small tenderness for vocal sextet and string quartet

Commissioned by the BSO Board of Trustees and premiered by Tanglewood Vocal Fellows and Fromm players at Tanglewood’s Festival of Contemporary Music.

Inspired by Olga Tokarczuk’s Nobel Prize Lecture “The Tender Narrator”, my piece and poem reflect on the meaning and the power of tenderness. The poem opens with seemingly disparate and abstract events thrown in time and space. However, as the poem progresses, it reveals various kinds of connections between these events and an abstract narrator. It is through tenderness – the ability to relate to other humans, animals, plants, or objects – that the narrator, no matter how insignificant or small, begins to make these events become personal, while becoming a part of a larger, interconnected universe.

Conducted by Stefan Asbury

Soprano, Bridget Esler

Mezzo-sopranos, Bella Adamova and Gabriela Barkidjia

Tenors, Bradyn Debysingh and Nathaniel Bear

Bass-baritone, Jacob Heacock

Violins, Sage Park and Tiffany Wee

Viola, Elizabeth Doubrawa

Cello, Benjamin Fryxell