Postcard from Cava Menzies
This week’s postcard comes from composer and SFGC alum Cava Menzies whose SFGC commissioned work "The Line Between" will receives its world premiere at our upcoming performances at the Fort Mason FLIX drive-in, on Saturday, May 29 at 6:30 p.m. & 9:00 pm. and Thursday, June 3 at 6:30 p.m.
Cava Menzies
How did you first learn about SFGC?
I first began my journey to the San Francisco Girls Chorus at the age of 5 or 6. I was taking piano lessons at the time and a friend of my mom’s mentioned the chorus as an opportunity to pursue music. Little did I know at the time that choral work would become a big part of my musical career. My mom enrolled me in the Girls Chorus and I was with SFGC until the age of 15.
How did you become a musician? Tell us about what you’ve done and what you do now.
I think I was born to be a creator. Music (and Art in general) is a huge part of my ancestral legacy and my personal life-calling. I come from a very long line of musical creators and their work serves as a huge source of motivation and inspiration for me.
My grandmother, Vivian Brown, was a dancer and performer at the Cotton Club in Harlem and spent the majority of her career surrounded by musicians and entertainers such as Lena Horne, Cab Calloway, Cannonball Adderly, and Duke Ellington. She was steeped in music and it infused every aspect of her life. One of my favorite video performances of hers is with Fats Waller on the famous song “Ain’t Misbehavin”. She’s seen sitting on the piano and dueting with Fats. I feel tremendously fortunate to have footage of that time in her life and it inspires me deeply. My grandmother’s husband and my grandfather, Edward Jackson, was a gospel doo wop singer and had a Vocal group called “The Charioteers” who performed regularly on the Bing Crosby show with Pearl Bailey and Frank Sinatra. Both my grandmother and grandfather worked together in Harlem. My father, Eddie Henderson grew up surrounded by musical parents and followed in their footsteps as a Jazz trumpeter. He has continued to make a tremendous career out of music, now at the age of 80, and is currently teaching at Oberlin and touring.
My journey to music has been housed in both the piano and vocal world. Thanks to my mother’s diligence and care, I studied both instruments simultaneously as a kid. I believe this duality to be a fundamental reason why I love working in multiple musical genres. After high school I went on to study Jazz Piano and Music Education at Berklee College of Music and later to study Composition, Film and Studio Recording at the University of Miami.
Moment to Moment by Cava Menzies, featuring Nick Phillips (trumpet) Cava Menzies (piano), Jeff Chambers (bass) and Jaz Sawyer (drums). Released January 21, 2013 Recorded at Fantasy Studios
My musical teaching career has been a hugely influential force in my journey as a musician as well. I am a founding faculty member of the Oakland School for the Arts and have been working with young musicians at the school for the past 18 years. It has been a joy and an inspiration to be surrounded by such blossoming creativity constantly. I believe we (the students and I) reciprocally feed each other’s creative wells. To me, the classroom is an extension of my own artistic practice.
I continue to play, perform, record, compose, arrange, direct and do about anything I can to be engulfed in music. Right now I am working on original music for a new musical, a short film score, a Hip Hop album project, and a grant project that allows me to collaborate with musicians around the world.
I also started painting about two years ago and created a brand called COLORQUEEN. I’ve begun to fuse my music and visual art world together and I believe this multidisciplinary route to be the next iteration of my creative journey.
A painting by Cava Menzies titled Jazzhead
How do you find inspiration for bringing creativity and imagination into your work with young performers?
I think young people are natural creators with an instinct for imagination. They are free thinkers and unbound by some of the structures that we most often adopt as adults. I love working with young people for this very reason. They keep me questioning and push the boundaries of what I think is possible.
I am always on the search for inspiration. It could come from a neighborhood walk with my camera, browsing through a bookstore, listening to a good podcast, watching a sunset, listening to music on a city walk, or being surrounded by nature. There are so many possibilities and places to extract creativity from. I try to look at the world as a source of inspiration as much as possible.
Can you describe the work you are doing with SFGC?
For me, this is a full circle moment. As I mentioned before, I was in the Girls Chorus from the age of 5 to 15. When I was in high school, my choral director there was Brad Wells, who is the founding director of Roomful of Teeth. To get to compose for these two musical groups that were formative in my musical journey as a child feels like somewhat of a homecoming.
My piece, The Line Between, is a composition that examines the search for identity and the fragile place that exists at the intersection of cultures. This composition allows us to explore texture, nuance, vowel morphing, extended techniques and the intersection of traditional and experimental vocal timbres. Part of the composition inquiry process included the SFGC choristers sharing stories of their own intersectionality and the places in which they too felt that they straddled multiple worlds. I think these are important conversations for young people to embark on, especially during this time.
What would you like to tell parents about the importance of young people doing music?
There is no greater gift you can give your children than to study music and find their own voice. There are multitudes of skill-sets that are acquired while doing music that extend beyond the music. It enhances brain function, it develops an aesthetic for beauty and harmony, it creates dexterity in language beyond what words can express, and it gives voice and a sense of purpose to young people. Music is integral to the human experience.
Cava Menzies: Make Room For Me (feat. Barbara Deveaux Griffith)
For those choristers that want to become professional musicians, any words of advice?
Take the time to find your authentic voice. Once you’ve found it, learn how to really explore and celebrate it. I would also recommend looking into the variety of careers that one can have in music. Most often young people only think of performance as the way to have a successful career. Most of my career has been about being adaptable as a musician and being willing to wear a number of musical hats as a director, arranger, composer, singer, player, studio musician, producer, songwriter, choir member, etc...Versatility in the music industry means that you will always have work!
Why is it important to continue practicing music and doing online music during this time of the pandemic?
It’s hard for me to answer this question because the truth is that this pandemic has been really hard on all of us. I know a lot of creative people have felt like their inspiration and motivation to create has left them. It’s hard to stay motivated to practice when we don’t get the chance to come together to create music. My strategy during this time has been to remove all expectations of what I “should” be doing as a musician and just allow myself to “be”. That has actually been a recipe for authentic creativity during this time.