Tone Glow 183: Eliana Glass

An interview with the Seattle-raised, New York-based singer and pianist about disembodied voices, being inspired by Nina Simone and Sibylle Baier, and her debut album 'E'

Photos by Camille Vivier

Eliana Glass (b. 1997) is a New York-based singer and pianist whose forthcoming album, E, stands as one of the most striking debuts of the year. Inspired by numerous vocalists, from Nina Simone to Asha Puthli to Elizabeth Fraser, her works are interested in capturing the voice as a sort of tactile object. While she has performed live in various contexts, it was only after hearing Sibylle Baier’s work that she became interested in recording; she reached out to the late folk singer’s son to purchase the same device she used to record music.

Across E, Glass performs songs—both her own as well as those by Carla Bley and Annette Peacock—with a clarity that proves intimately homespun but also eminently transportive. The effortlessness with which her songs entice is made clear in her homage to Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou (“Song for Emahoy”), which channels the same aching tenderness of the Ethiopian musician’s work. And on a track like “Human Dust,” Glass eschews traditional performance by singing long-form text from the multi-media artist Agnes Denes. Her versatility is on full display across these tracks, as is the fullness of her artistic vision.

E is out via Shelter Press on April 25th and can be purchased at Bandcamp. Joshua Minsoo Kim spoke with Glass via Zoom on March 12th, 2025 to discuss muses, early musical memories, and the freedom of singing Nina Simone’s music.

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Joshua Minsoo Kim: I know you were born in Australia. How long were you there for?

Eliana Glass: I was there until I was three. My dad is a Kiwi, so he’s from New Zealand, and my mom is from California. They were living in Brisbane at the time and there was a job opportunity for my dad that brought us to Seattle. And I have a brother who is three years younger than me.

It makes sense that your dad is a Kiwi because I saw the little mobile you made out of harakeke.

It’s funny. I have some in my apartment here and I’m hoping it’ll survive—it’s not the harakeke’s native environment at all.

Do you feel a connection to Australia and New Zealand? Have you visited much since moving to Seattle and now New York?

My brother and I got our passports in 2021. We went to New Zealand, got a car, and then traveled all around to visit our dad’s side of the family. We camped and backpacked, staying with family members who are farmers. We got to know our dad’s world a little bit, which was super meaningful, and we were connecting him back to his own upbringing. I’m an Aussie, technically, but I’m more connected to New Zealand because my dad’s from there, and we don’t have any family in Australia. I did have an Australian accent at one time, but they say that when you come to a new country as a kid, you can lose your accent as early as two weeks.

What do you feel was significant in having gone to New Zealand?

That’s a good question. Going to New Zealand, I learned so much about the natural environment and native plants and birds, of invasive species. And I met so many of my dad’s friends and their kids and I got to connect with them. Everyone’s really nice there. I took with me that kind of friendliness. I also learned about Indigenous culture. The material that you mentioned—harakeke—is such a strong fibrous plant and you can basically just go outside and make something with it. There are possibilities for that in New York but the natural landscape in New Zealand is incomparable. Being able to walk outside and just make something out of what’s there—I really like that. And I love that Auckland, for instance, is on a volcano. And it’s an active volcano. I grew up with Mount Rainier in Washington State, but I think it’s important to know that the volcano could erupt at any moment. It teaches you about life and the land in a good way.

What was your household like? Were your parents really into the arts?

My parents played music all the time growing up. They played a lot of kids’ music, like The Wiggles and Raffi, but my dad also played a lot of music I didn’t like as a kid that was really cool—sea shanties but also stuff like Sonic Youth and Pavement and Johnny Cash. I remember my brother singing along with the lyrics during road trips, but I was a little scared by some of the stuff my dad played. He had one of those stereo systems that could play six CDs and rotate them, and when he’d come home from work he’d go straight to that. He had all this music he collected since he was living in New Zealand as a young person, and so did my mom. But my parents didn’t play classical music for me when I was a kid.

What are some of the earliest musical memories you have?

The earliest memories involve the piano that I grew up with. I would explore it as a kid and write my own songs—I really enjoyed it. I had piano lessons, but they weren’t controlling the way the lessons went; I was doing my own thing. I think the freedom they gave to me from an early age allowed for me to do things in my own way. I’m not telling the full story here, though, because I did a lot of training with my voice and didn’t enjoy practicing exercises even though I still did them. The earliest memories are actually me underneath the piano. I really liked playing under the wood. Some of the music that I’ve made recently are trying to draw out those memories, of playing underneath the piano and seeing it as a sort of ship, like from a child’s perspective.

Why didn’t you like your singing lessons?

I had a teacher named Bruce and he had me do all these kinds of exercises with my voice and diaphragm. We just did those exercises—we didn’t do anything else, really, so it was kind of dry (laughter). I liked singing songs, so the dryness of those lessons made me love singing all the more. And I realized that I loved to sing when I was given chances to perform. Doing that connected me with people. I liked the interaction that could happen, this power of the voice and of being able to rule over a room, to lure them in.

Do you remember the first time you did that?

This is a funny example, but I was in fourth or fifth grade. We sang The Marriage of Figaro, the opera, and there was a solo where I was supposed to sing like a very bad singer. I liked performing that at the assembly and hearing the parents in the audience laughing. I remember the magnetic feeling that came from it, and I love that this is an example where I wasn’t necessarily sounding good—it was about the dynamic. Like, I love acting, but the problem with theater is that I’m not a good dancer (laughter). I played Adelaide in Guys and Dolls. I wasn’t allowed to sing in my normal voice, and I remember feeling frustrated by that. There was one song where I could break out of that and didn’t have to be a character. That was an early sign that theater maybe wasn’t for me; I like to sing the way I like to sing.

Given your role in Figaro, I’m curious if you can tell me what distinguishes a good singer from a bad singer. How do you evaluate others or your own performances?

That’s a really good question that I’d like to ask a lot of people. In a way, I don’t think there’s such a thing as a bad singer. Being a “bad singer” comes from the listener or from the reason you want to sing. Everyone should sing, everyone is artistic, and singing isn’t really about being “bad” or “good.”

Right, this goes back to what you said about just going out in New Zealand and making something. You don’t want to discourage people from doing what they can with what’s available to them.

Exactly. And I don’t even know why I sing—it’s still mysterious to me. But sure, there are some concrete reasons: I like singing in the same way that I like making gifts or writing cards for people. I feel like singing provides the same feeling. One time when I performed, someone came up afterwards and told me that he felt transported, that he was able to forget everything. I read something recently that framed forgetting as a positive thing, and I’m seeing this in the same way—like how you’ll see a movie and completely forget your whole life. The performer has the opportunity, too, to forget themselves. Music can be a gift in that way.

Something I was wondering while listening to your album, E (2025), is how much of it is autobiographical. I like the opening song “All My Life” because it starts with this expectation: “All my life I’ve waited for you.” But then that idea transforms because you understand it as something all-consuming. You eventually say “give me back my life.”

Ah, that’s great, you’re seeing it as something romantic that eventually turns sour. With that song, I definitely wrote it with a friend in mind. So it was like a gift, again, that I made for this person. I was really inspired by Ornette Coleman and Asha Puthli’s “All My Life.” There are so many songs with this name and I wanted to make my own. The beginning of that song says, “I’ve waited all my life for you,” which is basically the same as mine but rearranged. I found the chord first—the chord that I play has ten notes in it, so it’s a really big chord. It just naturally evolved where I would say that line with the chord.

Do you mind talking about how you developed your own voice? You mention Asha Puthli and there are other singers that come into play on the record, like Karin Krog.

I think it all started when I started to feel limited by songs from the 1940s and from jazz standards. There were specific expectations for how a singer, especially a jazz singer, should improvise. That made me feel restricted, and that’s when I abandoned everything that came before and made me want to stick to my guns. I was thinking about my early memories with the piano and feeling free, thinking, “You know, there was something good going on there.” (laughter). I felt this way when I was in college, but I also went to this piano recital when I was a kid and didn’t play anything that the teacher asked me to play (laughter).

That’s really bold. How did the teacher respond?

The teacher was totally fine with it, which is the best reaction.

Do you mind talking about the different singers who’ve meant a lot to you? There’s Karin like I said, but also Annette Peacock and Patty Waters.

Nina Simone is the voice I’ve listened to most in my life. I’ve always loved her voice and her approach. It’s funny because I remember a classmate of mine heard her sing and said, “It’s so hard to listen to Nina Simone, her voice is so wavery.” I never felt that way, and it was so interesting to hear that, to understand that there were these completely different experiences. And I also love Elizabeth Fraser [of The Cocteau Twins]; I love that her words aren’t exactly understandable. I’ve been doing that a lot now, with a lot of the songs I’ve made after the album. I love “Lorelei,” that song is crazy beautiful.

You have a song like “Human Dust” on the album where you’re relaying this massive text by Agnes Denes. Your delivery veers closer to a sing-speak mode than traditional singing. How did you approach a song like that when the words aren’t lyrics but just actual text?

I created that song on a whim. I had the text in front of me and sat at the piano and took a stab at singing it. The melody is very improvised and I didn’t really have a system—I just went for it. Afterwards, I practiced how to deliver it. I memorized it too, and I think that’s important—this life should be internalized so that the facts are somewhere in me. There are a lot of expectations for how a singer should improvise in jazz and there are a lot of opinions about what you should and shouldn’t do. For a long time, it was a constant challenge for me to figure out how to improvise, and I think a lot of jazz vocalists can relate to that. With an instrument it can be more obvious, but as a singer it’s like, do I make up more syllables? Do I use the syllables that Ella Fitzgerald uses? Does that sound… bad? People have all these connotations.

When I made E, I was thinking about improvisation in this more free way. Improvisation could mean taking a text like “Human Dust” and putting it in front of you and then going for it. I can have an idea of what’s going on with the piano and letting it all come out when you vocalize. There’s also a way to improvise as a singer where you don’t have any words planned and it becomes Elizabeth Fraser-esque. I like improvising in a way where it sounds like words but is actually just the vowels and sounds that I like. Improvising might mean sitting down at the piano and not trying to make anything, but seeing what comes out.

Are there any songs where you were just seeing what could flow out of you?

“Good Friends Call Me E” is kind of like that.

That’s interesting because the lyrics are really specific.

Yeah, it was kind of just luck of the draw. I remember sitting down, and I remember the color of the light in my room—I was just open to singing something with these two chords that I liked. I happened to record it and I kept everything pretty much the same. There are some things that I said that were more like mumbles that I filled in later, but that’s an example of that.

What about “Song for Emahoy”? The first time I was listening to the album, I was hearing it without looking at the track titles and I was really amazed because it really did sound like Emahoy [Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou]. It reminds me of what you just said about being under the piano—there’s a sort of purity and clarity there.

I really love Emahoy so much. I heard her song “Ballad of the Spirits” many years ago and I would say the song I wrote is pulling from that. Her music sounds like the rain—it’s deceptively simple, it’s total magic. I love the chromatic stuff in her music, and I think it’s really evocative of water. Chromatic piano playing gets at something human… it feels more similar to something that a human voice could do.

What’s it like working with your brother, Costa? He’s credited on a handful of these tracks.

Working with him is amazing. He’s a huge muse to me, and I love having muses in my life. I guess I think about this in the way I think about music as gift-giving. He’s had a huge role in making the album, and he freed me from any restrictions or limitations that I had about how singers should sing or how I should play the piano.

What does it mean for someone to be a muse for you?

It means that you’re inspired by them and that some element of them is embalmed in the music forever.

He contributed to songs like “On the Way Down,” “Solid Stone,” and “Flood.” Where do you hear him in these songs, then?

That’s a great question. I can just hear his voice in my head. I have this memory of sitting down at the piano and not knowing what the next line should be and he’s like, “Why don’t you do this?” And that completely opened things up for me. It all happened in 10 minutes, writing “All the Way Down.” I was playing on the piano and I liked the mumblings that I came up with, but I had no lyrics, I felt blocked. My brother was sitting there with me and was like, “Just give me a second,” and then left the room and took a piece of paper and wrote all those lyrics down. I was like, “Should I sing it this way or that way?” and he told me that it was up to me. It was really cool; I’ll always remember that moment.

Who are the other muses in your life?

Just people in my life—friends, my parents, other musicians, romantic interests, my dogs that I grew up with (laughter).

When I listened to the song “Da,” it reminded me a lot of Sibylle Baier. It reminds me a lot of “Forget About.”

I love her. Sibylle Baier is another stairway down into something else. I really love her recordings and the sound of her voice—it sounds so resolute, sturdy, grainy. My album was created, initially, as a series of demos. And I recorded them on the same machine that Sibylle Baier used to record her own songs. I wrote to her son and asked how she made all those recordings, and she used this machine from the ’60s. I got one and had to get it repaired many times because it never really worked. She inspired me to record music in a lot of ways because I liked how her voice sounded, where these recordings were just with one microphone.

I wanted to make something that sounded tactile, that could capture the voice. The voice is this amazing, invisible thing without any form, and recordings are the only way to capture them. I wanted to capture it in a way where it could feel like this object you could touch. These old recordings record the voice but also the machine, so ultimately I just liked the way this machine made the voice sound (laughter). I recorded the songs at home with my brother and that one-microphone, reel-to-reel machine. It was actually used to record business meetings—it’s not meant to record music. It’s not the exact machine, but it’s the same make just a few years apart from the machine that recorded the Nixon Tapes [the Sony TC-800B].

When they first discovered recording, everyone was really freaked out and it was really uncanny to have someone’s voice disembodied, and I always love reading about that. And in using that kind of a device, I wanted to capture that feeling. I wanted to bring back that strangeness. We’re so accustomed to it today—we hear it when we’re on the phone, when we’re listening to music—but when it first happened, people were freaked out.

That makes me think of a song like “Shrine” because you have all these layers. It sounds spectral. It doesn’t sound like you’re singing to someone; it sounds like your voice is haunting this space and I’ve just stumbled upon it.

Yeah, and that also is very strange because it’s just my voice two times. And we’re accustomed to that now, but it actually is crazy to have two of me at the same time.

I end all my interviews with the same question and I wanted to ask it to you. Do you mind sharing one thing you love about yourself?

I love that all these other people live in me, that all these people I know and don’t know are there, and that life carries on in this way.

What does it feel like, then, when you’re singing a song from someone you adore but never knew personally? Let’s take Nina Simone as an example.

Her music is total freedom to me. Nina Simone was always the singer I was supposed to listen to last. Singing teachers would say, “You need to know the song the way the composer wrote it.” And it’s why I couldn’t listen to Sarah Vaughan either (laughter). Nina Simone represented this freedom, of something you could only get to at the end. But she’s always who I wanted to listen to first, and she sang so many other people’s songs, too. Many people have this opinion that you should only sing your own songs and not others’. I don’t agree with that. It’s anti-music, actually.

Eliana Glass’ E is out via Shelter Press on April 25th, 2025. You can purchase the album at Bandcamp.

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Thank you for reading the 183rd issue of Tone Glow. What is love? Only a prelude to sorrow.

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