Twenty / Twenty

In September 2020, composer Scott Ordway asked 100 singers from four colleges to complete the sentence "One year ago today, I did not know that..." He compiled their submissions to create a crowdsourced poem in which each line is based on a single response. The result is a personal and deeply moving meditation on the early months of the pandemic. It serves as a memorial for those we lost as well as a celebration of the power and fragility of singing together as a group. Critics praised the piece as "a quiet work that says it all" (Philadelphia Inquirer) and "seamless...quietly melodic...masterful" (Phindie: Philadelphia Theater and Arts). Twenty / Twenty was commissioned by Haverford, Swarthmore, Bryn Mawr, and Hamilton Colleges.