The Tender Scars of Memory

“Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.” ―Leonard Cohen, The Favorite Game (1963) Serving as composer-in-residence of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra since 2016 has been the most thorough long-term learning experience for myself as a composer and orchestrator. Coming from a background as a guitarist, pianist, and vocalist, no amount of textbook studies and small-scale academic explorations could teach me how to write effectively for wind and brass instruments. Over many years of composing and arranging inordinate quantities of orchestral music for the WSO, I’ve grown intimately familiar with how the instruments of the orchestra speak, interact with each other, and – most importantly – how the respond to my own particular musical idiolect. It so happens that Caitlin Broms-Jacobs has been playing with the WSO for many years, and her own artistry on the oboe has directly informed my understanding of the instrument’s expressive nuances and technical capabilities. I was deeply honored when she first reached out to me about commissioning a new work that would feature her and pianist-composer Adam Sherkin in a focused chamber setting. The Tender Scars of Memory began as an idle musical idea, emerging organically during a late-night piano improvisation session in the isolating privacy of my home studio in NYC during the dark days of 2020. Its main theme – a high, wandering melody floating above a gently off-kilter arpeggiation texture – came to my hands and ears basically fully-formed and lingered in my memory for days. It suggested something of Chopin’s and Scriabin’s intimate nocturnal ruminations, with a dash of Debussy-esque coloration. This was quite alien to my usual style, which tends towards propulsive, mechanical chugging and dense chord voicings. That it was a stylistic deviation, and that it evoked flavors of long-dead composers, was not in itself an issue; by that point, I’d long shed any academia-instilled hang-ups about the viability of certain musical languages. But in 2020, the world of concert music was at a standstill, almost all professional projects on indefinite hold, and outlooks troublingly uncertain. There was no practical outlet for the piece that these original ideas were suggesting to me, so it was relegated to the “maybe someday” shelf. Four years later, the project found a home. The pairing of piano with oboe unlocked the piece for me, and The Tender Scars of Memory emerged. Presented here in the brightness of spring, performed with elegance and luminosity by Caitlin and Adam, I sense an optimism in the work that lightens its dark origins. My warmest thanks to Caitlin, Adam, and the entire Piano Lunaire organization for bringing this project to fruition. —HS