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
You brought up Jessica, who has written for us. She wrote a piece that you wrote the libretto for, and as you said, you've collaborated with her on a number of operas and projects, and you wrote the lyrics to "Cassandra, or Don't Girls Love Horses." That was our piece for the Cassandra Project. Can you talk about your inspiration and thoughts as you engaged with Cassandra and her story?
Kendra Preston Leonard 01:18
Sure. So I first of all, I loved the project-the whole project of centering texts and pieces around Cassandra and she's a great figure in myth. And I have to admit that I have a soft spot for the Greek myths. They were among the first myths that I read. The figures of Greek myth are so human; they're much more human than even Odin or Freya, right? They're just, they're just like everyday people. I think that's part of what appeals to people about the Greek pantheon.
Nanette McGuinness 01:53
Yes.
Kendra Preston Leonard 01:53
So, like other projects, I start off with a ton of research. So I read numerous versions of of her myth, there are all sorts of different versions, and you had given us a brief where we needed to focus on the fact that she is heard but not listened to and not believed, rather than her origin story or the origin story of her curse or gift or anything else.
Nanette McGuinness 02:17
That's what we really wanted out of this project. That was the seed for me, anyway.
Kendra Preston Leonard 02:23
Yeah, and so the more I thought about Cassandra, the more I read about her, and I, I was doing so much reading, and I thought she is at Troy when the horse, or she's at Sparta when the horse is brought in. She's there for the arrival of the Trojan horse, and she's from a place that was associated with how fine the horses were, and and you don't really have to be a horse person to understand how important the horse was in ancient Greece.
Nanette McGuinness 02:58
Yeah.
Kendra Preston Leonard 02:58
Right. There is art with horses. There are songs with horses. There's all sorts of stuff with horses. Horses are everywhere, and I will confess, I was a horse girl, and I do love horses. I will, I will confess. But I started thinking about Cassandra and what it would have been like for her growing up in a place that was all about horses, and then ultimately seeing her doom come in the form of the Trojan horse.
Nanette McGuinness 03:27
The horse, yeah.
Kendra Preston Leonard 03:30
And so that's where I got the idea of you know, well, it's a cliche to say girls love horses, but I thought that's kind of that's kind of apropos for her. So I created her as a character, starting with her as a young girl, and at the beginning of the text, she's young and she's voluble and she's very excited about all the horses in her father's stables, and she loves them all, but there are special ones, right? And as she grows up at the barn, like horse girls do, right? We grew up in a barn. We're raised in barns. You know, she she learns that she can take whichever horses she wants, and she can ride out far beyond the gates and past the guards and past any soldiers and get away from everything that's going on around her. And then, when the time finally comes that she's an adult, and she has this vision of what will happen when the Trojan horse is let into the gates. Her first thought is, "How do I get these other girls out of here? Knowing what will happen, she knows right that she's not going to escape. So her first thought is, "I need horses." So she's calling for her horse to give it to another woman who will escape.
Nanette McGuinness 04:46
Right, right.
Kendra Preston Leonard 04:48
So that is sort of how... how I thought about that, and I thought about you know her the vision she has is goes very much against what her natural. Inclination would be when she sees something that is horse-like or made in the shape of a horse. Right? She's the kind of she's the kind of girl who would have had pictures or pottery of all of her favorite ponies decorating her bedroom. Right? And so normally she would see a giant horse and go, "Oh, look at that! It's, it's a beautiful homage to equines, right? But she knows better, right? And for the first time, she's saying, "I don't like that." Literally, trust...
Nanette McGuinness 05:36
Right, right.
Kendra Preston Leonard 05:37
...that horse.
Nanette McGuinness 05:39
Right.
Kendra Preston Leonard 05:40
Right. And then she thinks about what needs to be done to get people away.
Nanette McGuinness 05:46
Yeah, yeah, beautiful. Yeah.
Kendra Preston Leonard 05:50
Yeah.
Nanette McGuinness 05:50
No, it's great. I mean, I too love the Greek myths, and we had a special class in elementary school for the kids who were didn't have to learn how to take notes for themselves. Who are doing, you know, and it was a pull-out class. And one module of it was Greek myths, the other was dinosaurs. And I, I thought both of them were fabulous, but I've always had a soft spot for them ever since. And the Cassandra Project for me, the entry point was women's voices, women's warnings, not being heeded, not being listened to, knowing something's going on, and being just kind of brushed off. So I really liked how the direction you took this. I thought it worked beautifully. And what you created was either, you know, a long song or a monodrama. You know, depending on how you do it. And thanks to the pandemic, we kind of straddled both. What we created was a semi-semi. Right.
Kendra Preston Leonard 06:49
Yeah. I mean, I suppose you could do it in a in sort of a semistaged version. After I wrote that, I wrote a second piece of companion poem for it. Oh, it is. It's a lot more oblique. It's it's very, it's for insiders. You have to know your Greek myths to really to get the the companion piece, and it's on Jessica's list of things to set one day as a... as a companion song for for girls, girls, the girls love horses.
Nanette McGuinness 07:19
Yeah.
Kendra Preston Leonard 07:19
And it's... it's more from the point of view of Cassandra, and she's an adult. She's at a dinner party, and she's in the throes of having a vision and she's saying, "The snakes licked my ears. You know, there's this idea, right, that... that she was a priestess and kept the snakes, the you know, the sacred snakes, and that was part of the divination. So she's she's thinking about the snakes and she's thinking about all of these sort of ritual things that she's participated in, and people are still not listening to her, and, and she keeps saying, but I could whisper truth into your ears, and they're all still like, whatever.
Nanette McGuinness 08:08
Yeah.
Kendra Preston Leonard 08:08
Go away.
Nanette McGuinness 08:09
Go eat your dinner.
Kendra Preston Leonard 08:10
Go eat your dinner. Yeah, please go sit at the children's table. You're being embarrassing.
Nanette McGuinness 08:16
Yeah.
Kendra Preston Leonard 08:16
Yeah. So hopefully that will excel in me.
Nanette McGuinness 08:18
That sounds fascinating. I'd love to see it.
Nanette McGuinness 08:21
[OUTRO MUSIC] 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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