It was four years ago, performing at the invitation of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, that Natalie Merchant first experienced the excitement of standing onstage with a 60-piece orchestra at her back as she shared her music with an audience.
“It was astounding,” Merchant says. “A full-string section, woodwinds, brass. The texture is so different from anything that I had ever heard onstage before. So that was my first taste of it. And it’s become a bit addictive. I really look forward to my agent calling to say, ‘We have another show.’”
This week, she flies to Arizona for a concert with the Phoenix Symphony.
“It’s replaced conventional touring for me,” Merchant says. “I don’t have to carry a band and lights and sound and all that and be on the road for six solid weeks. I fly to a city, do a rehearsal, do a show and come home. It’s conducive to family life and community life so it’s been a godsend, actually, because I crave being out there and making music. I just can’t keep up that pace anymore.”
The symphonic experience even worked its way into her latest album, 2010’s “Leave Your Sleep,” on which the songs were adapted from 19th- and 20th-century poems about childhood.
“When I started making ‘Leave Your Sleep,’” she says, “I started incorporating more symphonic instruments. And the new album has even more. So the program is growing. We actually have to leave out about five or six songs a night because there are too many now.”
The new album of which she speaks is yet untitled, but this time, she’s putting her own words to music.
“The last time I made an album of original songs was in 2001,” Merchant says. “So for the last 12 years, I’ve continued to write new material but haven’t had a place to put it.”
It’s only natural, she says, that she’d incorporate more orchestration.
“Knowing that I have those instruments available, it’s hard not to use them,” she says. “I’m in a unique situation because so many composers never get an opportunity to hear their music performed with a live orchestra. I can write a song, work on an arrangement and perform it within a week. We’re debuting a new song in Phoenix and then another new song a week and a half later in Charlotte (N.C.). It’s really exciting.”
The new album is a darker ride than “Leave Your Sleep.”
“I wrote many songs during the Bush era that didn’t see the light of day,” she says. “And it was hard to be optimistic in those days. But they’re good songs. And even though the players have changed, the situations haven’t. I tend to examine power and the abuse of power. That seems to be the bone that I’ve been chewing on for decades.”
Merchant talks about the “long dark shadow” cast by global warming, our nation’s continued dependence on fossil fuels and the dangers of hydraulic fracturing as reasons she’s not seeing any reason to believe that things have gotten any better under President Obama.
“There’s one song that directly addresses global warming,” Merchant says. “But it’s pretty hard to talk about these issues in music, I find, because it’s so large. Maybe that’s also why I’ve really embraced working with orchestras, because the ability to address something that has this monumental scale with an orchestra seems to be easier for me.”
