“Letters Home” on BBC Radio3

I’m so excited and honored to be included in Nick Luscombe’s series about sound design and music & architecture on BBC Radio 3! You can hear this awesome first episode that also includes inspiring music by other fantastic composers [including a personal favorite of mine, Iannis Xenakis, who’s piece “Rebonds” I performed on my senior recital at the Chicago College of Performing Arts.]

My piece “Letters Home” was composed for Open House Chicago at Chicago’s Union Station with the Chicago Architecture Foundation and Access Contemporary Music. In thinking about what to compose, I wanted to write something reflective and emotionally tied to Union Station’s Women’s Lounge. A room that had been boarded up and used for storage for decades, the Women’s Lounge would have been a getaway from the hustling and bustling travelers in the great hall of Union Station in the earlier half of the 20th century.

I was so fortunate to find the letters written by a young woman who had recently moved to Chicago in the 1920’s, Trudel Adler Grossman. Her letters were a portal to another time and the exciting adventures of a young woman during her first years in Chicago.

Leah N., pictured here at the same age as Trudel at the time of her writing, brought the letters to life at the original performance by reading a letter aloud.