eero (2019)
TWA Hotel at JFK Airport, NYC
Choreographed by Peter Walker
Commissioned by Access Contemporary Music and Open House New York
Clarinet, Violin, Viola, Cello • 4 minutes
ABOUT EERO.
This work is dear to my heart; in high school I drove my first car, a 1983 Studebaker Avanti, back and forth to youth orchestra rehearsals on the University of Michigan's North Campus every Sunday. In writing this piece for the commemoration of the grand opening of the TWA Hotel and witnessing the midcentury designs of Eero Saarinen come back to life, I learned that Raymond Loewy, the designer who created my Avanti, had helped with much of the industrial design of the interior of the terminal. And in taking Saarinen's building's shape, tracing it on score paper, and working with that to create a cohesive structure for my own art that exists not on a canvas of public space but in the canvas of a public audience's temporal experience, I realized that this piece was meant to more than anything capture the experience of iconic TWA luxury and the adrenaline and exhilaration that comes from the moment of being in a plane as it takes off. As I neared the end of writing this piece, I learned of the place where Saarinen had passed away in 1961: in Ann Arbor, Michigan, overseeing his latest project, a building for a university music school that would some decades in the future hold those very same youth orchestra rehearsals that I attended.
about the commission.
THE MUSIC: Access Contemporary Music partnered with Open House New York in June 2019 to present four commissioned pieces (by Anthony R. Green, Ed Windels, Seth Boustead, and Stephanie Ann Boyd) inspired by the Eero Saarinen-designed TWA Center, formerly the Flight Center, at JFK Airport. The pieces were performed in the building as part of OHNY’s annual gala, one of them with dancers from the New York City Ballet. It was a magical evening.
THE HOTEL: MCR and MORSE Development have reignited the magic of Eero Saarinen’s landmark 1962 TWA Flight Center at JFK Airport, restoring and reimagining it as a first-class hotel. At the center of the hotel is Eero Saarinen’s iconic TWA Flight Center, where restaurants, bars and retail outlets have taken flight. Two hotel wings, designed to reflect and defer to the landmark TWA Flight Center, sit behind the historic building and contain 512 guestrooms with views of JFK’s runways and the TWA Flight Center.
ACCESS CONTEMPORARY MUSIC: We integrate musical creativity into everyday life through high-quality concerts of the music of living composers, by teaching creativity and an appreciation for musical creativity in our storefront music schools, and through innovative commissioning projects with composers worldwide. We are changing the image of classical music and presenting it as a living tradition – not dead European men in wigs. When classical music is seen as thriving and relevant, audiences grow. ACM has developed a strategy to address both of these challenges and revitalize classical music:
Go where the people are, make contemporary music visible.
Raise musical literacy in general. There are many extremely intelligent individuals who don’t know basic things about music. This has to change.
Humanize the composers who create the music. Show off the diverse elements of today’s classical music and change the perception about who can compose and perform classical music. We have to widen the definition of classical music to include the diverse faces of today.
All of ACM’s programs have been created to serve one or more of these three strategic elements, from our ACM School of Music, to the Thirsty Ears classical music street festival to Sound of Silent Film, Open House and more.
OPEN HOUSE NEW YORK: Open House New York provides broad audiences with unparalleled access to the extraordinary architecture of New York and to the people who help design, build, and preserve the city.
Through year-round programs and the annual OHNY Weekend, Open House New York celebrates the best examples of design and planning throughout the five boroughs, from historic to contemporary, and helps foster a more informed conversation about how architecture and urban design sustain New York as a vibrant place to live, work, and learn. Open House New York is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. Open House New York was founded by Scott Lauer in 2001 to engage New Yorkers in the city’s architecture, public space, and the future of urban life.
With the help of a dedicated board and volunteers, OHNY became an important platform for celebrating New York at a critical moment in its history. Following the events of September 11, when much of the city was closing itself off through increased security measures, OHNY offered a countervailing force, one that advocated for openness and access as key components of an enlightened and vibrant civic life.
The first Open House New York Weekend was held in 2003 as part of the city’s first Architecture Week. With the help of 300 volunteers, that event included 84 sites in all five boroughs.
Since the inaugural year, the event has grown exponentially, increasing its outreach and audience participation; the number of sites, talks and tours; and developing additional thematic and interpretive programming. OHNY Weekend now includes more than 275 participating sites and offering 1,300 tours with an estimated 85,000 visitors and more than 1,400 registered volunteers.
In addition to OHNY Weekend, Open House New York organizes year-round programs that extend the conversation that begins during the two days of the Weekend. Programs include Projects in Planning, an ongoing series of presentations that explore the design and development of major new projects in the early stages of their development; Making Place, an annual event that opens a range of architecturally and culturally significant sites in one neighborhood to look at neighborhoods in the midst of change; and the Urban Systems Series, year-long thematic series that explore important issues in New York City’s built environment, from manufacturing, to food, to waste. Open House New York’s year-round programs are a significant platform for fostering discussion about how the city might take shape in the years ahead, and address issues including planning, preservation, infrastructure, and contemporary design.
About the Choreographer
Peter Walker is from Fort Myers, Florida, where he began his early dance training at age eight with teacher Judy Murray in tap dance and the next year at the Gulfshore Ballet with Melinda Roy. Mr. Walker began studying at the School of American Ballet (SAB), the official school of the New York City Ballet, during the 2006 and 2007 summer courses and enrolled as a full-time student in the winter of 2007. In the spring of 2011, Mr. Walker became an apprentice with NYCB and joined the Company as a member of the corps de ballet in Fall 2012. He was promoted to soloist in October 2018. Mr. Walker’s first work for the Company, ten in seven, premiered at NYCB’s Fall 2016 Gala. His second work, dance odyssey, premiered in Winter 2018.
About the Composer
Photo by Catherine Hancock
Her work has been presented by the Thalia and her Sisters concert series, the Moirae Ensemble, and Sandcastle New Music in New York City; Æpex Contemporary Music in Michigan; Juventas New Music, Collage New Music, and the New Gallery Concert Series in Boston; Cincinnati Soundbox, and others. Stephanie has worked with conductors Andrew Litton, Lina Gonzales, Earl Lee, Nathan Aspinall, Cliff Colnot, Gill Rose, Julian Benichou, Kristo Kondakci, and Kevin Fitzgerald. Her work has been performed in venues like Merkin Hall, Detroit Symphony Orchestra Hall, the Martha Graham Studio, Singapore Symphony’s Esplanade Hall, The Joyce Theater, Boston’s Jordan Hall, the Midwest Conference, Poisson Rouge, Tenri Cultural Center, Ganz Hall, the DiMenna Center, and the TWA Hotel.
Boyd has made ballets with New York City Ballet principal dancer Lauren Lovette (Red Spotted Purple commissioned by the Ashley Bouder Project, 2018), New York City Ballet principal dancer Ashley Bouder (Out of the Dust made at NYU Center for Ballet and the Arts, 2019), New York City Ballet soloist Peter Walker (Eero, commissioned by Access Contemporary Music and Open House New York for the grand opening of the TWA Hotel at JFK, 2019), and choreographer Eryn Renee Young (EARTH, commissioned by the Eryc Taylor Dance Company, 2019, and Flower Catalog, for XAOC Ballet, 2022).
Stephanie has given talks about her work at Roosevelt University’s Chicago College of Performing Arts, the Longy School of Music of Bard College, the University of Northern Colorado, the University of Arkansas, the University of Central Florida, Texas State University, Northwest Arkansas Community College, and others, and has given talks on her work at the New Music Gathering conference and the Continuum Music Festival in Memphis. Stephanie especially believes in instilling agency and sparking initiative in young people, and as such has given talks on creativity at high schools in Wyoming, New Mexico, Michigan, and Hawaii.
Stephanie was the 2021-2022 Composer in Residence for the Peoria Symphony Orchestra, the 2016-18 Composer in Residence for the Eureka Ensemble in Boston, the 2013/14 Collage New Music Fellow, and has had composition residencies at summer festivals in Italy, Canada, and the US. She is a faculty member of the Iceberg Institute in Vienna. She holds degrees from Roosevelt University and New England Conservatory (with honors).
Stephanie grew up as a violinist in the Ann Arbor, Michigan string world. One of the last students of renowned pedagogue John Kendall, she was a member of the Pioneer High School Symphony Orchestra, the Michigan Youth Symphony Orchestra, and the Blue Lake International Youth Symphony Orchestra. Her string orchestra works have been performed by youth, amateur, and professional ensembles alike, and include Beyond the Gate, Dark Sky Soliloquy, Bright Dawn Chorus and A Kaleidoscoped Menagerie for advanced ensembles, and Eternal Golden Braid and Summer Walker Dances for Beginning/Intermediate level ensembles. Find her music online at stephanieannboyd.com
Boyd is a member of the Iceberg New Music composers collective. For concert premieres and red carpet appearances, she is usually dressed by MILLY creator Michelle Smith or Boston-based designer Sasha Parfenova. Stephanie intensely adores jazz big band screaming trumpets, the smell of camp fires and old cars, that moment when planes leave the ground during takeoff, and reading contemporary fiction novels next to her cat, Petra.
Michigan-born, Manhattan-based American composer Stephanie Ann Boyd (b. 1990) writes melodic music about women’s memoirs and the natural world for symphonic and chamber ensembles. Her work has been performed in nearly all 50 states and has been commissioned by musicians and organizations in 37 countries. Boyd’s five ballets include works choreographed by New York City Ballet principal dancers Lauren Lovette and Ashley Bouder and include a ballet commissioned for the grand opening of the TWA Hotel at JFK Airport. Stephanie’s music has been praised as “a racing, brassy score” (New York Times), “attractive lyricism” (Gramophone), “[with] ethereal dissonances” (Boston Globe), “[music that] didn’t let itself be eclipsed” (Texas Classical Review), and “arrestingly poetic” (BMOP).
Current commissions include a concerto for principal clarinet of the New York Philharmonic Anthony McGill, a new reed quintet for Akropolis, and the second book of Flower Catalog Piano Preludes.
Recent commissions and premieres include a work inspired by Betty Friedan entitled Everywoman, with Kennedy Center President Deborah Rutter, mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung, and 2022 Indianapolis Competition winner Sirena Huang as soloists and commissioned by the Peoria Symphony Orchestra with George Stelluto; Julia Louisa Esther: a Suffragette Symphony commissioned by the Wyoming Symphony Orchestra with Christopher Dragon, the premiere of which was the subject of a documentary on Wyoming PBS in 2022; Alleluia Olora commissioned by Astral Artists for cellist Tommy Mesa; Aurora, commissioned by the Kurganov-Finehouse Duo, and others.
Boyd’s music has been commissioned and performed by concertmasters of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Singapore Symphony, the New York City Ballet Orchestra, the Des Moines Symphony, the Faroe Islands Symphony, the Anchorage Symphony Orchestra, the Fort Smith Symphony, the Arkansas Philharmonic Orchestra, and principal players in the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. Her music has been commissioned and/or played by the Wyoming Symphony Orchestra, the Peoria Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the New England Conservatory Philharmonic, the Cape Cod Chamber Orchestra, the New York Jazzharmonic, the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra, the Detroit Civic Orchestra, the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra, the El Paso Youth Symphony, and others.