Scott Ordway's Festival Mass to Premier at Easter

Dear Friends,

I sure hope you'll join us this Saturday and on Easter Monday when our Composer in Residence, Scott Ordway, unveils his latest composition for us, Festival Mass, written as part of our fabulous program called New Music for Sacred Places. We'll hear part of the Mass during the Easter Vigil on Saturday. The New Fire will be kindled and the Vigil begin at 8 PM. Then on Easter Monday, again at 8 PM, the entire Mass will be heard in a full evening's performance at our neighbor, Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral. More information follows below.

World Premiere Performances of Scott J. Ordway's Festival Mass

St. Mary's Church, Hamilton Village and Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral are pleased to present the world premiere performance of Philadelphia composer Scott J. Ordway's Festival Mass, a new, large-scale composition for soloists, choir, organ, and chamber orchestra. The evening-length work will be conducted by the composer himself and feature the Choir of St Mary's Church, the Choral Scholars of the Philadelphia Cathedral, and players from the Curtis Institute of Music. Soloists Sara Ann Mitchell (soprano), Julia Teitel (mezzo-soprano), and Ricardo Torres-Cooban (baritone) will travel from Boston to sing the premiere.

This exceptional collaboration among local and regional artists both amateur and professional takes place under the auspices of the New Music for Sacred Spaces Project, a program created and operated by St Mary's Church, Hamilton Village, the Episcopal Church at Penn. The program aims to encourage and support composers and performers to collaborate in creating new music for use in Philadelphia's architecturally and sonically remarkable sacred places, often (as is the case at St. Mary’s) by the congregations and in the context of liturgical practice.

In fact, the Festival Mass was written specifically in the context of the Great Vigil of Easter, an ancient liturgy that begins the Easter season for Episcopalians. Pats of it will be sung in St. Mary’s Vigil in its historic sanctuary on the Penn campus on Saturday, April 23, beginning at 8 PM.

The Project has created a major new avenue for the commissioning and performance of new works, five thus far. Ordway's evening-length Festival Mass marks the end of a highly successful inaugural season.

In 2010, New Music for Sacred Places has been supported by the American Composers Forum, Philadelphia Chapter, the University of Pennsylvania, Partners for Sacred Places, Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral, and St. Mary’s Church Hamilton Village.

From the composer:

It is a great privilege, but perhaps a greater challenge to compose a full setting of the Mass in the twenty-first century. In addition to the myriad technical challenges attendant upon any large-scale work, one must inevitably reckon with the communicative aspect of the text itself and all of its far-ranging implications. Regardless of one's own spiritual background, the Mass is one of western philosophy's great texts of supplication, of yearning, of hope, and of redemption; its familiar lines contain the language of a great universal aspiration to know better how we might live.

My response to this immortal text reflects my struggle to understand its meaning, its implications, and its place in our culture. The work is highly dramatic, at times quite intense and at others very meditative. In the breadth and scope of its expression, it might better be described "an opera about god".

Scott J. Ordway (b. 1984, Santa Cruz CA) is an American composer and conductor of contemporary music. His works have been performed and broadcast throughout the United States and in Europe and he has conducted more than 30 world premiere performances in recent seasons, most by young American composers. His output is diverse, including his two symphonies, numerous chamber works, and sacred and secular vocal music, as well as experimental or improvisatory pieces in collaboration with sound and video artists and live music for film. From 2007–2008 he was music director of the Eugene Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, and from 2008–2009 was in-residence at the Boston Conservatory as Associate Conductor of the Juventas New Music Ensemble. He is presently a Benjamin Franklin Doctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania.

Mr. Ordway has worked with members or graduates of the Juilliard School, Curtis Institute of Music, Opera Boston, New York City Opera, and Oregon Bach Festival. He is a published James Joyce scholar and the recipient of grants or awards from the American Composers Forum, American Music Center, Oregon Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra, University of Pennsylvania, University of Puget Sound, and University of Oregon.

He graduated with high honors in composition from the University of Oregon (MM, 2008), and in English literature at the University of Puget Sound (BA, 2006); he has studied conducting at the Curtis Institute of Music and at the University of Oregon. His composition teachers have included Samuel Adler, David Crumb, Robert Hutchinson, Robert Kyr, Jim Primosch, and Jay Reise. He presently lives in West Philadelphia.