Candour

Commissioned by and dedicated to Cassandra Wolff

My dear friend and colleague Cass Wolff is one of the most remarkable and honest musicians I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. I have crossed paths with very few people who have such an authentic, candid, and personal way of making music – I count myself as extremely lucky to have improvised and performed so many times with her, sessions that proved to be quite healing through the emotional turmoil of finishing up five challenging years of music school.

Both Cass and I approach music in similar ways and have thus found common ground in the pursuit of artistic fulfilment. Equally so, we have struggled with squaring our passions with the realities of both academic music and the field more generally. Both of us exist within and across multiple spaces – a source of great joy, to be sure, but also a continual challenge in finding stability and an artistic home. Enjoying the varied facets of orchestral music, chamber playing, improvisation, songwriting, composition, conducting, and more have been wonderful, defining parts of our trajectories as musicians, but in some ways have prevented us from enjoying the steadiness and reassurance of dwelling within one or two musical homes.

Candour is an honest exploration of these feelings – the joy and warmth of finding music, the trepidations of searching for a home and facing shame within the music world for honest expressions of love for the art form, and rediscovering some level of original joy through friendship – with thanks to our companions Jacob, Andy, and Noah.