Ep. 12 - Inheritances: thematic collaboration

PuSh Play

Adam Tendler discusses the unorthodox inspiration for his collaborative composition.

Show Notes

David Pay, Artistic Director of PuSh partner Music on Main, chats with Adam Tendler about Inheritances, which will be presented at the 2024 PuSh Festival from January 24-25 at Annex.

Co-presented with Music on Main.

David and Adam ask the following questions and more:

• Does this piece honour the past and Adam’s father, or is it about something more?

• What is the source and story of Adam’s strange inheritance itself?

• What is grief and mourning when you are numb?

• Why did Adam ask composers to help him figure out how to grieve, or as a mechanism through which he could grieve?

• How does the piece explore the loss of access vs. the actual loss of a person?

• How did the pandemic affected the process and premiere?

• How did the different pieces change when composers heard other pieces?

• How can the experience of catharsis carry through other composers and to the audience?

• What does it mean that the piece has “true dramatic stakes”?

• What does inheritance mean to you now?

About Adam Tendler

Adam Tendler is a recipient of the Lincoln Center Award for Emerging Artists and the 2022 Yvar Mikhashoff Prize. He has been called “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” (The Washington Post) “joyfully rocking out at his keyboard” (The New York Times).

A pioneer of DIY culture in classical music, at age 23 Tendler performed solo recitals in all fifty states in a grassroots tour that was later the subject of his acclaimed coming-out memoir, 88×50. He has gone on to become one of classical music’s most 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, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and as soloist 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 and Cage’s publisher, Edition Peters, and performed the composer’s work internationally. He has also extensively performed the music of Julius Eastman and is featured on Wild Up’s latest album of the composer’s works, If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich. Other recent releases include Liszt’s Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses on the Steinway Label, Robert Palmer: Piano Music on New World Records, as well as his second book, tidepools.

For his Inheritances project, premiered in 2022, Tendler commissioned 16 new piano works using the entire inheritance left to him by his father from composers including Laurie Anderson, Nico Muhly and Missy Mazzoli. A New York Times Critic Pick, the program was described as “not only a display of contemporary compositional force, but also a true show…with a sense of true dramatic stakes.” Adam Tendler is a Yamaha Artist and serves on the piano faculty of NYU. He is currently Artist-in-Residence at Green-Wood Cemetery.

Land Acknowledgement

David hosts from the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver.

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Show Transcript

A complete transcript of this episode will be available soon.