Nicole Takesono Flowers: Leading with Empathy from the Opera Stage to Higher Ed

0:06 There were very long days, but as I explained to my nephew who said to me one time, Auntie Nicole, how do you work so much? And I said, the end of my day is like dessert. It's work. It's not easy and I'm just hanging out. But it's when, when it's something that feeds your soul, it's really easy, easy to keep going. I'm delighted to be speaking with Nicole Take Sono Flowers, opera singer and higher Ed administrator. Originally from Hawaii, Nicole has garnered a claim for her rich, warm mezzo soprano voice and profound dedication to storytelling. She has graced the stages of esteemed companies such as the San Francisco Opera Opera San Jose, W Edge Opera, Festival Opera, and West Bay Opera. Recently, she's shifted her focus to recital work, collaborating closely with guitarist Sharon Wayne. For over 20 years, she has served as an administrator at UCSF, where she is currently the program manager for the Biophysics Grad program.

1:10 In 2022, she was awarded the Chancellor's Award for Exceptional University Service at UCSF. Nicole, welcome to the show. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to join you. You you grew up in Hawaii and it's obviously a big part of who you are Growing up. What did you think was possible in terms of your career paths and did you imagine you'd be living the life that you have today? I went to an amazing elementary school called Hanahalli, which means happy work. It was very small at the time. There was one class per grade, so 25 kids per grade. It's expanded a little bit now, but it's still very small and very nurturing.

2:01 And I credit that school as well as my parents with giving me this idea that I can do whatever I want as long as I put my mind to it. Fast forward a little bit down the line. When I was in high school, that's when I thought I I wanted to become an opera singer. And when I was a senior in high school, let's see, it was second semester, senior year. I'd already done my college applications. My mom and I took off for maybe about a week and we came to San Francisco. It was February, I believe, so there was no opera at the time.

2:42 So we got tickets to the ballet and I remember sitting in the War Memorial Opera House watching the ballet, being in this beautiful theater and thinking this is amazing, I want to work here someday. Then Fast forward a little bit more, 2005 I think it was, I was actually contracted to work for the ballet. They were doing the West Side Story suite and they hired 3 female singers and 1 male singer to beef up the sound with the ballet, the ballet dancers. And I was sitting in the pit and I remembered when I was in high school thinking that I wanted to be there.

3:23 And there I was, full circle. Wow, wow. I actually have been a pit singer also. This was in college, though. It was for a production of Chorus Line and A Chorus Line. And you know, they're leaping everywhere, so they needed soprano. That was me. Connect the dots for us as a young singer. What was that path like leaving Hawaii, getting to San Francisco and finding opportunities to sing? So when I graduated from high school, I went to College in Boston.

4:09 And I want to add that I think that the name of your show is so great, the ampersand. I am biracial and I think in every facet of my life I have always straddled a line, whether it's, you know, ethnically or professionally. I could never, I could never conceive of just being a singer. That seemed way too risky. And I always needed to have a sort of backup plan or another job. So when I was in college, I started off as a double major in economics and music. And then I realized I really didn't want any economics and I I didn't really need to have that part in my, my bachelor's degree.

5:01 But when I did leave college and I moved out to San Francisco, I did not feel comfortable not having a job because singing gigs are unpredictable. Sometimes you have lots and sometimes you have none. So that's when I started working at UCSF and I was working just part time supporting the department at the time. Finding audition notices was I think the best resource was a classical singer. They have their magazine and they also have their website where you could look up auditions. But it was it was it was tough. You know, finding a study church job was helpful. It was helpful in that you're constantly learning new music and you're constantly singing and you meet you meet other singers out there.

5:55 Tell me about UCSF. How did you, of all the many things you could have done, how did you land at UCSF? Craigslist. There was an ad on Craigslist for a part time job. Specifically, I was looking for something part time that offered health insurance and that's what this job was. I was living, and I still do live in the Sunset and the position was at the Parnassus campus, so it was walkable, easy to get to, flexible, and it allowed me to work half a day and then come home and practice or go to rehearsal or whatever I needed to do for this rest of the day. So you were in the chorus at Opera San Jose, and then you were in the opera chorus for San Francisco Opera for over 20 years.

6:47 And you know, you and I overlapped. I was in the marketing department there in 2005 to 2008, and I had a few friends in the chorus and it always seemed like such a wild job with the costumes and the sets and and being on call for pretty much the entire season. I mean most operas. Have. Choruses. What was it like performing in a a world class opera company? I will never forget my very first performance. We were doing Cavalerio, Rusticana and Pagliacci, and we're waiting for the curtain to go up. And I remembered that high school story that I told you about.

7:35 I hadn't yet had that ballet experience, but I, you know, and I just couldn't, I kind of couldn't believe that I was hired and that I was there at this company that is world renowned, one of the top companies in the whole wide world. I, I was, I was stunned and starstruck and in awe of the, the building and the production quality and everybody's voices. All of you know the the chorus is filled with soloists, people who could have had careers if they if they wanted to, in various places. It's it's, it was amazing. What are some highlights that you remember from your time over the many years?

8:18 Let's see. I think it was my second season. I was in Eugene Onegin and the costume fitting was unreal. I think I had three costumes. But there's a scene in Eugene Onyegen that is a big ball scene, a big and you know, the men are all in tails and with white tie and everything and the women are in these most amazing and ridiculous ball gowns. My hoop skirt, I'm 52 and my hoop skirt was probably whiter than I am tall. It was huge. And it was, the dress was all white. They put on white gloves and all this, you know, dripping with diamonds, not real diamonds, but just dripping with jewelry.

9:06 I, I, I, I could not believe. I felt like a, like a doll being dressed up. It was, it was incredible. That's definitely a highlight. Let's see. My husband is also a singer and so he and I were both in the opera chorus for a few years together. We did a production of Mfistofile by Boito. That was wild. The range of costuming is from A-Z and maybe a is our naked suits that we wore. OK, I don't remember this production. So there was a. There was a scene like in the Valpargus knocks in the sort of the the Limbo of Heaven or Earth and Hell where we're all dressed as partygoers, but naked partygoers with some costume pieces.

9:58 We were not naked. We were not naked. We we had flesh colored body suits that had some anatomy drawn on them. Some men had appendages, so not there were also children in the show and during this scene before and after, there was a a certain amount of cushion time before and after the scene. The children were kept up on the 5th floor in the chorus room, nowhere near any of us. Because when you looked at these costumes from a distance, they looked very real. That was wild.

10:39 That was absolutely wild. I. Love it. What was it like in those many years where you would be getting on stage at the War Memorial Opera House in the evenings? What were your days like? Like at USFSF? Would you talk about the operas? Did everyone know you were an opera singer? Give us a glimpse into your daytime life. So I was in the opera Chorus for 22 seasons. Three of those seasons were as a full time chorus member and then the rest were as a part time chorus member. So the years that I was full time, I was still working.

11:23 I maintained my job at UCSF, which made for very long days. Especially the last time I was full time was in 2022. That's when I see I, I had been a program manager at UCSF running the biophysics graduate PhD program. I started doing that in 2019. So in 2022 I was doing that and the full time job at the opera, very long days I would work, you know, this was still sort of that limbo COVID time. So I was working, I was able to work remotely more. And so I think I would start my days when I was I would start my day at 8:00 and then I would work until I had to go to the Opera House. And then I would usually have in, at least in the beginning of the season, it's mostly musical rehearsals. I would have musical rehearsals usually between 3:00 and 5:00 PM.

12:23 And then from 5:00 to 6:30 we have our dinner break. So I would hop on my laptop and do more UCSF work while eating my dinner. And then we would have more rehearsals from 6:30 to 9:30 when we got into performances and also staging rehearsals that would sometimes go until 11 at night. So it's like, go home, get ready for bed and hurry up and sleep. You can fall asleep quickly. Sorry, there were very long days. But as I explained to my nephew, he said to me one time, Auntie Nicole, why do you work so much? How do you work so much? And I said the end of my day is like dessert.

13:04 It's, it's work. It's not that it's easy and I'm just hanging out, but it's when when it's something that feeds your soul, it's really easy, easy to keep going. Let's take a moment to reflect on this question. What do you do that feeds your soul? Are you an Ampersand? Looking for community inspiration and resources? Come join us in the cohort where we help you grow and scale your creative and professional aspirations. If you're looking for more dedicated support, ioffer executive coaching for business leaders, people managers, creatives, and of course, Ampersands. Find out more about the cohort and one-on-one Coaching at jessica1.com.

13:59 Now back to the show. In the last few years, you've pivoted more to recitals, and last summer you did a show called Places We Want to Visit. You had five performances of this program, and the fourth performance was on Oahu at the tarot farm that your cousin runs. What made this performance particularly meaningful to you? That was just such a special day. The whole event really blended family and my passions.

14:40 My family's really important to me. Growing up in Hawaii, you typically have a huge extended family. So you know, my parents were there, my aunties and uncles, but then my my cousin's cousins and my auntie's cousins. And it just, and having it at this Taro farm, I have to tell you about this farm. It Taro farm sounds quaint. What it really is, is a ancient Hawaiian agriculture practice that is being resurrected in ancient Hawaii. They would divide the island up into wedges. Like think of a pie and each each piece of the pie wedge. So it included the mountain down to the sea. So you got all of the agriculture that you could have from the mountain, you know, trees and fruits, maybe some pasture all the way down to fish ponds and marshlands, marshlands and fish ponds for Taro farming, which is a huge staple in the Hawaiian diet.

15:45 And then they would have the fish ponds beyond that just by the Ocean's edge. And so this Taro farm is part of that old process. It was called an ahu Puaa. And across across the street from the Taro farm is actually a fish pond that my cousin also helped develop. The Terrell farm has been there for centuries. It was inundated with mangrove for many, many years. There's a a bridge that we would always have to drive over in order to get to school, to get to Kaneohe town. Every day we would drive over this bridge at least once. And it was on either side of the bridge was just really, really dense mangrove. And when they removed that to restore the font to tarot patch and to restore the fish ponds, I had no idea what was back there. It's, it's, it's so stunning.

17:22 The. The. How have you seen your identity as Hawaiian, as biracial come up in your journey as a musician and what you're studying now?

18:10 The first thing I want to just say is I am not Native Hawaiian and it's a something that is not widely understood in that, you know, if you are from America, you would never say you're Native American, right? That's a very distinct ethnic. Group or. Collection of ethnic groups. So I would never say that I'm Hawaiian because that refers to somebody being native Hawaiian. I'm from Hawaii, that's what I say. So, but being biracial, I'm being from Hawaii, is it informs who I am. It is it is at the root of who I am. And this next recital that I'm planning has a theme that is called Songs of Our Forebears. And so we're going to the plan is to do a set that reflects my guitarist Sharon Wayne's heritage. She's Ashkenazi Jew.

19:08 So we're looking at maybe some klezmer, maybe some Russian music. And then my side is I'm half Japanese and half Northern European, so there's a lot to choose from there. And so I'm, I, I'm choosing some French Huguenot music, which is really obscure from my Japanese side. I really was hoping to find music from the Japanese internment camps. That's where my father was born. I'm the music that I, I, I've learned of is it's a lot of big band, which is great, but it's hard to do with a guitarist and just a vocalist.

19:50 So I'm actually starting to look at music from the sugar plantation days in Hawaii. And then also maybe some songs from where each of my grandparents were from. And then I will also do another set in Hawaiian. I have a few songs that are that I've chosen that are. Partially in English and partially in Hawaiian. Hawaiian and their songs from, you know, maybe like the 70s and 80s. Lovely. It sounds wonderful. What do you hope your audiences will take away from this program? I think there's a little education that can be found there. I, I've realized in planning this one that it could be a dissertation.

20:35 So I'm trying to not bite off more than I can chew. But I, you know, I think learning about other cultures is so important, especially these days. I think learning about their music can make it more accessible. And I think that when you when one chooses A recital program, if the music really speaks to the performers, if it has a lot of meaning to to them, it'll come across as interesting. Yeah, I think you're spot on. I want to talk a little bit more about your role at UCSF. You started out part time there. Now you're the program manager for the PhD program. In 2022, you were awarded the Chancellor's Award for Exceptional University Service, and you mentioned that the nomination included letters of support from faculty and students.

21:31 What did it mean to you to receive this honor? It blew me away. I, you know, I had seen this award being announced every year and didn't really think too much about it. Like, oh, that's nice for that person, that's great. But you don't, you don't really, unless you're at the awards ceremony or unless you know the person, you don't really know all that goes into the nomination and the conviction that those who are nominating you have to have in order to submit this package. Part of my goal as a graduate program manager is, well, the big goal is to get, get students through, to finish with their PhD. And along the way, people run into all sorts of hurdles. And my goal is to just be there for them and help them. And the, the, the words of support in this nomination package confirm that I, I'm, I'm meeting my goal. But it was so encouraging also to know that I, I'm making a difference in these lives.

22:41 And you know, to boot, these people are researching things that make all of our lives better on some level there because it's it's basic science and a lot of it goes in the direction of pharmaceuticals. Not all of it, some of it it's in other therapies, but you know, it's all in service of medical science. When you think about your life and how you've chosen the administration side and the singing side, what skills or similarities do you see between these two worlds? What ties them together? That's a really great question. I often think about this as a performer. You have to know how to pivot, you have to know how to be nimble, you have to know how to adapt on the fly. I've done a lot of educational work where you going to schools and you perform a show that's been rehearsed, but there's always new variables, whether it's the students that you're teaching who are involved in the show and what they might say or what they might forget or what they might ad Lib, which is always super fun.

24:00 But also the space that you're going to be performing in is never the same. So you have to be flexible, you have to be able to pivot, you have to be nimble. In administration. There are certain things that seem like they should be prescribed and regular, but they never are. They never are. There's always, there's always variables. And of course, whenever dealing with other humans, there's always nuance and variables. And I, I, I, I often think about how my training as a, as a musician, as a performer has set me up well to do my administrative job, to think on the fly. And I think also empathy, you know, you as a performer, you want to be, you want to show empathy. And I think that also helps with graduate students who are trying to get through a really, really rigorous program. Yeah, absolutely.

25:04 One of the goals of this show is for us to collectively create the Ampersand Manifesto, defining principles for leading these types of lives. What are some principles that you live by? I'm looking at a whiteboard that is above my desk. We often do these community circles with our first year graduate students and we have to pick words that represent us. And I think they could also answer your question. So I have 3 words written up here. 1 is harmony, open mindedness, and compassion.

25:47 And I would say those are three guiding words or principles in my life. Nicole, it's been wonderful talking with you listeners. Stay tuned for Nicole's upcoming recitals. You can follow her on Instagram at Sunset Gamer Babe, and we'll link to that in the show notes. If you liked this show, share it with your friends and fellow ampersands and make sure to hit the follow button to be notified when new episodes drop. It would mean the world to us if you took two minutes to rate and review the show. Just go to the main show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and look for the stars. I had a chance to listen back on my interview with Nicole, and I want to share a few key takeaways. One, it's so heartwarming to see how Nicole is weaving in her identity and background into her artistry in this chapter of her life.

26:47 Looking back at where her ancestors came from and not only performing their songs but also in the places themselves. This is so meaningful and a beautiful homage to everything that came before. I'm so excited for her next recital and what she'll learn about herself through the process. 2 The idea of empathy being a key skill that artists develop. Here's the definition of empathy, the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. As an artist, this really is our work to comprehend the meaning of what we perform or create and also to translate that empathy to the audience.

27:37 Being a singer is a constant practice of empathy, and that empathy can be applied in all other areas. 3 Nicole brought up several times how she's really felt seen by this term. Ampersand being biracial and having dual careers. This really is my hope with this show and the community work I do with the cohort for more people to feel seen and for all of us to embrace our Ands, whatever they might look like. It's always and I'm never just one thing.