Cultural Caravan presents Behind the Music: Letters to My Daughters

Join us for a special edition of Behind the Music series—a joint presentation by the Cultural Caravan and the Dairy Arts Center. In this intimate, onstage conversation, composer Scott Ordway and cellist Josh Halpern, Artistic Director of the Cultural Caravan will explore the creative process behind Scott’s new composition Letters to My Daughters, the Cultural Caravan’s first-ever commissioned work.

Written as a series of musical and textual reflections to his young daughters, Letters to My Daughters responds to the political, environmental, and social uncertainty of our time. It asks how we speak to the next generation about the future they’re inheriting—and how music can hold space for both personal reflection and broader cultural questions.

About Scott Ordway:
Scott Ordway is a Philadelphia-based composer and multimedia artist whose acclaimed work often blends music, text, video, and photography to explore themes of ecology, philosophy, and the American West. His compositions have been performed at Lincoln Center, Wigmore Hall, and the Aspen Music Festival by artists and ensembles including Sasha Cooke, Roomful of Teeth, and the Hong Kong Philharmonic. In addition to his creative work, he serves as Associate Professor of Music and Head of Composition at Rutgers University.

Josh met Scott in 2022 while recording his album The Outer Edge of Youth and was immediately struck by the sonorous beauty of his music and its ability to convey powerful stories. Scott’s wide-ranging interests—from rock music to photography to climate issues—inform a musical voice that audiences will find relatable, engaging, and thought-provoking.

From Scott:

“I am drawn to Josh’s expansive and inspiring vision of what a concert series can be, and the uncommonly deep relationship he envisions between composer, performer, and audience. This speaks directly to my mission to create works of beauty and musical refinement in the service of human values that animate me more generally. Additionally, it is a rare privilege to be asked to curate the concert on which a new work will be premiered, offering the opportunity to integrate new musical impulses with those works from the repertoire which taught me what a cello could do and how it could sound and speak and sing.”

Behind the Music offers audiences a rare opportunity to go beyond the performance: to hear directly from the artists, explore the stories behind the work, and engage in an open conversation about music’s role in shaping how we understand the world around us.