Scott Ordway

PREMIERE

Commissioned by PhilaSoup, a Philadelphia micro-grant organization for educators,
with support from a 2013–2015 Community Partners Grant from the American Composers Forum. 

Premiere: June 2015 at the Asian Arts Initiative (Philadelphia, PA)
Musicians from the Pennsylvania Ballet Orchestra

MEDIA

NOTE

Brotherly Love is a crowdsourced multimedia collaboration between composer Scott Ordway and PhilaSoup, a Philadelphia micro-grant organization for educators. Together, they asked teachers and their students in nine Philadelphia public schools to consider the question: What does it mean to live in a City of Brotherly Love?

Ordway visited each school to meet with students, facilitate group discussions, and record individual students of all ages speaking their responses. He then combined recorded audio drawn from more than 100 student interviews with synthesized sound and live instruments to create a digital soundscape composition. Brotherly Love brings the voices of Philadelphia students together, literally and figuratively, to describe the reality of life in a twenty-first century city. As the work is performed, dozens of students voices are woven together, creating a sonic tapestry of witness and resilience.