MY GRANDMOTHER’S GARDEN.

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PROGRAM NOTE.

MY GRANDMOTHER'S GARDEN is a work for piano solo consisting of aural portraits of my and Lara's grandmothers; paintings of the energy and atmosphere of the musical world they grew up around.

I. Margaret delves into the life of a woman who grew up in Missouri as the youngest child of Depression-era farmers, playing piano by ear, eventually becoming a prolific composer whose notes only touched the ears of her closest friends and, after decades, her granddaughter.

II. Fay speaks about woman whose parents came to the US from Belz, Ukraine at a time when Europe was changing quickly in devastating ways and immigrants faced excitement and challenge as they sought to preserve the tenants of their culture while welcoming those of their new homeland with open arms.

III. Ivy pays homage to the life of a woman who brought her Jamaican heritage to the magical neighborhood of Harlem in the decades when Harlem had the most artistically fertile soil on earth.

IV. Shirley tells in fragmented memories the story of a little girl who came of age during the war, a young woman who fell in love with someone she wasn't allowed to marry, a mother determined to be a successful career woman, and a grandmother who slowly and then quickly fell into the madness of Alzheimer's.

These women courageously existed during the past century: a time in our history marked by tremendous movement away from racism, sexism, and ethnocentrism. And yet we still have so far to go before we achieve this "equality" we've been fighting for for so very long.

Nearly one hundred years ago, Shirley was sent to live with relatives when she refused to break off an engagement, and was pushed into a marriage she didn't want. In 2020, women everywhere are still having to demand the agency to choose who to love and who to accept or deny affection from.

Nearly one hundred years ago, Fay navigated the terrain of keeping her parent's culture alive while adopting and seeking to be adopted by the culture of her family's new country. In 2020, immigrant families are separated at our borders with no responsibility being placed on those in positions of power.

Nearly one hundred years ago, Margaret was born with an unexplainable talent, and no expectation from those around her that anyone outside her home or church would bear witness to it. In 2020, women are overwhelmingly bearing the burden of child-rearing and house-keeping during the pandemic, and young girls still do not have constant, consistent representation to look up to in an overwhelming majority of fields of study.

Nearly one hundred years ago, Ivy left her job as a teacher in Jamaica to come to Harlem, and had to relinquish her status as an intellectual because of her race. In 2020, racial prejudice, race-motivated killings, and violence permeate cities and the lives of those within them to a horrifying degree.

My Grandmother's Garden is a series of four portraits. It is four slices of nostalgia and mood and breath in time. It is four collections of memories. It is also a meditation on how strong and courageous the women were whose faces we see every morning when we look in the mirror at our own. This piece is a call for audiences to think back on what lives were lived so that we might live better ones, to think back on how much social progress gets gained in the small span of a generation and yet how far we have yet to go when all women currently alive were not born into a world where all peoples automatically inherited the fundamental human right to vote, the fundamental human right to dignity, the fundamental human right to bodily autonomy, and the fundamental right to capitalize on one's intellectual talents regardless of race, and gender, and culture. This piece is a space to think about the world you want to create for your daughters. It is a pleading for you to take those thoughts and build new structures of support and expectation for the human beings who have yet to exist.

As we celebrate a segment of women having had the right to vote for 100 years, we have created a piece of art pointing out patterns so that you may break them.

COMMISSIONER biography.

Lara Downes is among the foremost American pianists of her generation, a trailblazer on and off-stage whose musical roadmap seeks inspiration from the legacies of history, family, and collective memory. 

Downes’ playing has been called “ravishing” by Fanfare Magazine, "luscious, moody and dreamy” by The New York Times, and "addicting" by The Huffington Post. As a chart-topping recording artist, a powerfully charismatic performer, a curator and taste-maker, Downes is recognized as a cultural visionary on the national arts scene.Lara's forays into the broad landscape of American music have created a series of acclaimed recordings, including America Again, selected by NPR as one of "10 Albums that Saved 2016", and hailed as "a balm for a country riven by disunion" by the Boston Globe. Her recent Sony Classical debut release For Lenny debuted in the Billboard Top 20 and was awarded the 2017 Classical Recording Foundation Award.

Her Sony Masterworks recording Holes in the Sky, a celebration of the contributions of phenomenal women to the past, present and future of American music, was released in March 2019, debuting at the top of the Billboard charts. Her newest release For Love Of You marks her concerto recording debut, and celebrates the 200th birthday of the great pianist and composer Clara Schumann.

Downes enjoys creative collaborations with a range of leading artists, including multi-instrumentalist/composer/singer Rhiannon Giddens, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, pianist Simone Dinnerstein, folk icon Judy Collins, baritone Thomas Hampson, writer Adam Gopnik, and former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove. Her close partnerships with prominent composers span genres and generations, with premieres and commissions coming from Jennifer Higdon, John Corigliano, Stephen Schwartz, Paola Prestini, Clarice Assad, Michael Abels, and many others.

Downes’ fierce commitment to arts advocacy, mentorship and education sees her working in support of non-profit organizations including PLAN International, the Sphinx Organization, the Lower Eastside Girls Club, Washington Performing Arts, and NPR’s From The Top, where she appears as a rotating guest host. 

In 2020 Downes celebrates the Year Of The Woman with world premieres of newly discovered works by Florence Price and Margaret Bonds, and large-scale commissions from Paola Prestini and Clarice Assad, in collaboration with the Chicago Symphony and the Louisville Orchestra.

More about Lara Downes