Premiere of “Twenty / Twenty” by Scott Ordway

"Twenty / Twenty is an audiovisual reflection on the year 2020.

In September 2020, composer Scott Ordway asked 100 singers from three collegiate choirs to complete the sentence “One year ago today, I did not know that...”.  He compiled and edited their responses in order to create the text for Twenty / Twenty. Each line of the text is either based on a single response or is a synthesis of two or more related responses.

In addition to recording their individual audio part, each singer also acted as a filmmaker, shooting video footage in response to a series of prompts. In all, the project generated more than 1,600 audio and video clips which were edited and assembled by Scott Ordway with engineer Alexander Brusencev and Research Assistants Kimberlee Sibilia and Mateo Urgilés.

Twenty / Twenty was commissioned by ensembles at Bryn Mawr & Haverford Colleges, Hamilton College, and Swarthmore College (Nathan Zullinger, Charlotte Botha, and Joseph Gregorio, directors, respectively). 

View the piece here: https://youtu.be/wxGVMDxqj38