After his father’s unexpected passing, pianist Adam Tendler received an envelope of cash from his step-mother as his inheritance. The Grammy-nominated artist has spent much of his career championing the work of 20th and 21st century composers, and after sitting with the money for several months, he decided to invest his entire inheritance in 16 new piano commissions from artists he deeply admires: Laurie Anderson, Devonté Hynes, Nico Muhly, inti figgis-vizueta, Pamela Z, Ted Hearne, Angélica Negrón, Christopher Cerrone, Marcos Balter, Missy Mazzoli, Darian Donovan Thomas, Sarah Kirkland Snider, Scott Wollschleger, Mary Prescott, Timo Andres, and John Glover.
On Dec. 6, Tendler will release his passion-filled album, simply titled Inheritances, on New Amsterdam Records. Given the plethora of commissioned composers, the album features a multitude of musical styles; from minimalistic isorhythms to text-related inflections, Tendler shines with his sparkling precision and honest emotion.
Tendler’s pianistic clarity is at the center of Laurie Anderson’s Remember I Created You, an electroacoustic piece that features the composer’s voice reading a poem addressed to one’s father while the piano part swells and wanes in reaction to the text. Another notable piece on the album is Pamela Z’s Thank You so Much, which combines live performance of muted piano strings with prerecorded fragments of Tendler’s own voice thanking an unknown interlocutor – presumably his father, though this remains ambiguous through the piece. Z adeptly marries speech with tones in a way that places the listener into a sublimely disoriented state.
What began as commissions funded by an inheritance has become an album that evokes Tendler’s complex relationship with his father and questions of what inheritance means to any of us. In advance of the album release, we asked Tendler five questions about the process of designing and recording the project, his collaborative relationships with the composers, and the concept of inheritance.
“Inheritance” collage by Brock Lefferts
Congratulations, Adam, on a wonderful album with beautiful performances throughout. How did you decide that this was how you were going to use your inheritance?
Thank you so much! I’ll be honest, it wasn’t a knee-jerk decision. Several weeks passed between when I received my inheritance as a wad of cash in a Denny’s parking lot to when I decided to commission a program of new piano music. It was sort of appealing to just pay off my credit cards and call it a day, but that seemed so blah. I wanted to honor the gesture of the inheritance, as weird as that gesture was.
The idea really just came to me one night sitting in the balcony at Roulette listening to a String Orchestra of Brooklyn concert. I was so moved by the performance, and it reminded me that, like … this is what I do. I make music, and I try to shape musical experiences for people and for myself, hopefully powerful, even transformational. It seemed like creating music from this inheritance could be a kind of therapeutic tool, which I needed. And I saw it as an investment. Debts are temporary. But I could live with these pieces forever. So it literally came together in a second for me to use the money as a kind of… dare I say, “grant.” After that moment, I couldn’t shake the idea.
Why did you want to work with these particular composers for this project? Did you have existing relationships with all of them?
Well, this was my dream team of composers. Even if I could theoretically ask for a piece from one of them, I would. But I’m fortunate enough to also say that these were people I considered friends and allies going in. That’s my privilege, really, to have friends like this! But the team behind Inheritances sort of needed to be my friends, if that makes sense.
For one, I didn’t really have a lot of money to offer them — the entire inheritance was enough to hold in my hand — so they needed to be folks willing to do me a favor. But then, they also needed to be people in my life who would understand the circumstances of the “ask,” and who understood me well enough as a friend and artist that they’d actually want to enter into a space like this, for me but also for themselves. It was about the assignment, I think, not the money. At least one composer donated their fee, and another sent theirs back to me.
You’re no stranger to the recording studio, but was the process of recording such a personal album different from past projects?
Yes, and in a good way. In my other recording projects, even for pieces I love or for composers I’ve so-called ‘championed,’ like Robert Palmer… I was recording repertoire that existed before me, and then I sort of came along decades or centuries later. But to live with the pieces of Inheritances from seed-to-stage… I actually felt excited going into the studio, I’d say even unusually confident. There wasn’t a question of whether I “knew the pieces well enough,” or anything like that.
I also chose to work with legendary classical music producer Judy Sherman, who is — and I mean this in the best way — staunchly old-school in her approach. Long takes, very few patches, super detail-oriented, and really unflinching and unsympathetic in her feedback. I needed and wanted that too, someone to keep me “in line” but who could also challenge me to go even deeper with this music I thought I knew so well.
Technically, the pieces are super challenging, even… sometimes especially… when they don’t sound like it. And of course some pieces are so incredibly personal and intense to play. I knew the studio itself would be a really charged environment when recording them. And you can hear that on the album, that immediacy and intimacy. Dimmed lights and the whole deal. I mean, we went there. After the two-day session, Judy and I just hugged.
How has your concept of inheritance changed or evolved since you first commissioned these pieces?
I think I’ve grown to see how multi-dimensional the concept of inheritance even is. I’ve performed the program, for instance, in areas that are closer culturally and physically to Native American communities, and even that added a new dimension to this project and the idea of inheritance. I’ve performed it in areas that are closer culturally and physically to queer communities, and that added a new dimension to the project.
Because of Inheritances, I’ve found myself talking to grief groups, “medical assistance in dying” advocacy groups, and so on. It’s been really powerful to see all of the ways this program can touch different people, and for different reasons. And at the same time, the “side effect” is they experience this bona fide new music recital, and get a slice of what’s going on in contemporary music right now.
I went into Inheritances really just thinking I’d create a vessel to process my grief, and a way to thoughtfully invest an inheritance that seemed — and this might sound harsh — not to have had much thought put behind it. But this program, as it came together, seemed to build a place to honor the imperfection and complexity of its origin story, and as an extension, the imperfection of our relationships in general, our histories, what we inherit, and how, and from whom.
I didn’t anticipate that this thing designed to help me process my grief would open up so many other… I don’t know… healings? Forgivings? But in the end, it has been healing, and I’ve learned to forgive. I used to really get down on my dad, and down on myself for things I perceived as flaws or imperfections. Now I see a lot more beauty in the complexity of it all. The aim has always been to extend this experience to the composers, and to our listeners, and I think this album will now do that outside of the concert hall.
How has the process of bringing this album into the world changed your practice as you move forward into your future projects?
Honestly, I’ve learned to just put one step in front of the other. Inheritances started with an email inviting composers into a process without knowing where that process would lead. I was upfront about it, too. I was like, “I don’t know what I’m doing, but join me.” After pressing send and, frankly, promising my inheritance away, there’s no undoing that. And in the beginning, that was the only sure thing — I’d get some music and Venmo these leading composers of our time my entire inheritance.
These days you’ll see language about the prompt being for them “to explore inheritance itself…” and I’ll admit that I’m responsible for presenting that narrative. But in reality, that narrative formed over time. The truth is that there was no prompt. Only a situation. I was like, “here’s what happened. And here’s my idea.”
The pandemic stalled the whole thing indefinitely. There was no stage. No label. And for a while, no music! But another step was reaching out to Kate Nordstrum of Liquid Music to present the very first show. Then asking for support from the arts patron, and again, and importantly, friend… Anthony Creamer… to help bring in even more composers. And step by step, with everything sort of bonded by mutual trust, mutual affection, and many leaps of faith, pieces came in, a program came together, and we finally got to this album. We’ll see what comes next. I still don’t know what I’m doing.
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