A legacy in sound: Adam Tendler’s journey through music and memory.
In a deeply personal and experimental album, pianist Adam Tendler intricately bridges memory, family, and contemporary composition.
photo by Cameron McLeod.
I first heard Adam Tendler perform at the barn-like Maverick Concert Hall in Woodstock, New York in 2016 where he played the composition for which he is known best: the solo piano repertoire of John Cage. His interpretation of “4′33,” a groundbreaking piece that demands the performer sit in silence for precisely four minutes and thirty-three seconds, was enhanced by the sounds of nature and my ten-year-old self’s restless impulse to flip through the program. Tendler, a Grammy-nominated pianist and NYU faculty member who later became my first piano teacher, appeared energetic, charismatic, and acutely disciplined on stage.
After years of teaching and performing the works of the renowned Aaron Copland, Philip Glass, and John Cage, Tendler embarked on a unique and personal project in 2020. When he received an inheritance from his late father—delivered unceremoniously in a parking lot via cash envelope—he envisioned music as its most fitting use. Tendler reached out to sixteen acclaimed contemporary composers commissioning solo piano compositions with no parameters. As he initially wrote in his email to them: “I trust your instincts in responding to the commission and taking the piece in any direction you choose. I'm also happy to answer every question you may have; personal, musical or otherwise.” Tendler told me that although they were very close as kids, he and his father remained in limited contact as adults. “It just struck me that maybe a way to sort of get closer to him would be to create a project in which I would have to think about him all the time.” He continued, “Through the process of playing this over the last three years in different places for different people, I've had to confront my memory of him and actually him himself, and it's felt really good and cathartic.”
Initially, Tendler placed complete trust in the composers, encouraging them to produce whatever they were drawn to, unbound to the circumstances of his life. He explained, “A lot of performers and groups will have something called style guides where they're like, ‘here's what we do and here's what we don't do,’ and I've never done that because I actually like being confronted with stuff I don't know how to do or that seems too hard.” This is emblematic of Tendler’s open approach to experimental contemporary performance. However, despite his initial resistance to incorporating his grief into the project, the composers delved into themes of family and lineage to construct their works. For example, in a live performance of Darian Donovan Thomas’ composition, which incorporates a mix of musical notation, handwritten notes, and family photos, Tendler is instructed to speak to the audience about his family experiences, and the recorded version of this piece includes his own singing. In addition, the beautifully hypnotic “hushing” by composer inti figgis-vizueta accompanies footage of the pianist as a child. At one moment in the piece, Tendler raises his arm, mirroring a motion made by his younger recorded self.
As composer Timo Andres remarked to Tendler, those involved in the project all “let their freak flag fly,” boldly pushing the boundaries of their unique idioms. For instance, Marcos Balter’s sensitive and intricate “False Memories” brims with jazz-inspired language and rich harmonic fourths. Tendler spoke of Christopher Cerrone, who composed the dark and enchanting “Area of Refuge,” explaining that while Cerrone often produces “really ‘patterny’...exciting music or music that really feels tonally sort of solid and stable in a way, [he] wrote a piece that's totally unstable and it sounds like this kind of echo chamber… A lot of them just kind of went in directions that I was like, ‘that's so not what I thought you were going to do.’” Tendler continues, “Another composer, Ted Hearne, wrote a piece called ‘Inheritances,’ and Ted tends to write really, really, really complicated, dissonant music for instrumentalists to play. I was very nervous to receive his piece because I thought it was just going to be fiendishly hard…His piece is almost silent. It's very slow, almost inaudible. Again, I just never thought that was going to be the piece from him – and totally beautiful, very tonal, and consonant.”
Though Tendler specializes in contemporary experimental tunes, he said he was “totally humbled by the demands of all this music.” After two years of performances, the complete album Inheritances was released on December 6, 2024. Many of the pieces in the album can be described as open, soulful, and meditative—including “Eires, Sones” by Nico Muhly, which is my personal favorite. I asked Tendler how teaching impacts his work as a performer: “Whenever I am having a technical problem in a piece or I find myself sort of stuck,” he explained, “I try to put myself just in the ‘teacher mind’ or I'll think ‘well, what would I say to a student at this part?’” Challenging conceptual music is founded on productive dialogue between the composer and performer and thus reflects the act of teaching. By embodying both roles, Adam Tendler could meaningfully and convincingly forge through the impressive Inheritances project and let his “freak flag” fly.
edited by Alia Smith.
photo by Cameron McLeod.
album artwork believed to belong to either the publisher of the work or the artist.