable than others, but you know. And to go back to what you said, I actually think writers should read what they write aloud, or in their at least read it in their mind's ear.
Kendra Preston Leonard 11:52
Always, I tell all of my writing students that you have to read it out loud. Not only does it help you understand how meter and rhythm might work in it. If you are consciously using meter and rhythm, it helps you find out if you're also subconsciously using meter and rhythm.
Nanette McGuinness 12:10
Right.
Kendra Preston Leonard 12:11
But it's also, is it expressive the way you want it to be expressive? Do the words work together, or is there some sort of awkwardness? Right. It also, and it's sort of a side benefit. It also helps you find all of your typos. So anytime you, and I tell my students this all the time. What you do, you write your thing, right? And you think it's all good and happy. Then you read it out loud for words, and you check for typos and rhythm and breath and things like that. Then you read every word out loud from the end to the beginning, going backwards. That helps you find words that you've repeated too much, spelling errors, grammar weirdness, all sorts of things. And that's an old editor's trick to read it backwards. But I tell everybody, it doesn't matter how short it is. It could be a limerick. Read it out loud forwards. Read it out loud backwards. You'll have a better idea of things that you might need to fix or places that could be problematic.
Nanette McGuinness 13:09
Oh my goodness! One of my professors, Joseph Kerman, read his books backwards, or perhaps his wife did to edit...
Kendra Preston Leonard 13:19
He knew!
Nanette McGuinness 13:19
...and I never understood how that could work because I didn't know or understand that the process begins with you read it forwards, and you catch everything that doesn't make sense forwards, and then you read it backwards and you catch the rest. Now, thank you. That is something I've never gotten or understood my whole life. Thank you for that.
Kendra Preston Leonard 13:42
That's why you do it.
Nanette McGuinness 13:43
That's wonderful.
Nanette McGuinness 13:43
Thank you for listening to For Good Measure, and a special thank you to our guest Kendra Preston Leonard for joining us today. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to our podcast by clicking on the subscribe button and support us by sharing it with your friends, posting about it on social media and leaving us a rating and a review. To learn more about E4TT, our concert season online and in the Bay Area, or to make a tax-deductible donation, please visit us at www.E4TT.org. This podcast is made possible by grants from the California Arts Council, the San Francisco Arts Commission, Grants for the Arts, and generous donors like you. For Good Measure is produced by Nanette McGuinness and Ensemble for These Times, and design by Brennan Stokes, with special thanks to Co-producer and Audio Engineer Stephanie M. Neumann. Remember to keep supporting equity in the arts and tune in next week "for good measure." [OUTRO MUSIC ENDS]
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