PROGRAMME
Roy Thomson Hall presents
DEVONTÉ HYNES
Select Classical Works with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra
FRI Nov 1, 2024 • 8PM
DEVONTÉ HYNES
Select Classical Works with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra
MATTHEW LYNCH, conductor
DEVONTÉ HYNES, piano
ADAM TENDLER, piano
TORONTO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
ODIN QUARTET
Naked Blue Symphony for full orchestra ~20 minutes
INTERMISSION
The Long Ride II for 2 pianos ~7 minutes (Devonté Hynes and Adam Tendler)
Morning Piece for 2 pianos ~10 minutes (Devonté Hynes and Adam Tendler)
Untitled IV ~10 minutes (Devonté Hynes, Adam Tendler and Odin Quartet)
Happenings
Concerto for piano and orchestra ~20 minutes (Adam Tendler, piano)
DEVONTÉ HYNES
Raised in England, Devonté Hynes started in the punk band Test Icicles before releasing two orchestral acoustic pop records as Lightspeed Champion. Since 2011, Hynes has released four solo albums under the name Blood Orange –Coastal Grooves , Cupid Deluxe , Freetown Sound , and Negro Swan , as well as
2019’s Angel’s Pulse mixtape and his most recent EP, Four Songs in 2022, all of which have been met with critical acclaim. His work has explored the complexities and ambiguities of 21st century identity, delving into memory, trauma, depression and anxiety, as well as the triumphs of vulnerable communities, including people of color and queer and trans communities, and where they intersect.
In addition to his solo work, Hynes has collaborated with pop music superstars including Mariah Carey, A$AP Rocky, Solange, Blondie, Paul McCartney, Tame Impala, Robyn, and Sky Ferreira.
Hynes’s film and television credits include the scores for Melina Matsoukas’ Queen and Slim , Gia Coppola’s Palo Alto , Luca Guadagnino’s We Are Who We Are , Rebecca Hall’s Passing , and Rodrigo Garcia’s In Treatment . He also recently scored the music for the Broadway production, Job , and is a frequent collaborator with the fashion house, Marni.
As a performer and scholar of contemporary music, Hynes has long specialized in the work of Julius Eastman, performing the composer’s work internationally and recently featured on Wild Up’s Grammy nominated anthology of the composer’s works. Hynes also provided the forward to the French edition of Gay Guerrilla , a collection of essays about Eastman’s life and music. Hynes has also performed the music of Philip Glass alongside the composer, and was recently featured in a ten-part BBC series Composed , about the breadth of classical music.
Hynes’s symphonic and instrumental music has been performed and commissioned by the London Symphony Orchestra, LA Philharmonic, and Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, among others, and championed by artists including Seth Parker Woods, Adam Tendler, and Third Coast Percussion, who in 2020 were nominated for a Grammy in the category of Best Chamber Music or Small Ensemble Performance for their recording of Hynes’s work, Fields . Hynes’s piano concerto, Happenings , saw its premiere at New York’s Little Island Festival in 2021, and has been featured, along with his cello concerto, Origin , multiple chamber works, and his symphony Naked Blue , in a series of Selected Classical Works programs, which have appeared at Sydney Opera House, Los Angeles’s Ford Theatre, London’s Barbican Centre, and New York’s Brooklyn Academy of America.
ADAM TENDLER
Grammy-nominated pianist Adam Tendler is a recipient of the Lincoln Center Award for Emerging Artists, the Yvar Mikhashoff Prize, and is considered “currently the hottest pianist on the American contemporary classical scene” (Minneapolis Star Tribune), “relentlessly adventurous” (Washington Pose), a “remarkable and insightful musician” (LA Times), and an “intrepid... maverick pianist” (The New Yorker). A pioneer of DIY culture in classical music, at 23 Tendler performed solo recitals in all fifty United States as part of a grassroots recital tour called America 88x50, the subject of his comingout memoir, 88x50. He has gone on to become one of today’s most recognized and celebrated performers in classical-contemporary music, appearing with the London Symphony Orchestra, LA Philharmonic, Sydney Symphony, Vermont Symphony Orchestra, NJ Symphony, and on the main-stages of Carnegie Hall, the Barbican Centre, Sydney Opera House, BAM, and leading series and stages nationwide.
Tendler’s recordings include Wild Up’s Grammy-nominated album of works by Julius Eastman, If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich? , as well as solo albums of music by Robert Palmer and Franz Liszt. He recently premiered and recorded 16 new works for piano, commissioned using the entire inheritance left to him by his semiestranged father, in a project called Inheritances , a New York Times Critic Pick, which described it as “emotionally involving...with a sense of true dramatic stakes.” Inheritances will be released on New Amsterdam Records this winter, and the lead single, “Morning Song,” by Devonté Hynes, released just this October.
Adam Tendler was 2024’s Artist in Residence at Green-wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, creating an immersive installation exploring queerness, grief and identity, called Exit Strategy. Adam Tendler is a Yamaha Artist, and serves on the piano faculty of NYU.
MATTHEW LYNCH
Conductor
British/German conductor, Matthew Lynch, is a Fellow Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra and enjoys a busy international career. The 2022/23 season saw him make debuts with, among others, the London Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Concert Orchestra, the Ulster Orchestra, and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.
Last season he returned to London’s Southbank Centre to conduct the Chineke! Orchestra and made debuts with, the Philharmonia, Sinfonia Viva, the London Mozart Players and the French chamber orchestra, Le Balcon. This season he will see him make debuts with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.
A keen advocate of contemporary music, Matthew is a regular collaborator of the composers Max Richter and Devonté Hynes and has performed and recorded their music with ensembles internationally. In addition to symphonic
and contemporary repertoire, Matthew is a regular conductor of opera, and in recent seasons has conducted new productions of La Bohème , Rusalka , and Don Giovanni in Dresden, and Treemonisha in London.
He also continues to play an active role in music education, working with several youth and training orchestras, including the London Schools’ Symphony Orchestra, the Southbank Sinfonia, the Chineke! Junior Orchestra, and the orchestras of the Royal Irish Academy of Music and Trinity Laban.
Matthew Lynch studied music at St Hugh’s College, Oxford and at the Hochschule für Musik, Dresden. He began his career as a flute player, playing s principal and sub-principal flute with the Chineke! Orchestra and the Mittelsächsische Philharmonie Freiberg. He was a conducting fellow of the Aspen Music Festival and School with Robert Spano, a fellow of the Dartington Festival with Sian Edwards, and has participated in the Tanglewood Conducting Seminar with Stefan Asbury.
ODIN QUARTET
The Odin Quartet, formed in 2015 and hailing from the heart of Toronto’s musical scene, derives its name from the Norse god Odin, revered for his insatiable thirst for wisdom and knowledge. Embodying Odin’s spirit of exploration, the quartet endeavors to redefine classical music’s role in contemporary storytelling.
At its core, the quartet is a testament to the diverse talents and backgrounds of its members. Alex Toskov, a virtuoso violinist and multi-instrumentalist, brings forth his Serbian heritage and musical depth from Belgrade, Serbia. Tanya Charles, an accomplished violinist and dedicated educator, channels her heritage from Saint Vincent and the Grenadines into her performances, infusing them with passion and cultural resonance. Matthew Antal, a violist with a keen ear for audio engineering, blends his Italian and Hungarian heritage seamlessly into the quartet’s fabric, adding technical finesse and musical sensitivity. Samuel Bisson, a cellist and accomplished composer of French Canadian descent, revitalizes the ensemble with his unique artistic vision and profound understanding of the cello’s voice.
TORONTO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
For more than a century, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (TSO) has played a fundamental role in shaping and celebrating Canadian culture. The TSO’s commitment to musical excellence and ability to spark connection remain as strong as ever. With a storied history of acclaimed concerts and recordings, Canadian and international tours, and impactful community partnerships, we are dedicated to engaging and enriching local and national communities through vibrant musical experiences. Music Director Gustavo Gimeno brings an expansive artistic vision, intellectual curiosity, and sense of adventure to programming the 93-musician orchestra that serves Toronto—one of the world’s most diverse cities. As a group of artists, teachers, and advocates who share the belief that music has the power to heal, inspire, and connect people from all walks of life, we engage audiences young and old through an array of community-access, health-and-wellness, and education initiatives including the TSO-affiliated Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra—a tuition-free training program dedicated to cultivating the next generation of Canadian artists. Join us for a concert at Roy Thomson Hall , or experience the TSO in your neighbourhood . Visit TSO.CA or newsroom.tso.ca
Programme Notes
Naked Blue
Originally composed as a collaboration with filmmakers Mati Diop and Manon Lutanie for the live performance series Sun Dogs presented by Liquid Music, this piece was debuted by the Cincinnati Symphony alongside Diop and Lutanie’s short film of the same name, a portrait of thirteen year old dancer Oumy. As described by the filmmakers, “the musical composition accompanies Oumy’s movements, mirroring their magnetism, cohesion, and radical autonomy. It also gestures to the transition from childhood to adolescence, wakefulness to trance, sadness to its overcoming—as well as to the interstitial, tenuous nature of such passages.”
Naked Blue was “Commissioned by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra Louis Langrée, Music Director and Supported by the David C. Herriman Fund of Greater Cincinnati Foundation”
The Long Ride II
This piece was the first I wrote for the Luca Guadagnino HBO Series “We Are Who We Are,” initially for a scene where the character Fraser rides his bike outside of Bologna, Italy through a village, ending up at a local bar, where he then proceeds to day drink way beyond his limit. I related to the idea of riding your bike in order to think clearly, so the repetitive refrain with flourishes over the top somewhat signifies that for me. In my mind initially I saw the concert version as maybe a three person piano piece, but Adam Tendler is so immensely talented that he can embody two people (and more). Arranged and expanded here for two pianos, the musical material cycles through a series of interlocking melodic and rhythmic patterns over a foundation of shifting harmonies. I love this two-piano rendition that we have now come to. In rehearsal and performance alike, I’ve found that this piece helps us calibrate into the spaces where we play, centering us and connecting us to our instruments, our spaces, our listeners, and to each other.
—
Devonté Hynes
Morning Piece
Months after my father’s unexpected death, I found out that he left me an inheritance as a wad of cash in a manila envelope. I later received it in a Denny’s parking lot. After some thought, I decided to use all of the money to commission new piano works for a program I would eventually call Inheritances. I hoped these pieces might help me process my own grief and complicated past with my father, but told the composers who I invited into the project—all of them friends—to use the commission as an opportunity to explore the idea of inheritance itself, whatever that might mean to them. Hynes’s Morning Piece unfolds in three sections connected by a common thread of pulsing chords. My first encounter with the piece was a private recording that Dev made of himself playing it. I was on a B46 bus in Brooklyn heading home late at night, and listened on my headphones. The piece left me speechless—it still does—and I knew instantly that it would close the entire Inheritances program. The two-piano version performed in this program premiered at the Ford Theatre in Los Angeles on July 9th 2022, in a program presented by the LA Philharmonic.
— Adam Tendler
Happenings
My first piano concerto was commissioned to be performed by pianist Adam Tendler and the String Orchestra of Brooklyn at Little Island in New York City during its opening season in the summer of 2021. At the premiere, which took place in an open-air amphitheater on the Hudson River, only ten musicians were allowed onstage due to Covid regulations, forcing the conductor of the orchestra to play violin, and Adam to conduct the ensemble from the piano. In the two years since that performance, I have expanded the orchestration from strings alone to a full orchestra. While it is technically a single-movement work, the concerto might be felt in three larger sections, ending with an extended solo piano cadenza. Upon completion of the piece I was unsure really what it was about, but actually at the premiere, I realized I had inadvertently written a work describing a two year period of my life - years filled with beautiful moments that I will hold forever, moments of confusion, self doubt, pain and all those feelings I’m sure everyone has felt in some way within the last couple of years. Influences abound in this one, if you want to know more about that please feel free to ask me!
— Devonté Hynes
We are pleased to welcome 155 students from different schools and community groups to this performance through Share the Music! Share the Music, part of our Education & Outreach programming, has enabled over 27 000 youth to attend shows at Roy Thomson Hall and Massey Hall since the program’s inception in 1999. Additionally, Share the Music attendees participate in a variety of pre-show workshops and soundcheck opportunities, have access to online teacher resource guides, and more. Information for teachers is available on our website, roythomsonhall.com/sharethemusic
Share the Music is presented by Desjardins, and made possible through many generous individual donors. To make a gift and help us to “share the music” with as many people as possible, please visit roythomsonhall.com/stm .
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