The New Sound of the Von Trapps’ Music
Fifty years after the release of The Sound of Music, the name “von Trapp” still conjures up images of Julie Andrews and seven children wearing matching clothes made out of curtains and singing about raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. But the latest von Trapp generation is making the name their own: Sofia, Melanie, Amanda, and August von Trapp, the grandchildren of Werner von Trapp (portrayed as the “incorrigible” Kurt in The Sound of Music), have spent the last 14 years touring concert halls all over the world and collaborating with an eclectic list of fellow performers, including Pink Martini, Rufus Wainwright, and Wayne Newton. On their upcoming EP, Dancing in Gold, the von Trapps combine their classical background and wide-ranging influences with youthful energy and a new indie-rock sensibility. I recently spoke by phone with Amanda von Trapp from her family’s home in Portland about the von Trapps’ musical history and evolution.
REBEAT: How did you end up in Portland?
AMANDA VON TRAPP: Well, it had to do with Pink Martini. We came to give a performance with the Oregon Symphony, and we were asked to do some promotion. And one thing that’s very Portland-esque is the Christmas tree lighting the day after Thanksgiving. Pink Martini is there every year, and there’s a huge singalong in the square, and we joined them in 2012. And we fell in love with Thomas Lauderdale, who’s the band leader, and everyone else in the band, and we had these crazy, hectic rehearsals, ‘cause there were about a million people onstage during these shows, and we thought, “Oh, wow! This is fun!”
So we started a relationship with Thomas, and we exchanged some musical ideas, and then we started working on an album. We came here for two weeks to record, but it ended up taking two years, and we fell in love with the city and the people, so we just stayed.
How was it working with Pink Martini?
They really are the most unusual band. The connection we ended up having was because of this international repertoire, which was a part of the way we grew up and used our music. And I think we felt very alone in that, because no one our age was singing in all these different languages — until we met Pink Martini, and they have that flair for taking all these beautiful melodies and international folk songs, and turning them into something fun and sexy and interesting, and people really love them. So for us, it was a good way to take all the years we’d been doing that particular genre and make it Pink Martini-esque. It was a great relationship with the band, but also a good move for our career in terms of really developing artistry.
We went on tour with them, and we still see them often — we live pretty close to a few of them. They really are a fantastic band. And I think for us, because our music was so vocal-heavy, we needed to learn how to value that instrumentation behind us, and we definitely learned that through Pink Martini, because each member is so specifically talented in their instrument, so to watch them put the same care and technique [into their instruments] as we did with our voices, it made a really nice marriage between us, and it worked really well.
You’ve incorporated more instruments into your own music since then.
It’s interesting. The four of us have been doing this for 14 years, and we’ve picked up pieces everywhere we went, mix-matching everything and creating a show that catered to a large audience from all over. And these last couple of years, we’ve really had to narrow down our interests, musically, as honest to our experiences, our tastes, the messages we want to say, and the image we want to convey. Pink Martini was a really nice transition into what we’re doing now, because working with them took all that we’d done in the past — all those 14 years of traveling as children and as young adults, and then putting that all into one final project.
So now this next phase is original music: writing music that is really specific to our voices, our style, and what we’re capable of doing right now. And challenging ourselves to be a little more artistic in our music. It’s turned into a little bit of indie rock, which is funny, because we’re so classically trained and have been so vocal heavy, but now we’ve added in a lot of drums, bass, and piano, and it’s become more of a “band” band. We’re really excited about these songs, because they’re very honest to who we are right now.
How did you figure out how to narrow down all your influences and experiences into this new sound?
I think when you grow up as a performer, you’ve very sensitive to an audience. You can pick up the vibe, and you can pick up what they want and how to respond. And while that’s a really important quality of being a performer, sometimes it gets in the way of you creating music that’s very specific to you. And I think over time, you have to learn how to slowly transition that. You can’t just cut it off. But audiences know when you’re not being entirely honest. And the four of us, we’re growing up, and people are seeing that. And so our new music takes a little bit of each thing that we’ve experienced, and the quality of our voices, and the training that we’ve done, and the hopeful message that we have in general. Pulling all those pieces into it is where it gets emotional or technical, because you have to decide which songs to keep — and when you have four people, with four different experiences, deciding these things, it gets even more complicated. But we make it work.
How did you start performing, and how did you decide to do this professionally?
It started when we were really young, just singing. Our mom brought us to choir, and we took music lessons together, and I think we were really loud in the car, so she was trying to turn that noise into something constructive. And our grandfather, who was portrayed as Kurt in The Sound of Music, came out to visit us every summer, and he taught us the Austrian folk songs that he grew up with, and a lot of the songs that the older generation sang. At one point, he had a stroke, so he couldn’t come out to visit us anymore, and we decided to put all those songs on a recording and give it to him in the hospital. And while we were making this little recording, in this little studio a couple of hours away [from home], somebody said, “Hey, if you guys record a few more songs for this, you could probably make it an album.” And we thought, “Oh, hey, that sounds like fun.” I mean, August was seven, Sofie was 13, and I was 11, so there wasn’t a whole lot of conscious thought. It was just, “Let’s go with it, and let’s have fun.”
And you know, we were all homeschooled, and the rule of thumb for homeschooling is that you try to maximize your experiences, and the world is your textbook. So we really went with the music, and people were asking us for bookings, and it wasn’t until about halfway through that we started making more conscious decisions about it being a career, and instead of making choices for the sake of experiences, we were making choices about what was the best career option, and the best direction that could help us grow the most. I think for us, the thing we really wanted to do was create something from all our our experiences, and Dancing in Gold is that.
What was the transition like, going from being homeschooled to being touring musicians?
A lot of people wonder that! We definitely grew up differently from most homeschoolers, because we were traveling, and we were working. We had a job, and we were doing homework in between sets or on the airplane. It was a very unconventional way to match schooling, and touring, and growing up. So the transition into life outside of that really hasn’t been that traumatic because, especially in our industry, people are unconventional. I think the hardest transition for us was probably having enough bravery to show people exactly what we want them to see about us. And it’s not that dramatic — there’s no rapid change — it’s just growing up. And it’s really hopeful.
I think a lot of people think we’re like the Brady Bunch, we’re bubblegum, like, “Oh, it’s the Von Trapps! They’re so cute!” and “They’re siblings! How can they do it?” And you know, we’ve gone through a lot. We’ve had an interesting life. And I think we’ve just chosen to be very hopeful and optimistic about the way we feel, and the way we want other people to see our music and our interactions with them. It’s hopeful, and it’s fun. That’s kind of our mission statement in a way: we want people to feel like there’s hope.
Did you and your siblings grow up with The Sound of Music, and the understanding that it was based on your family?
Well, it was kind of dualistic for us, because we had The Sound of Music and the reputation that came with that, and we had the history of the real family, and all those stories that were really personal, because they were about our great-aunts and great-uncles, and our grandma and grandpa. So I think we always jumped between that understanding and the way that the rest of the world was looking at us. It was a weird mix and match.
And the next question would be, what does the family think of it, and what’s our relationship with it? And for us, it’s kind of funny, actually. Because yeah, there were a lot of discrepancies between the real-life scenario and the movie, but Sound of Music took the best parts of the family story and made it hopeful. It’s that same message: family, looking for a better life. There’s a lot of courage in the story, and there’s also a lot of honesty.
For us, the most amazing thing is that people are happy when they see us, and they want to come talk to us, like, “Oh, you’re a Von Trapp?” It’s always positive. Because so many people have had wonderful relationships with this movie. And maybe that’s why we are such hopeful and positive people, because that’s people’s relationship with us. And that’s wonderful. I mean, it would be hard if you came from a family where people were making it difficult for you because they had something bad to say. But it’s always positive and happy.
That positivity comes through in your live performances and in the video for “Dream A Little Dream.” Your sister directed that, right?
Yeah, Melanie directed that one, and actually, we just filmed the music video for “Dancing In Gold,” and it is awesome. It’s in an infinity room, so there’s all these crazy lights everywhere. And [Melanie] directed that one, too. It comes out next month, and we’re super excited about that.
We’ve talked about your work with Pink Martini, and you’ve also worked with artists like Wayne Newton, Rufus Wainwright, and some of the original Sound of Music cast. Who would you like to collaborate with in the future?
Oh, my God, so many people. One of our biggest influences in modern pop culture right now is the Fleet Foxes — such amazing music. We would love to work with Sufjan Stevens, or My Morning Jacket, or Beach House. Or another band we really love is Blind Pilot; they’re from here, and they’re an indie folk band. We met a few of the members when we first came to Portland, and we asked Israel Nebeker, who’s the lead singer and the band leader, if he would produce our EP. And so that’s where the indie rock influence comes in. So we’re starting to branch out and work with people whose music we really love, or we really love their tastes, and we feel like they can help us branch out, and move, and challenge us into expanding our creative spectrum.
Where do you see your music going next?
You know, I still feel like we’re in this phase right now. We’re still figuring out how to do it. You know, we grew up performing in a lot of symphony halls and performing arts centers in a very classical environment. And now we’re doing club tours, and we’re trying to figure out how to make this music work in that sort of setting. So there’s a lot of transitioning that we’re doing, and I think we’re still in that phase. We’re not quite ready to move onto the next phase yet. . We’ll always have that classical part of us, because that’s in our genes, and we know that we do it well, because it’s what we’ve been trained to do for 14 years, and we add these classical elements into the new music. And that’s exciting. I think the hope is to keep what people love about us, and what people really want to come see in a show, but also to figure out how to have fun with our music, and how to feel liberated to perform and sing the songs that we write.
Dancing in Gold is out April 14. Catch the von Trapps at SPACE in Evanston, IL, on Tuesday, March 31.
