“I don’t like talking, I’d rather sing,” Eva used to say, so it is unsurprising that in her short career she only did one press interview. That was with Alona Wartofsky in 1992.

As the arts editor for the Washington City Paper, Alona Wartofsky had been writing about the DC music scene for years. When local Go Go superstar Chuck Brown released an album of standards and duets with an unknown soprano named Eva Cassidy, Wartofsky met with the pair at a lunchroom, and her subsequent article about the album THE OTHER SIDE appeared in the City Paper in the November 20, 1992, edition.

Twelve years later, when I contacted her to ask about that interview in connection with something I was writing for this website, Wartofsky naturally didn’t recall a lot about it. “It was such a long time ago. I remember thinking that she was shy and beautiful and so much the opposite of Chuck, who I had known for a few years at that point. That might explain why there’s more Chuck than Eva in the story. The interview was taped, and there is a small possibility I kept the tape.”

After changing jobs and moving to New York City, she wasn’t sure where she had stored all the old cassette tapes from City Paper interviews, but they were probably back in DC. “I know I considered throwing them out when I moved, but I don’t think that I did.” She was about to give birth to twins and wouldn’t be traveling for a while, she explained, but if the tape of the long-ago interview ever turned up, she’d let me know.

Over the course of the next 18 years I checked in with Alona Wartofsky from time to time, and she put up with my polite pestering with good grace. Eventually she had found her City Paper interview cassettes in an attic. Unfortunately, nothing was labeled “Eva Cassidy.”

Around 2020, before and during the pandemic, filmmakers Malcolm Willis and Alex Fegan were beginning work on a documentary about Eva. They came across a surprising number of videos of Eva, but almost nothing in which Eva was talking. I thought about the remote possibility of the City Paper interview tape and wondered if I should get their hopes up, but I decided to wait and see, and not to say anything. It seemed like such a longshot. Yet Alona had mentioned that she finally had the time to begin on a long-contemplated project, a book about Go Go culture. Part of her research was going to require going through box after box of poorly-marked cassette tapes from years of interviews, listening to every one of them.

On October 19, 2022, I got the wonderful news:

“I’m sorry it took so long to find it. I am writing the Chuck chapter of my book and was listening to old interview cassettes. I think the last time I listened to this, [Chuck] was talking and not her, so I assumed she was not on it, but this time I listened to the whole thing, and there she was.”

Not only had the tape been found, it still actually played, no small miracle considering the years it had been stored in an attic. I didn’t have the equipment to convert an ancient cassette recording to a digital file, but Eva’s longtime producer Chris Biondo did, and he was certainly someone I could trust to know what a unique and precious artifact it was. Alona arranged to deliver the cassette to Chris when she was making a quick trip to Washington DC later that fall, and fortunately the digitization went through without difficulty. What a joy to hear Eva’s voice answering the questions in her own words.

I introduced filmmaker Malcolm Willis and Alona via e-mail (“Here is your introduction to the amazing Alona Wartofsky, who managed to hang onto that unique Chuck and Eva interview cassette tape through 30 years, several moves, and the birth and rearing of twins!”)

Throughout the documentary, now titled “The Essence of Eva,” excerpts from the interview audio are used to help introduce the different sections. Malcolm says, “It’s gold!”

Someday the full interview may be made available to Eva’s worldwide fans, but it will have to be digitally “cleaned up” to remove all the static and microphone bumps and cafeteria noises. In the meantime, the film “The Essence of Eva” is making the rounds of film festivals.

Next stop: Filmfest DC in Eva’s hometown of Washington DC, in April 2026. As a preview to the documentary screening, Alona returned to the Washington City Paper to write a touching review of “The Essence of Eva.” “In their extraordinarily nuanced documentary, The Essence of Eva, Irish filmmakers Malcolm Willis and Alex Fegan celebrate the tremendous talent of Maryland vocalist Eva Cassidy, who died at age 33 in November 1996. They also capture the love that surrounded her as she held on to her artistic vision while recording songs that would reach millions only after melanoma stole her life and what surely would have been a stellar musical career…”

Alona Wartofsky’s book Crankin! Power and Resilience in Washington, DC’s Go-Go Culture will be published by Georgetown University Press in September, 2026.