TRACKLIST
Ordway: Letters to My Daughters
1. Ring All the Bells
2. I Love Telling You Things
3. Tell the Truth
4. I Will Always Love You
5. The World is Bright
Claude Debussy: Cello Sonata in D minor, L. 135
1. Prologue: Lent, sostenuto e molto risoluto
2. Sérénade: Modérément animé
3. Finale: Animé, léger et nerveux
Olivier Messiaen: Louange à l'Éternité de Jésus
Leonard Bernstein: Three Meditations from MASS
1. Meditation No. 1: Lento assai, molto sostenuto
2. Meditation No. 2: Andante sostenuto —
3. Meditation No. 3: Presto — Fast and Primitive — Molto adagio
Bruce Adolphe: Thakla III
Ilse Weber (arr. Henrique Eisenmann): Three Songs
1. Wiegala
2. Und der Regen rinnt
3. Ich wandre durch Theresienstadt
Total length (excluding spoken word): 80 minutes
ARTIST STATEMENT
Letters to My Daughters is not only my first commissioning project, it’s a profoundly personal collaboration with my friend, Scott Ordway. As I seem to lack any inclination to compose myself, this was an immensely satisfying project that brought me—and the audience—directly into Scott’s creative space, using his most personal relationships as an entryway.
But first, a general introduction: I’ve long wondered why we tend to pour time, money, and immense effort into supporting new commissions only to sneakily wedge them among more “palatable” pieces, thereby requiring audiences to hear something new without context or, often, even an invitation. Why not make the commission the centerpiece, building a cohesive program around it in order to prime the listener to receive the new work as openly as possible? Better yet, why not make the composer the centerpiece, as if we could open a hatch at the top of their head and allow their life experiences, inspirations, and musical influences to pour out and assemble themselves into not only a vibrant program, but a kind of musical self-portrait?
I first met with Scott to discuss this project in November 2024. Like so many, Scott was reckoning with the uncertainty of the world—in particular, how to discuss it with his two daughters, four and seven at the time. Rather than a broad exhibition of Scott’s life and influences, our collaboration began to take shape as a love letter, time capsule, and urgent appeal to decency for his girls.
He began by writing five real letters—and was generous enough to allow me to serve as his editor. We discussed their content and intention over long calls and essayistic email threads. I found these exchanges tremendously cathartic despite having no children of my own. Not only did his feelings so closely mirror mine, but our questions increasingly led us away from defensiveness and toward kindness, generosity, and humility: Can we experience wonder and optimism in the face of fear and uncertainty? How might we find courage in the face of failure, injustice, or threat of harm? How do we foster and preserve reservoirs of goodness and decency in ourselves and each other? How do we tell people that we love them?
In a similar way, the larger program became brighter as we refined it. We began with, among other ideas, the concept of a triptych of Eastern Bloc composers: 45 minutes of uninterrupted pitch-black music for solo cello by Valentin Silvestrov, Sofia Gubaidulina, and Alfred Schnittke. An interesting concept, perhaps, but as a friend asked me, “do people want that right now? Do you?” We went back to the drawing board.
We finally arrived at a program comprising music written at times of profound sociopolitical uncertainty. Debussy’s Cello Sonata, a vibrant and unexpected suite composed as the global social order was being redefined by World War I; Messiaen’s slow, transcendentally still yet ecstatic meditation for cello and piano from his Quartet for the End of Time, a masterpiece born within a prisoner of war camp that Alex Ross described as “the music of one who expects paradise not only in a single awesome hereafter but also in the happenstance epiphanies of daily life;” Bernstein’s Three Mediations from MASS, wordless reflections on the seed of faith each of us must find when our ancient rituals unravel under the weight of doubt, dissent, and disillusionment; three songs by Ilse Weber—a nurse and music teacher at Theresienstadt later sent with the children in her care to the gas chambers at Auschwitz—gorgeously reimagined by my friend, the brilliant jazz pianist Henrique Eisenmann; and finally, a lament named after the Arabic word for a mother’s grief over her dead child, composed for me by Bruce Adolphe.
It is a stunning, devastating, and ultimately uplifting program about love and resilience. And by mining this contemporary moment through the lens of Scott’s paternal love for his daughters, we created a communal experience that was simultaneously intensely intimate and profoundly universal.
— Josh