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

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