Chloe Flower first came to New York City when she was 12. She was with her parents, and she had one question for them: “Why didn’t you bring me sooner?”
She came because she had been accepted into the Manhattan School of Music. Since she was 2 years old she had loved to play the piano, which would eventually take her to the Grammy Awards stage to perform alongside the rapper Cardi B.
“When I got here, I thought, ‘Where has this city been my whole life?’” said Ms. Flower, 39.
She grew up in Mechanicsburg, Pa., a borough of under 10,000 people about two hours west of Philadelphia. Her main hangout spot with her friends was a gas-station parking lot.
“I feel super lucky that I grew up surrounded by nature, but sonically and visually, New York was a new level of inspiration,” she said. “At the start, I even loved Times Square.”
Ms. Flower signed her first record deal in 2010, and she spent the next decade appearing on songs with a wide range of artists, from the rapper Nas to Celine Dion. She wrote the scores for short films, documentaries, commercials and even a Netflix comedy special. But her big breakthrough came in 2019 when she performed “Money” with Cardi B on a rhinestone-studded piano at the Grammys. Two years later, she released her self-titled debut album.
“It was a dream to have that kind of stage to perform classical music,” she said. “Afterward, I got so many messages from kids telling me that they were starting to take piano lessons. To me, learning an instrument and learning how to make music can change not just a person, but also a family and even society.”
She and her boyfriend, Michael Sepso, 52, a video game entrepreneur, live with their Chihuahua, Wolfie, in a two-bedroom apartment in the financial district of Manhattan.
STARTING ‘ME’ DAY WITH MUSIC From Monday to Saturday, my schedule is all over the place. One night I’ll be performing for a corporate client, the next I’ll be at a photo shoot and the next I’ll be at an event. Sunday is the only day where I can actually have a routine. I call it my “I love me more” day, and I do only the things that I want to do. I get up at 5:30 because I really want to squeeze in as much as possible.
I eat a hard-boiled egg and head to my gym in Midtown. I work out with a trainer from 6 to 7:30, and then I walk back home to FiDi. It takes about an hour and a half, but I love it. Sunday mornings are some of the most beautiful moments in New York City. There’s hardly anyone out, and you can hear the birds chirping. There’s something about walking that really activates my brain. I put my headphones on and will make notes and edits on my music. I’m working on my new album now, and those Sunday walks are helping it come together.
MORE WALKING As soon as I walk in the door, Wolfie is there waiting for me. About a year ago, I visited the Humane Society, and I was going to help them find her a home. I ended up just taking her home myself. I turn right back around with her and my boyfriend, and we head to Seaport. I get matcha tea from the Tin Building by Jean-Georges and let Wolfie do her thing. Mike and I like to call it Dog Oak over there, because it’s like her version of the nightclub 1 Oak. She plays with every dog that passes by. She sniffs every single butt.
K-DRAMAS AND CLEANING We get home around 10 or 10:30, and I get to do my chores. I love doing chores. For my birthday this year, I asked Mike to get me a steamer and a fancy laundry detergent. While I’m cleaning, I put on a Korean drama in the background. My Korean isn’t great, but I’ve heard that you can improve it by watching TV, so I have it on in the background while I do the dishes and the laundry and organize the spice rack and refold the napkins and clean up the crazy mess that accumulates on my piano during the week. While I walk around, I’ll eat a few snacks for lunch.
Between the gym and walking Wolfie and running around the house cleaning, I sometimes take like 15,000 to 20,000 steps on Sundays. And then on Monday it’s like a total of three.
PERFORMANCE COACHING I recently went through a period of intense stage fright and performance anxiety. I’ve seen this happen to other people in the music industry, but I never expected it to happen to me. I found a coach, Robert Andrews, who works primarily with athletes who are dealing with similar situations. At 1 p.m. on Sundays, I have an hourlong session with him. We work on motor exercises and breathing techniques and performance rituals. I grew up always trying to be perfect, and he reminds me: Perfection is not the goal. Excellence is.
FREE TIME I like to call Sunday afternoons my wild-card time. I’ve worked out, I’ve cleaned the house, I’ve had my coaching — and now I do what I want. Sometimes I go to a movie theater and catch a matinee. I especially love scary movies; I’m in a horror movie club. Sometimes I go shopping. I like to go to big department stores like Saks, where they have everything in one place. But my favorite thing to do is get a foot massage at Spa Meig. I’m obsessed with foot massages, and I mean that seriously. I probably get five a week.
EARLY BIRD BBQ I always eat dinner around 5 p.m., but on the weekdays, I can’t get anyone to eat with me that early. And Mike and I don’t really have the same taste in food, so we more often order in or cook so that we can each have what we want. But one place where we unite is Korean barbecue. And my absolute favorite restaurant here is COTE. It has a Michelin star, but it still somehow tastes like home cooking — like your grandma made it.
On Sunday nights, it’s inner circle only. It’s a time to be together with family and close friends, and I love that I can just be myself. I eat raw garlic and onions and don’t have to worry about killing anybody with my breath later on at an event. We’ll sometimes stay there for three hours eating and drinking and chatting and laughing. It’s my favorite meal of the week.
MIDNIGHT MUSIC It can sometimes be tough to be a musician in New York because there’s so much stimulation and sound everywhere. I find that I do my best writing on Sunday nights after dark. Being a pianist is very solitary, and my practice space growing up had no windows, so I feel at home when it’s dark and quiet. Just last month, I came home and wrote a song in under an hour, and it turned out to be something really special. I recorded it with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Abbey Road Studios, and it’ll be on my new album.
It’s been a long, full day by now, but sometimes I’ll stay up until midnight or later writing and recording. Monday is the one day a week when I get to sleep in, so I don’t mind staying up a little late. Sundays always seem to go by really fast, but I milk the day for everything it’s worth.
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