Grammy-winner Sara Bareilles is working on new original music for the first time post-pandemic.
“I did this grand experiment where I was like, let me just see if we make some demos what this ends up being,” Bareilles told The Independent at Monday night’s Maestra AMPLIFY concert in New York City. “And it was a very exciting sort of spark-filled week. So I have more of a record than I thought I did, which is always really exciting.”
While she didn’t share further details about a possible timeline, Bareilles said there’s “a really good chance” an album is coming soon.
Bareilles, a two-time Grammy winner with over a dozen studio and live albums, has been keeping busy collaborating with two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Sarah Ruhl on a musical adaptation of Meg Wolitzer’s 2013 novel, The Interestings. The story centers around the relationships six teenagers forge at an arts camp the summer Richard Nixon resigns, following them through to their middle ages.
At Monday’s event — a concert in support of the Maestra organization’s mission to uplift and support women and non-binary musicians in the theater industry — Bareilles previewed a song from the forthcoming musical called “Enough.”
The singer-songwriter is no stranger to Broadway, having written the music and lyrics for the stage adaptation of the hit movie Waitress, which garnered her a 2016 Tony nomination. The “Love Song” singer also took a star turn onstage, playing lead character Jenna for multiple engagements throughout the show’s multi-year run.
She was last seen on Broadway in the 2022 revival of Into the Woods, for which she received another Tony nomination — her first in a performance category — and was on all three seasons of the sitcom Girls5eva.
For now, she finds herself back on the creative side of the theatrical process. Speaking about The Interestings, Bareilles said it’s “a really human story. It’s about messy people and the way they love each other and the way they hurt each other. And I don’t know anybody who can’t relate to that.”
She continued: “Art, I really believe is medicine and I think it’s really essential to keep pursuing these artistic endeavors right now because the world feels so bleak.
“So I think making things that you love is an act of resistance.”
But her new original music is taking a different tone. Born out of the pandemic and the state of the world — and of losing two close friends in the last four years — Bareilles said her new tunes are grief-heavy, but not entirely melancholy.
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“My hope is that what feels heavy about it will feel comforting and will feel cathartic — And then there is joy in there too. There’s always joy.”