In the late 1970s, a college student singing with a jazz trio at an off-campus bar in upstate New York was invited by saxophonist Illinois Jacquet to tour with his big band. She turned him down to pursue graduate study in classical music. This deep dive follows Renée Fleming from that decision through Eastman, a Fulbright in Germany, and Juilliard, where she paid the bills singing jazz at night.

The episode explores how jazz phrasing and rubato gave her classical singing an unusual elasticity, why winning the Metropolitan Opera auditions at 29 was biologically well timed for a lyric soprano, and her last-minute 1991 Met debut as the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro. It then traces her crossover work and her later pivot into arts and health research with the National Institutes of Health.

• Sir Georg Solti’s statement that he had encountered perhaps one other soprano of her quality
• Her exclusive Decca contract in 1996 and becoming the first woman to solo headline the Met’s opening night gala in 2008
• Singing on The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, the indie-rock covers album Dark Hope, the 2014 Super Bowl anthem, and a 2018 Tony nomination for Carousel
• The Ann Patchett connection, from Bel Canto to the blind date that led to her second marriage
• Co-authoring a 2017 JAMA article, becoming WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Arts and Health in 2023, and launching the NeuroArts Investigator Awards and the anthology Music and Mind in 2024