Devonté Hynes Program

PROGRAMME

Roy Thomson Hall presents DEVONTÉ

HYNES

Select Classical Works with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra

Thu, May 18, 2023 • 8PM

DEVONTÉ HYNES

Select Classical Works with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra

MATTHEW LYNCH, conductor

DEVONTÉ HYNES, piano

ADAM TENDLER, piano

TORONTO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

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 ~7 minutes (Devonté Hynes and Adam Tendler)

Untitled III  ~7 minutes (Devonté Hynes, solo piano)

Happenings

Concerto for piano with full orchestra ~20 minutes (soloist Adam Tendler)

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, P. Diddy, and many others. Hynes’s film and television credits include the scores for Melina Matsoukas’ Queen and Slim , Luca Guadagnino’s We

Are Who We Are

, Rebecca Hall’s Passing and Paul Schrader’s Master Gardener .

As a performer and scholar of contemporary music, Hynes has long specialized in the work of Julius Eastman, widely performing the composer’s work and recently performing and recording Eastman’s music with the new music collective Wild Up for their 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’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 alongside Hynes for a Grammy in the category of Best Chamber Music or Small Ensemble Performance for their album 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, two-piano works, and symphony Naked Blue in a series of live, sold out Selected Classical Works programs, which have included appearances at Los Angeles’s Ford Theatre, London’s Barbican Centre, and New York’s Brooklyn Academy of Music, with appearances in Toronto, Vienna, Sydney, and Washington D.C.’s in the summer of 2023.

ADAM TENDLER

Adam Tendler is a recipient of the Lincoln Center Award for Emerging Artists and 2022 Yvar Mikhashoff Prize, and “currently the hottest pianist on the American contemporary classical scene” (Minneapolis Star Tribune), a “remarkable and insightful musician” (LA Times), and a “relentlessly adventurous pianist” (Washington Post) “joyfully rocking out at his keyboard” (New York Times). A pioneer of DIY culture in classical music, at age 23 Tendler performed solo recitals in all fifty states as part of a grassroots tour called America 88x50, the subject of his acclaimed coming-out memoir, 88x50. He has gone on to become one of classical music’s most recognized and celebrated artists, commissioning major works from composers as diverse as Christian Wolff and Devonté Hynes, and recently appearing as soloist with the London Symphony Orchestra, LA Philharmonic, and on the main-stages of Carnegie Hall, the Barbican Centre, and BAM. An expert in the music of John Cage, Tendler has worked closely with the John Cage Trust, Merce Cunningham Trust, and Cage’s publisher, Edition Peters. He has also extensively performed the music of Julius Eastman and is featured on Wild Up’s latest album of the composer’s works and Sō Percussion’s recording of Stay On It . Tendler recently released an album of Liszt’s Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses on the Steinway Label, Robert Palmer: Piano Music on New World Records, and published his second book, tidepools . He recently commissioned 16 works using the entire inheritance left to him by his father, including music by Laurie Anderson, Nico Muhly and Missy Mazzoli as part of a project called Inheritances , a New York Times Critic Pick described as “not only a display of contemporary compositional force, but also a true show...emotionally involving... with a sense of true dramatic stakes.” Adam Tendler is a Yamaha Artist and serves on the piano faculty of NYU.

MATTHEW LYNCH

British/German conductor, Matthew Lynch, enjoys an international career, working with orchestras such as the Ulster Orchestra, the Chineke! Orchestra, and the London Symphony Orchestra. This season sees him make several high profile debuts, including with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and the BBC Concert Orchestra. In addition to symphonic repertoire, he 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 at London’s Grimeborn Festival.

As a flute player, Matthew Lynch, has been a member of the Chineke! Orchestra since its foundation in 2015, performing regularly as principal flute with the orchestra. Alongside his performing career he is also in demand as an arranger and orchestrator, with recent commissions from the composer Ian Venables, the Chineke! Orchestra and Voces8, and the Schola Cantorum Leipzig. Matthew Lynch studied at Oxford University and the Hochschule für Musik Dresden and was a conducting fellow of the Aspen Music Festival and School.

TORONTO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

For over a century, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (TSO) has played a fundamental role in shaping and celebrating Canadian culture. Now in our 101st year, the TSO’s commitment to musical excellence and ability to spark connection remain as strong as ever. With a storied history of acclaimed recordings, 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 education, community access and health and wellness initiatives. The 2023/24 season marks the 50th anniversary of the TSOaffiliated 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

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

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”

We are pleased to welcome 153 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

Presenting Sponsor