Sixteen Composers Reflect on Inheritance

Adam Tendler at the piano keyboard (photograph by Cameron McLeod, from the home page on Tendler’s Web site)

Last night saw the return of Adam Tendler to San Francisco to present another solo piano recital. Unless, I am mistaken, this was his first appearance since February of 2019, when he gave a solo recital for the Piano Talks series of concerts presented by the Ross McKee Foundation. This time his recital was presented by Other Minds at the Brava Theater in the Mission. The title of the program was Inheritances, which refers to the money received through the last will and testament of his father. That money was then distributed equally among sixteen composers, each of whom would create a work for Tendler to perform for the aforementioned program. The contributing composers were as follows:

1. Laurie Anderson
2. Missy Mazzoli
3. Scott Wollschleger
4. Angélica Negrón
5. John Glover
6. Mary Prescott
7. Timo Andres
8. Ted Hearne
9. inti figgis-vizueta
10. Sara Kirkland Snider
11. Christopher Cerrone
12. Marco Balter
13. Pamela Z
14. Darian Donavan Thomas
15. Nico Muhly
16. Devonté Hynes

When Tendler introduced the program last night, he said it would run around 90 minutes; but it seemed to run longer, perhaps by as much as a quarter of an hour.

Sadly, from a more subjective point of view, after about half a dozen of the selections, the program began to feel as if it would go on forever. Ironically, one of the “movements” turned out be a home movie. The “musical significance” of this selection was, at best, ambiguous; but it was still a bit of a relief from the “roll call” of the piano solo compositions. It is clear that this program was conceived and executed with the best of intentions, but we all know about the road paved with good intentions and where it leads.

I still remember the skill that Tendler brought to delivering the “talks” part of his Piano Talks recital. I suspect that, if he had trimmed down the number of composers by half and then introduced each with his own spoken reflections (rather than consigning those reflections to print in the program book), this would have been a far more engaging experience. It might even have piqued my own perceptions of those composers on his list that have never given me much (if any) satisfaction in my past listening experiences.