Collage from composer Darian Thomas's commissioned score, *We Don't Need to Tend This Garden. They're Wildflowers*

On its surface, the concept of inheritance touches on two out of the three of the most emotionally fraught words in the English language: Death and Money — with an extra serving of awkwardness, grief, class, and privilege. Just past its surface, inheritance sparks more philosophical and abstract questions: What have I inherited? What have we collectively inherited? What will we leave behind? What are we to do with the sins and spoils of our predecessors, literally or figuratively? Who is responsible when the recipient has no choice in the matter?

It is easy to avoid thinking about these questions and beguiling to find someone confronting them head-on. But pianist Adam Tendler doesn’t always process things like other people. It is this spirit of questioning and self-discovery that’s at the heart of his latest project titled Inheritances, a truly collaborative commission that used Adam’s own monetary and symbolic inheritance as a launching pad for 16 new works for piano, created by a broad spectrum of sound artists and composers.

Inheritances isn’t the first time that Adam has taken on a wildly ambitious, conceptual, and personal project. Upon graduating from music school, he decided that he wanted to perform in all 50 states. “I’d gone to [music] conservatory and I came out of it a ball of nerves. It almost made me more anxious as a performer,” he reflected over Zoom in April 2022, sitting in front of his piano, laptop propped where the sheet music normally goes. He knew that more school wasn’t the answer. His rationale was simple: all he needed was a simple “yes” — from a church, coffee shop, or hall. With the gradual accumulation of small yes’s, laser focus, and zero know-how, he made this seemingly unprecedented project happen, which he eventually turned into 88x50: A Memoir of Sexual Discovery, Modern Music and The United States of America, a book chronicling his journeys.

Inheritances began in 2019 when Adam's father died unexpectedly. By Adam’s own account, his relationship with his father at the time was complicated: “I wouldn't say we were estranged, but we didn't talk that much,” said Adam. “We talked maybe about two or three times a year, like on my birthday, or holidays…” Adam was pretty close with his dad as a kid, even after his parent’s divorce. But this closeness faded over time in a vague and blurry way that made the eventual experience of his fathers’ passing similarly obfuscated.

“With his absence, there was definitely a sense of confusion. It wasn't like when some people die, what the survivors are left with is this hole, this gaping sort of loss and absence. I didn't have that. I know that sounds really weird. What I lost was access. It was sort of like, oh, well, I guess a part of my life with this person is now over and all the things we shared… that book is closed,” said Adam. At the time he didn’t know anything about his father’s financial situation, but when he eventually heard that there was an inheritance, he had a feeling that it “was gonna be something bizarre.”

“It wasn't a lot of money. And it was in cash,” explained Adam. “It was handed to me in a manila envelope by my stepmom in a Denny's parking lot in Lebanon, New Hampshire, the same border crossing of Vermont and New Hampshire where I was transferred between parents as a kid.” Initially, Adam didn’t do anything with the money. “There seemed to be something sort of sad about letting this symbolic money go into something as stupid as like debt, or subway fares, or rent. It seemed weird for it to just disappear like all my other money disappears,” he said.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Adam Tendler (@adamtendler)

It wasn’t until a few months later at a concert that he had one of those simple, profound, frustratingly platitude-like thoughts that seem to only hit with such force in the depths of emotional strife: “Music is Amazing!” And what better way to celebrate the transformative and cathartic potential of music than by commissioning work with this symbolic cash? So, without a venue, premiere date, record deal, or any other practical justification for the project, Inheritances came to be. Adam started to reach out to composers, asking them if they would write a piece on inheritance, paid from the inheritance he had just received. Incredibly, every single artist that Adam asked to participate in Inheritances said “yes,” materializing, as Adam puts it, “the coolest f**king lineup I could have ever imagined. There's not a single person that I am not stoked about.” Liquid Music signed on to premiere the work and Adam was able to secure matching funds to ask even more artists to participate.

Adam emphasized to all the artists involved that the commissioned works didn’t have to be about him, his father, death, grief, or anything prescriptive. The pieces he eventually received are as diverse as the set of artists behind them. However, to Adam’s surprise, there still does seem to be something tying the works together. “These pieces all have really stunning restraint,” he said. “It’s like they knew that they could actually do something very, very personal and be safe with me.”

Grief expert J. William Worden suggests that there are no set stages to the grieving process and that we approach grieving through tasks that can happen in any order. Those tasks are:

To accept the reality of the loss
To process the pain of grief
To adjust to a world without the deceased
To find an enduring connection with the deceased while embarking on a new life

Unbeknownst to him, Adam’s outreach to Inheritances’ composers perfectly encapsulates the fourth and most important task of grieving — finding an enduring connection with the deceased while finding a way to move forward. As he wrote in his initial email to the artists, he was seeking “to plant that cash in the soil of something that may actually grow and—if you'll forgive me—live on.”

It is not at all that surprising that the collaborators, when asked to reflect on inheritance in a time with no shortage of grief, responded reflectively with such sincere authenticity. In his own unique way, Adam Tendler has invited us all to participate in the transmutation of his extremely personal experience of ambiguous loss into a beautifully communal ritual of enduring connection — providing us all an overdue opportunity to utilize the emotionally alchemic potential of music to process our immeasurable and nebulous griefs. Accepting, processing, adjusting, and finding hope…

Join us Saturday, April 23 for ADAM TENDLER: INHERITANCES and hear the premiere of brand new works by commissioned composers Devonté Hynes, Nico Muhly, Laurie Anderson, inti figgis-vizueta, Pamela Z, Ted Hearne, Angélica Negrón, Christopher Cerrone, Marcos Balter, Missy Mazzoli, Darian Donovan Thomas, Sarah Kirkland Snider, Scott Wollschleger, Mary Prescott, Timo Andres and John Glover.