I wrote “Entente,” a track that ended up on Yearbook (2021), just as the COVID-19 pandemic started to hit. We were all reading and hearing stories about how terrifying a severe case of the disease could be, and I thought to myself, I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. That reflection led me to think about what the extreme polarization in this country has wrought in terms of the blind anger we can feel against those who hold different beliefs than we do. One would like to think that something dramatic—a life-threatening illness, or a war, maybe—might force us to bridge our differences.

I decided to record a stripped-down version of the song (with just me on the piano and the brilliant Jane Scarpantoni accompanying on cello) in November 2020 at Dreamland Recording Studios near Woodstock, NY. The experience was my first time in an actual recording studio and—infinitely more disconcerting—my first time performing live. The version here, captured so beautifully by the filmmker Tom Krueger, was our final take during the several-hours-long session. The song was recorded by Dreamland’s engineer Ariel Shafir.