Scott Ordway

photo © Jacques-Jean Tiziou

Scott Ordway (b. 1984, California) is an American composer and conductor. In 2014, he joined the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. During the 2013–14 season, his orchestral, choral, chamber, and multimedia works were heard on 35 concerts in eleven states and in Europe. Season highlights include the European premiere of his tone poem Detroit at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin, and the premiere of Brotherly Love, a multimedia collaboration with more than 100 Philadelphia schoolchildren funded by the American Composers Forum. His chamber music has been presented recently by the SOLI Chamber Ensemble (San Antonio), Boston Musica Viva, Portland Chamber Music Festival, the Michigan Recital Project, and the Momenta and Arneis String Quartets.

Ordway has spent summers at the Aspen Summer Music Festival, the Accademia Chigiana in Tuscany, June in Buffalo, the Oregon Bach Festival, the Freie Universität Berlin, and as a two-time Artist-in-Residence at the Foundation House in Bel Air, California. In recent seasons, he has worked with graduates of America’s leading musical institutions, including the Juilliard School, the Curtis Institute of Music, the New England Conservatory, and the Eastman School of Music, as well as ensembles such as Fireworks, Counter)induction, So Percussion, and the Oregon Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra.

Symphony No. 3

Program Note:
Ordway’s Symphony No. 3 was composed between July 2012 and March 2013 in Aspen, Philadelphia, and NYC. It unfolds in a single movement over twenty-two minutes. The first performance was given in 2013 by the Bates College Orchestra with the composer conducting. It has also been recorded by the Curtis Symphony Orchestra conducted by David Hayes.

Though the work is abstract, the music is characterized by a sense of open space and gradual unfolding. The symphonic argument traces the distinction between the vast external permanence of natural landscape and the volatile subjectivity of our own inner lives.