JAMES STRECKER: Please tell us about one or more projects that you have been working on or have recently completed. Why exactly do they matter to you and why should they matter to us?
MARYEM TOLLAR: I recently finished making a CD called “Cairo Moon” with my group “Al Qahwa” (which means “The Coffee House” or just “coffee” in Arabic) with a special guest musician, Alfred Gamil, from Egypt. This project is important to me because it is a combination of the Arabic music of my roots, but it also includes some original material by myself and some of the other band members – and overall, we allow musical influences from our lives to come through in the arrangements of the music. I also have been doing collaborative projects with different arts groups including 2 multi-media collaborations with Tafelmusik, where a story is told that is set in the baroque period, but there are all kinds of connections that are made with the place and time that we are living in now. One of the projects is called “Tales of Two Cities: The Leipzig-Damascus Coffee House” and the other one is called “Safe Haven.”
JS: How did doing these projects change you as a person and as a creator?
MT: These projects and most of the projects that I have been working on over the last 3 decades have given me opportunities to collaborate with people of different backgrounds – musically and culturally – and they have helped me to grow as a person and as musician and to understand many different perspectives of what our world is about.
JS: What might others not understand or appreciate about the work you produce or do?
MT: Generally, people seem to be very appreciative and often moved by the work that is being presented in these projects, but they may not realize how much planning, rehearsal, thinking and funding have to go behind making these projects a reality. I also feel very privileged to have been able to work with other artists who are very open, which makes it a huge pleasure to see what can happen when we bring the different genres of music and different backgrounds together.
JS: What are the most important parts of yourself that you put into your work?
MT: As a singer, my body is my instrument, and I feel that whatever I am singing, or singing about, I really have to believe the messages that I’m putting across. I also have to really feel that I can express the music in an authentic way that is respectful to the traditions I am doing (if I am doing traditional or classical repertoire), or to the composers.
JS: What are your biggest challenges as a creative person?
MT: My biggest challenges are balancing making a living and the day to day practicalities of life with having time to work on my artistic projects.
JS: Imagine that you are meeting two or three people, living or dead, whom you admire because of their work in your form of artistic expression. What would you say to them and what would they say to you?
MT: I am by nature quite shy, so I don’t know that I would want to necessarily meet any of the artists that I really admire. The best scenarios are if I have an opportunity to work with someone I really admire so that we can just create something together.
JS: Please describe at least one major turning point in your life that helped to make you who you are as a creative artist.
MT: Growing up, I was raised in a household that allowed me to participate in many musical activities at school, but the idea of becoming a performer as a profession was not something that I could consider. Because of my love and passion for performing, I did it whenever I could at school, but I didn’t major in music at university. And when I finished, with a degree in French, I still only really wanted to perform. It was a couple of years after that, that I finally had the courage to tell my family that that was my choice – and even though it was met with some resistance, I pursued that path and never looked back.
JS: What are the hardest things for an outsider to understand about your life as a person in the arts?
MT: It might be difficult for some people to understand my need to perform and have music as a major part of my life – and that without it, my life would be very difficult (in terms of nurturing my soul). I have a full time job as a teacher – and it is fulfilling work in its own way – and some people are surprised that I would have the energy to also pursue a career as a professional musician – but what they may not understand is that it is my work as a musician that gives me the energy and fulfillment and happiness so that I can have something to give to my students when I am teaching (or in any other aspect in my life).
JS: Please tell us what you haven’t attempted as yet that you would like to do in the arts? Why the delay so far?
MT: I guess I feel that I am very fulfilled in my artist life, so it is difficult to say if there is anything I feel that I have delayed doing. To be honest, I can’t think of anything. Of course, there are many artists that I admire, so I would love to one day work with them.
JS: If you could re-live your life in the arts, how would you change it and why?
MT: If I could do it all over again, I would have seriously pursued a career in music much earlier than I did. I knew as early as I can remember that I loved to sing, but it was my fear of telling my family that stopped me from going on a path towards music in a serious way.
JS: Let’s talk about the state of the arts in today’s society, including the forms in which you work. What specifically gives you hope and what specifically do you find depressing?
MT: I feel hopeful that more and more people are open to many different kinds of music – and that it seems that there are more opportunities to get it out there than there were when I first started performing what people refer to as “world” music. What I find depressing is that to get my music out there, we depend on funding, and I feel that lately the kind of governments, who are being elected, are not that interested in arts and culture.
JS: What exactly do you like about the work you create and/or do?
MT: I think I like that fact that I have made a name for myself of being able to work and collaborate across cultures. So I am invited regularly to be in different projects, each one very different from the last – and so I never get bored of what I am doing. I am also very interested in so many different kinds of music, I feel like with every project I get a chance to learn something new, whether it’s a deeper understanding of music I have been exploring for a long time, or it’s something totally new to me.
JS: In your creative life thus far, what have been the most helpful comments you have heard about your work?
MT: I am really moved when I hear from people that the work that I do has touched them in a deep way – and it has happened enough that I feel like I must be doing something right.
JS: Finally, what do you yourself find to be the most intriguing and/or surprising things about you?
MT: I find it interesting that I love to perform so much – there is nothing I would rather do more – and I am so passionate about it. Yet I am so shy, and when I have to just talk on stage, I am so nervous. Luckily over the years, I have been able to conquer the fear of talking (in between songs for example) and in the last project with Tafelmusik, I was even asked to be the narrator of the show. So I have definitely come a long way.