42. Interview: Susan Hellauer, Anonymous 4
Sounds Out of Time, episode 42
(Here’s a playlist of the songs featured in this episode.)
I clearly remember the first time I heard Anonymous 4 in the early 1990s. I was in a music store that had listening stations where you could preview new recordings, and the name of the group intrigued me, so I hit play. The ethereal sound of four women singing songs I’d never heard in languages I couldn’t understand completely bowled me over. No accompaniment, no artifice. Their Christmas album “On Yoolis Night” made me realize there was a whole body of holiday music that had been lost to the ages…or almost.
They made other albums of Christmas music, including “A Star in the East: Medieval Hungarian Christmas Music.” How much less commercial could a Christmas album be? And yet by that time, they’d built a loyal audience of people who were hungry for something different, something deeper than Rudolf. At one point they had three albums on Billboard’s top 15 classical chart.
Anonymous 4 stopped performing in 2016, after thirty years and too many holiday concerts to count. And that got me wondering: what does an Anonymous 4 member listen to around the holidays?
I reached out to Susan Hellauer, one of the founding members of the group, to find out. Susan is retired from singing these days, and she teaches music at Queens College. Here’s her answer.
Recent inspirations:
Ethan Iverson’s interview with Carly Bley (ethaniverson.com)
Thelonius Monk’s advice (listsofnote.com — the whole site is filled with inspirations)
Ambient jazz’s quiet, forceful return (pitchfork.com) — This got my attention because it started by featuring “Promises” (youtube.com), the collaboration among Pharaoh Saunders, Floating Points, and the London Symphony Orchestra that blew my mind last year. Space is the place.
Richard Scheinin, “15 Saxophone Albums You Should Hear” — from 2018. Some surprising choices.
Tribute to the late, great reggae bassist Robbie Shakespeare (bbc.com)
Multiple tributes to music writer Greg Tate (npr.com)
And Then There Were Two: Remembering Maggie Roche (rockandrollglobe.com) — This interview with Terre and Suzzy Roche transported me to my senior year in high school, when I caught part of a Roches sound check at McCarter Theater while dressed for work in a Beefeater jacket and top hat. I’ve loved their voices ever since.