Ellen REID When the World as You’ve Known It Doesn’t Exist
In Short Born: March 23, 1983, in Oak Ridge, Tennessee Resides: in New York City Work composed: 2019, on commission from the New York Philharmonic, Jaap van Zweden, Music Director, as part of Project 19, its commissioning initiative marking the centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment World premiere: February 20, 2020, by the New York Philharmonic, Jaap van Zweden, conductor, and Eliza Bagg, Martha Cluver, and Estelí Gomez, featured sopranos Estimated duration: ca. 12 minutes
About the Composer Ellen Reid is a composer and sound artist whose breadth of work spans opera, sound design, film scoring, and ensemble and choral writing. She was awarded the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Music for her opera p r i s m. Musicians from the New York Philharmonic performed a selection from her Pulitzer Prize–winning work on the GRoW @ Annenberg Sound ON series in 2019. Along with composer Missy Mazzoli, Ellen Reid co-founded the Luna Composition Lab, a mentorship program for young, female-identifying, non-binary, and gender non-conforming composers. She has served as creative advisor and composer-in- residence for Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra since fall 2019. Ellen Reid received her BFA from Columbia University and her MA from California Institute of the Arts. She is inspired by music from all over the globe, and she splits her time between her two favorite cities: Los Angeles and New York. Her music is released on Decca Gold.
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Lead support for Project 19 is provided by the Howard Gilman Foundation, the Donald A. Pels Charitable Trust and Dr. Agnes Hsu-Tang and Mr. Oscar L. Tang.
Generous support is also provided by Sheree A. and Gerald L. Friedman; The Hauser Foundation; The Gerald L. Lennard Foundation; Margaret Morgan and Wesley Phoa; Kimberly V. Strauss, The Strauss Foundation; the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation; and an anonymous donor. Project 19 is supported in part by a generous grant from the American Orchestras’ Futures Fund, a program of the League of American Orchestras made possible by funding from the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation Programs are made possible, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
In the Composer’s Words
My piece is not directly about the 19th Amendment, but it is about unabashedly presenting my artistic voice. This, at times, feels like my most political action. When the World as You’ve Known It Doesn’t Exist begins in a musical landscape of exhausted and disembodied questioning. The piece then moves through waves of blazing anger and strength toward something close to acceptance. Its musical vocabulary consists of clouds of sound, exaggerated contrasts, large drop-offs, and surprise. I enjoyed focusing on rhythm as a central theme in this work; a rhythmic ostinato spirals into focus as the piece progresses, alternatively taking on a driving identity and a jagged, antagonistic character in different sections of the work. The largely chromatic melodic material points toward the numb and disoriented mood I evoke in the beginning of the piece. One of these melodies is at first presented tightly coiled and, like the work’s rhythmic ostinato, it spirals outward as the piece progresses. One of music’s greatest attributes is that it can mean something different for each listener. While the work holds much specific significance for me, I hope each listener has their own journey.