I chose to create an album of these four works because they share themes of perseverance, alliance, and evolution through dark and light—concepts that have been at the center of my mind in recent years.
- Sarah Kirkland Snider
Forward Into Light is the fifth full-length album from composer Sarah Kirkland Snider, out February 27 on Nonesuch Records. Featuring the GRAMMY-nominated Metropolis Ensemble under Andrew Cyr and produced by GRAMMY-winner Silas Brown, the album features four orchestral works spanning themes of perseverance, memory, and renewal. Critical acclaim is already beginning to come through with a rave review in Gramophone.
Co-released by Nonesuch and New Amsterdam Recordings, of which Snider is one of the founding Artistic Directors, this album is part of the composer’s biggest season to-date. She has recently completed two sold-out runs of the critically-acclaimed opera Hildegard in New York and Los Angeles, and will soon enjoy an upcoming orchestral premiere with New World Symphony and Miami City Ballet. Following is an overview of the album’s four featured works.
A bold yet haunting meditation on women’s suffrage, Forward Into Light was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic and premiered at Carnegie Hall in 2022. With an eerie harp solo, resilient string melodies, and a poignant wind chorale based on Ethel Smyth’s The March of the Women, Forward Into Light has become one of Snider’s signature works since its premiere. Highlights include recent performances by the Boston Symphony Orchestra at both Symphony Hall and at Tanglewood Music Festival, as well as outings at the Cabrillo and Aspen Festivals.
Originally composed on commission for the Emerson String Quartet’s farewell tour, this version of Drink the Wild Ayre for harp and strings moves between exuberance, mystery, rhythm, and lyricism. The title nods to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s line—“Live in the sunshine / swim the sea / drink the wild air’s salubrity”—and to the old word ayre: a song-like, lyrical piece. Its lilting, asymmetrical phrases celebrate the questing spirit and collaborative openness of a life in music.
Commissioned by the Rochester Philharmonic to mark the orchestra’s centennial, Eye of Mnemosyne explores how memory, innovation, and culture refract through the lens of photography. In it, the “Kodak Girls” become modern muses—avatars of independence and creativity during photography’s golden age—set against the mythic backdrop of Mnemosyne, the Greek goddess of memory. The piece unfolds in eight movements, devised in collaboration with video artist Deborah Johnson.
Commissioned by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, this piece considers resilience through the prism of the Motor City. A bold, youthful brass gesture of hope meets real tests: it is humbled, re-formed into a delicate tune for flute, harp, and celeste, and is then weathered by surges and undertow. What remains at the end is clear-eyed and steady—a quiet, true endurance. The title comes from Philip Levine’s poem “For Fran,” where preparing winter beds becomes a promise of renewal: “Out of whatever we have been / We will make something for the dark.”
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