‘Minister of music’: Courtney Bryan fuses protest with the sacred

When Courtney Bryan was 5 years old, growing up in New Orleans as the youngest of three children, the piano became another way to communicate without speaking. She calls it her first communication. 

She has been faithful to it, as it has been to her, helping her find a unique voice. Dr. Bryan, who calls herself a “minister of music,” combines elements of jazz, classical, and gospel in ways that center Black lives. Her compositions have been featured in venues such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, as well as orchestras around the world. 

In 2020, the pianist and composer appeared on her first movie soundtrack when filmmaker Radha Blank featured Dr. Bryan’s original song, “Oh Freedom,” in the award-winning film, “The 40-Year-Old Version.”

Dr. Bryan is the Albert and Linda Mintz Professor of Music at Tulane University and the composer-in-residence at Opera Philadelphia. She has been awarded several fellowships, including a yearlong program for the American Academy in Rome. None have been as big as the one she received this fall. She joins the select list of composers – including Raven Chacon, Mary Halvorson, Tomeka Reid, and Osvaldo Golijov – to be awarded the MacArthur fellowship.

The award, also known as the “genius grant,” comes with an $800,000 prize paid out over five years. Though virtually all of the recipients have a history of accomplishment, the fellowship is a commitment to their future work. The organization praised Dr. Bryan for her melding “of jazz, classical, and sacred music in works that reverberate with social and political issues of our time.”

Dr. Bryan recently spoke with the Monitor by phone. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. 

How does it feel that someone thought enough of you and your work that they put your name forward?

It means a lot. … You’re kind of rewarded for being who you are, so it’s not just like you did a certain thing. And, I think the confidentiality of it is not like “oh, this one piece you did or this certain place where you performed.” You get the award for you and what you do in general. To me that is an affirmation of my path because it hasn’t always been so clear. … I think that there’s been a lot of insecurity at early points, so to me, it’s like a big affirmation of the path that I’ve stuck to even when it has been challenging.

Have you thought about what work you want to create in the next five years? Do you already know?

My first impulse when hearing about this, I was like, “Well, I’m given this big gift and how can I create something with this that is not only about myself, but things that I’ve been wanting to do, in the community in New Orleans.” That was my first thought. But then also, now that I’m letting it sink in, I realize it’s a good time to just sit back and dream about it a bit and think about what I want in my life overall.

When I saw how much the award was, I wondered, did any part of that shock you or did you immediately think about what you could do with the money?  

I think it’s a type of money that I don’t imagine having, so it’s taking that in. I do like that they pace it out for us over five years. It’s somewhat regulated, which I think is a good thing. Nobody could just let it slip out their hands at one moment.

How much has being a Black woman from New Orleans who grew up Episcopalian influenced your palate and what you offer to the world through your creativity?

I realized my church that I grew up in, it’s like the earliest music memories that I have. There’s so many musical memories, of course, coming up in New Orleans, but I feel like my church – it’s called St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in New Orleans – we always had an interesting mix of styles. We did the traditional Anglican hymns, and we had Gregorian chant. We also did spirituals and we did our version of gospel music.

Growing up in that, we were a very diverse church. Some folks are from New Orleans, but a lot of folks are from the Caribbean or from Central, South America – some from West Africa. That cultural mix, we kind of brought that into the music in different ways. Sometimes we have West African percussion or some sort of rhythm that sounded more Caribbean on a tambourine that mixed with the Anglican hymns. That kind of mixture is natural for me. 

And also, I didn’t think about this until much later, but I realized it was special that I grew up in a church where the artwork we had, we were surrounded by Black saints [including St. Martin de Porres and St. Frances Gaudet, who worked with incarcerated juveniles in Louisiana]. All of the stained glass of Jesus, he looks a little bit darker. I grew up seeing that. We have a Martin Luther King stained glass window. I noticed that later. I was like, “Oh, that was nice growing up with just all these images of important figures, important Christian figures that look like me.” 

Your work involves the lived experiences of African Americans through political and social movements. How do you think people can make a connection with all of this through music?   

I know a lot of people say music is like a universal language. What I like to do, especially when I’m thinking about anything that’s a political issue or social issue, I think music – the way I think about it – is a chance to really get at the emotions of things, of these experiences. For example, with the police brutality issue, there are different ways to deal with it. There are laws, there are protesters with different ways of speaking out. People write about it from different histories or sociology. … And, I think in writing this music, to me, it’s like a chance to feel something, because sometimes the reaction, for good reasons, might be to sort of become numb to what’s going on in the world.

Thinking about right now, there are ways to numb out from things, but also it’s sometimes important to face things. I feel like music gives a space to do that. … Even if something is very unresolved, I like to still think about the hope element and that’s usually where the spiritual side comes into play – because sometimes it’s not like a hope knowing the answer of how things get better, but more like relying on more spiritual hope and faith.