Scott Ordway: The Clearing and the Forest
Acis

While the three full-length releases Scott Ordway (b. 1984) has issued on Acis aren't formally a trilogy, they collectively testify to the fecundity of the composer's imagination. A magnificent realization by mezzo-soprano Julia Dawson and pianist Anna Naretto of the song-cycle Girl in the Snow arrived in late 2020, after which cellist Arlen Hlusko presented the world premiere recording of Nineteen Movements for Unaccompanied Cello. Now, The Clearing and the Forest solidifies Ordway's reputation as one of today's most gifted and thoughtful composers. He's that rare thing: an artist who's fully absorbed and steeped within the classical tradition yet cultivated a personal vision that's beholden to no one but himself. He is a serious composer in the best sense of the word: every work is meticulously conceived, impeccably crafted, and built to last.

Recorded in January 2022 at Trinity University's Ruth Taylor Concert Hall and performed by SOLI Chamber Ensemble (clarinetist Stephanie Key, violinist Ertan Torgul, cellist David Mollenauer, and pianist Carolyn True), The Clearing and the Forest explores concepts of migration, landscape, and refuge in strikingly original manner. While the work inarguably succeeds as a seventy-minute recording, in its most authentic form it's an audio-visual piece, as indicated by the words “a theatre of music” accompanying its title. For its 2019 premiere by the group at the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas, the live presentation featured a stage design involving botanical materials, changing fragrances in the performance space, and the musicians performing silent stage actions. When musicians dramatically illuminate a live presentation by combining visual gesture and musical performance, one can't help but wonder why more musical works aren't created with a similar theatrical dimension as part of the design.

The thematic origins for the project are clear. Having witnessed in 2018 the heartbreaking separation of children from their families at the US border, Ordway was compelled to create a work that would distill his feelings into vivid artistic form. Anything but coy about his intentions, he expressed his desire to “boldly, plainly, and publicly affirm my support for the rights of refugees as well as our sacred, ancient, and transcultural obligation to provide shelter to those who seek it.” To that end, he devised a structural plan that would see the work progress through three acts documenting the journey of a group of people forced by necessity to search for a new home. Wandering separately and in groups, they eventually reunite, now relocated but carrying with them memories of the place left behind. As forest photographs (taken by the composer) in the release's booklet show, the work also reflects Ordway's belief in the restorative power of the natural world, a conviction consistent with the travelers' wish to migrate from a cold and inhospitable locale to one that's warm, verdant, and welcoming. Of course the work also implicitly deals with the experience of loss, be it the sadness that attends a move from home, the lessening of freedoms wrought by the pandemic, or the considerable losses incurred by climate change.

The musical and narrative elements intertwine. During the series of trios that constitute the five-part first act (“we must leave this place forever”), the musicians exit the stage one by one and take with them personal possessions as they do so. The act ends with the pianist, alone, executing a slow and introspective movement on a stage covered with pine and fir branches, the atmosphere intended to convey desolation and emptiness. Melancholy naturally pervades much of the act, and the SOLI members convey that movingly through their expressive playing. There's intensity, as illustrated by its fourth movement “Cloth (recitative),” but tenderness is also communicated through the delicacy of the pianist's touch in “Warmth (coda).”

Migratory movement arrives with the seven-part second act (“we must run like wolves to the end”) as the players present haunting solos, duos, and trios as cadenzas, processionals, and a monologue, dialogue, and toccata, and the first act's branches are replaced by sculptures originating from a temperate oak forest. Particularly memorable are the poignant duet by Torgul and True in “Processional No. 2” and the respective solo turns by Mollenauer and Key during the act's closing “Monologue.” After a brief but stirring “Intermezzo” (“a prayer of thanksgiving”), The Clearing and the Forest concludes with the single-movement, fifteen-minute third act (“the things we lost we will never reclaim”). Here elegiac musical fragments gather into a vibrant whole, with three of the musicians playing while the pianist arranges hundreds of oranges into a geometric grid in front of the ensemble, the gesture symbolizing the making of a new home and the establishing of stability and order.

May 2022