[music playing] If you're in search of creativity and inspiration, that and so much more is waiting for you right here.

Welcome to MacDowell, a peaceful sanctuary for creative artists of all disciplines to have time for themselves, for their art, for the community of fellow artists, and for the good of us all-- composers, filmmakers, writers, visual artists, playwrights, architects, artists.

But once a year, for one day only, the MacDowell Artists Residency opens its doors, polishes the woodwork, raises its windows, and invites folks to stop by, enjoy the day, and take a look at what artists can do when they've got time and space to create.

This year is different because you're invited to join us.

Despite the challenge of a global health crisis, the human condition endures.

Creation continues, along with hope for a brighter tomorrow.

We're celebrating that happy fact today at MacDowell.

And we're glad you can be here.

Today, you'll meet this year's recipient of the prestigious Edward MacDowell medal for her outstanding contribution to American culture and the arts, singer, songwriter, and author Rosanne Cash.

(SINGING) All because I'm thankful for what we don't understand, the undiscovered country in every woman, every man.

[guitar plays] Tradition has it that notable speakers deliver remarks about the MacDowell Award recipient.

This year's a little different.

In fact, it's quite special.

Guests include author, medalist, presentation speaker, and host of NPR'S acclaimed "Studio 360," Kurt Andersen; author, visual artist, and madame chairman of the board of MacDowell, Nell Painter; and Pulitzer Prize-nominated poet and author Cheryl Savageau; plus a performance from Grammy award winner Emmylou Harris.

Rosanne will also visit with MacDowell Fellows, who will share their latest works, and she'll sit down for an exclusive one-on-one conversation with renowned "New Yorker" cartoonist Roz Chast.

125 years ago, American composer Edward MacDowell came here to the quiet of the New Hampshire woods to compose his memorable music.

And by doing so, he accomplished what every artist did back then, what they still do now, and what they'll always do in the future, create.

I knew I wanted to be a writer.

But I thought it would be in a little room by myself, where I could keep my anonymity and have quiet and to send it out into the world.

I didn't think about being a performer.

When did you sort of realize that you were going to go in that direction?

I was in Germany.

I had been writing songs and made demos of my songs and thought that other people would record them.

And then I was at the Lee Strasberg Institute, actually.

It was just for three months because I was interested.

And I after three months, I thought, I don't want this life at all.

I do not want to be an actor.

This is the worst job anybody could have.

And I went to Germany over Christmas break.

And my friend was in the music business.

She worked for Ariola Records.

And I went to a Christmas party with her.

And she was introducing me around, and everybody was drunk.

And she told the head of the label, oh, she writes great songs.

And he must have been drunk because he said, oh, send them to me.

We'll make a record.

So (LAUGHING) I sent them to him, and he said, yes, we want to sign you, make a record.

And then I went to bed for three days because I couldn't-- I knew what would happen.

You couldn't just make records and stay in your private room.

Thanks to Marian and Edward MacDowell's commitment to provide that private room with time and space to create, the artists who come here bring their inspiration along with them and the disciplined determination to create.

This is the very first one we started when we got here.

For some of those artists, perhaps for the very first time, to experience what it's like to have a studio all their own.

There are some that are sort of more straight.

That's just Angie doing a portrait of me.

That's me doing a portrait of her.

Tucked away in 450 acres of New Hampshire woodlands, a creative oasis to do exactly what they're inspired to do, have the time to do it, and share it with their fellow artists and the world.

We came here specifically to do collaborative paintings.

Oh, I didn't realize.

These are all collaborations?

Yes.

They're all made-- we've each painted.

We both painted every one of them-- almost every one.

Almost every one.

This is like co-writing for songwriters.

It's co writing.

That's right, yeah.

Who's doing words and who's doing music?

That's right, the libretto and the cantata.

[laughter] But they're both very physically active roles.

But they seem so seamless.

Roseanne.

When you're really kind of getting and working with the nitty gritty-- and that's really what I like about residency is it's one of the few places where you can talk about process with other people, that it can be different disciplines.

But they totally are able to kind of get it.

But these are just wonderful.

They're just-- they're very moving to me.

Yeah.

You've got to explain the process more.

I'm not quite getting it.

And we, of course-- well, is there one you like more than-- Well, I like the sea.

This one is nice, actually.

[laughs] Oh, god, I love this, too.

I like this one, too.

So first you cut out the piece.

Then you draw into it to give it detail.

And then you put the paint on it.

Yeah, and before we have to put in that medium to make-- otherwise it would absorb the [inaudible].. Oh, I see.

I see.

So this is good?

So I just remove the-- --the excess.

--the excess.

And just lay it right on.

Keep going?

Yep.

And that's it.

OK. And then?

You see, you can almost see.

And you want to lift.

You're very sweet to let me do this.

Maybe I didn't put enough.

[inaudible] you can see.

Oh, my god, that's beautiful.

Solitude and productivity are just two of the benefits of being a MacDowell Fellow.

Over the past 100-plus years, nearly 9,000 artists have had the opportunity to retreat from their busy day-to-day one-thing-after-another lives and experience their very own studio, custom made for inspiration and creation.

What are the things you like about touring?

What are the things that you don't like?

Well, that airport security is not my favorite.

But-- I love it.

[laughter] Talk about intention.

[laughter] I just want lobbed that one right over the plate to you, didn't I?

Well, it's changed over four-something decades.

In the beginning, it was all torture.

I thought you went on stage so that people could judge you and that you had to be perfect.

And why are they here?

And over time, I realized that it's energy exchange.

You're there to create something together in two hours.

And it's like a sand painting.

It's going to disappear in two hours.

And it's so beautiful because of that.

And also, I always quote Bob Dylan on this.

He says the audience doesn't come to hear about your feelings.

They come to feel their own feelings.

So just make the space so they can do that.

(SINGING) Some day will come the questions.

There's no answers, but we ask.

Just the same when we were children.

There was a philosopher Carolyn Heilbrun at Columbia.

She said this thing that I have thought of monthly since then, which is that women should live their lives out loud to balance the millennia of male stories.

And Joni Mitchell gave me that courage, too, when I first heard "Blue," that she could write such personal, revelatory poetic songs, put them out in the world as art and have them be so valuable to generations of people and to the culture as a whole.

Rosanne's in good company here at MacDowell.

For over 60 years, distinguished artists from every discipline have come here not only to accept this honor of high achievement, but also to share what being an artist means to them.

The first composer to receive the MacDowell Medal in Music was Aaron Copland in 1961.

So 60 years later, it is my special pleasure to honor and celebrate Rosanne Cash, the first woman to be awarded the Edward MacDowell Medal in Composition.

[applause and cheering] We are here in a space that has sheltered and nurtured MacDowell artists for many decades.

And we are here for a warm celebration of inspiration and accomplishment, acknowledgment of the triumph of art.

In recognition of today's honoree, Rosanne Cash, we have made a theater here, sanctified by our collective presence.

For what is theater or music but sitting among friends and strangers to witness, to listen, and to watch a story unfold.

And today we will hear a story.

Hello.

My name is Cheryl Savageau.

My people are Abenaki from Western Maine, the White Mountains, Quebec, and [inaudible]..

I say thank you to the Dawnland, a thank you to the people of the Dawnland, the Abenaki, Cowasuck, and Penacook.

And welcome, friends.

If we're lucky, we grow up with the arts, with story, with song, all of those things feeding us.

And when we get older, we give back to the pot.

We give back the gift we've received.

And I feel so much that MacDowell is part of that tradition.

Now, what kind of artist is Rosanne?

My favorite kind, the kind who can't easily be stuck in a pigeonhole.

She's a writer and performer of country songs, yes, but also a writer and performer of folk songs and of rock songs and blues songs and songs that become extremely popular, so a writer, I guess, of pop songs as well.

Plus, she has published a book of short stories, a very lovely book of short stories indeed.

And with her collaborator slash husband, John Leventhal, has a Broadway musical in the works.

Each of those genres is a hybrid of previous genres.

So her songs, all of her songs, constitute a new hybrid, which is really just another way of saying Rosanne Cash is an American artist who knows the histories of each tributary of that musical river she navigates, from the Delta, from Appalachia, from the Celtic lands.

Her songs are full of beauty and dreamy pleasures but also unflinching pictures of reality and history, and thus of anguish and tragedy.

Like all good art, hers is complicated.

And let me tell you, she works at it.

After her early success, she trained herself to be the artist she felt was worthy of that success.

And she knows what every artist knows-- I'm quoting her now.

"I am always a beginner, again and again."

I want to end with another great remark by EB White, quote, "all that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say is that I love this world."

I am with him.

And I have a feeling that Rosanne Cash is as well.

Thank you very much.

[applause] We honor Rosanne Cash, who's the first woman to win the medal into composition.

Her honor breaks tradition in honoring a woman composer, though Edward MacDowell was a composer.

And his widow Marian, the motivating force behind the establishment of MacDowell, was a woman.

Rosanne Cash's medal reflects changes occurring right now in US and MacDowell history, changes that began before 2020, but the events of 2020 galvanized.

I am so pleased and honored to give Rosanne Cash this Edward MacDowell Medal.

[applause] So every year when I get a new date book, I write the same quote in the front cover, same quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson.

And it says, "do not the great always live extempore, mounting to heaven by the stares of surprise."

So I may not be great, but I do find myself on the stairs of surprise quite often, like today.

Artists are in a service industry, the Premier service industry for the heart and soul.

We are bound by an imperative to create, connect, reveal, and to practice artful subversion.

And I live by that imperative.

But I have never created a single thing in a vacuum or provided any soul service outside of a larger power composed of all the writers, composers, and performers I admire, the traditions I build upon, my own DNA, and this numinous creative force that can't be defined.

I stand on shoulders.

And I stand shoulder to shoulder with those whose attention span is longer and whose musical ability is more refined, like my husband John, who is also my best reader, my North Star, and who is kind enough to tell me when something I've written or sung is not worthy of my instincts.

And he mostly tells me in a nice way.

[laughter] We should all be so lucky to have that person in our lives, the person we dream of before we meet them.

Many of the songs I've written have begun with an image, headlights on a Texas road, a woman who lost an election walking on a beach, Shakespeare and my father arguing in the afterlife, [laughter] little girls like dolls in party dresses who are struck numb with loss, a ship carrying my children, sailing over the curvature of the Earth into their future and away from mine.

Inside these pictures I found are chord changes and keys and backbeats and harmony.

And along with dreams of creating, I longed for a community of like-minded souls who spend their lives navigating their own beautiful compulsions in the heart-and-soul service industry.

I just didn't know that MacDowell existed back then.

And here I am, and here you are, so yearning must be alchemy because we manifested each other.

So you honor me as the first woman in composition.

But you also honor the particular genres I work in.

It's an essentially American songbook, as Kurt mentioned, of folk, blues, Appalachian, country, and all of the feeder streams that go in and out.

And that acknowledgment is an added thrill.

I see you.

And thank you for seeing me.

[applause] And now really, I think a first for MacDowell, kind of let the art tell the story.

Roseanne's two dear comrades and artistic collaborators are here to help us fully celebrate what today is all about, the music.

First, one of our world's most extraordinary singer/songwriters admired and beloved, winner of 13 Grammy Awards, composer, lyricist, poet Emmylou Harris and performing with Miss Harris, musician, songwriter, and music producer, winner of six Grammys, plus he gets to be the husband of Rosanne, John Leventhal.

Please welcome Emmylou and John.

[applause] So many songs I could have picked of Rose's that I love.

And this one is probably one of her most deeply personal.

And I shouldn't be singing it because it's so personal about her relationship with her father, which I witnessed because I got to know John when I got to know Rose.

But I love it so much.

And I was so touched by it the first time I heard it.

And so with her blessing, I'll do it for you now.

(SINGING) All those years to prove how much I care, I didn't know it, but you were always there.

Till that September when you slipped away, middle of my life on the longest day.

I heard you say, I'll be watching you from above.

'Cause long after life there is love.

Maybe I'll be watching you from above.

Long after life there's love.

[guitar plays] [applause] And now I believe another first for an historic MacDowell Medal Ceremony, we are fortunate to hear a performance by the medalist herself.

[applause] Music essayist Greil Marcus said this about Rosanne, "when you are in the room with that voice, you know something is at stake, that something is unsettled.

And so it is the tone of voice that leads you to listen for the rest of the story."

Please welcome Rosanne Cash and John, singing a composition, "An Undiscovered Country."

[applause] (SINGING) All those who go before us, the mothers and the kings, Shakespeare and my father kick dust up in my dreams.

If you're too close to the voices you can stray far from the track.

So goodbye, my friends.

It's my turn.

I won't look back.

Ghosts have had their moments.

They feed into the sun, shining like a carousel when summer's just begun.

Bonded for their silence, and I threw away the key.

And someone's going to down, but it's not me.

And all because I'm thankful for what we don't understand, the undiscovered country in every woman, every man.

[guitar plays] All those who follow after, our children who we pledge to historians and sailors who float beyond the edge, a big old box of wishes.

And we want them to reach higher, just beyond their grasp and plain desires.

The old men never helped us.

They took our every vow.

They turned them into money, and look where we are now.

Waiting for a savior, and she walks along the sea.

And someone's going down.

She went down for me.

Still she says she's thankful.

But we don't understand the undiscovered country in every woman, every man.

[guitar plays] Today's celebration's almost over.

Come tomorrow morning, hot coffee and breakfast arrives, while the MacDowell staff and associates keep doing what they've been doing best for over 100 years, giving talented artists something they need but don't always get, the time and space to create.

Thanks to Marion and Edward MacDowell and a host of committed corporate and individual supporters of the arts, an abundance of time and space will always be waiting here in the solitude and silence of the New Hampshire woods.

No telling what the world will be hearing, seeing, feeling, and talking about this time next year.

But one thing's for sure, creative arts will be a part of that conversation.

So will MacDowell.

(SINGING) The undiscovered country in every woman, every man.

[guitar plays] [applause] Thank you so much!