FEATURED PROJECTS

THE END OF RAIN
a multimedia oratorio confronting wildfire, drought, and displacement in the Western U.S.

for large orchestra, eight voices, and documentary video

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A 50-minute multimedia oratorio for voices, video, and electronics, The End of Rain (2022) confronts wildfire, drought, and the transformation of life in contemporary California. Built from crowdsourced text submitted by 250 Californians, the work weaves together music, documentary film, and still photography in a meditation on grief, memory, and the natural world. Commissioned by the Cabrillo Festival and created for Roomful of Teeth, the work also exists in a choral version premiered at Lincoln Center in 2024.

“Haunting and beautiful.” (San Francisco Chronicle)
“Composer Scott Ordway is a 21st-century auteur.” (Good Times Santa Cruz)
“Haunting…heartbreaking…a majestic three-part symphony.” (Lookout Santa Cruz)
”The Grievers of Climate Change” (Noema Magazine)
“The Cabrillo Festival’s 60th Anniversary Season With Composers Gabriela Lena Frank And Scott Ordway” (KSQD Radio Santa Cruz)
“Santa Cruz composer reflects on California’s new climate normal in The End of Rain.” (Lookout Santa Cruz)
“Songs of the Earth.” (Symphony Magazine)

THE OUTER EDGE OF YOUTH
a choral opera in two acts

for soprano, mezzo-soprano, chamber choir, three cellos, and bass

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A dreamlike choral opera exploring childhood, memory, and the quiet vanishing of the self. Commissioned and recorded by The Thirteen, The Outer Edge of Youth unfolds in a series of spare poetic texts that blur the line between prayer, memory, and song.

“Exquisite in every way.” (Gramophone)
“Exquisite depth of feeling…a poignant mediation on the loss of innocence.” (OperaNews)
“A contemplative and thought-provoking new choral opera.” (OperaWire)
“An expression of great power, imagination, and originality.” (Textura)
“A hypnotic, haunting fable.”(Washington Classical Review)

THE CLEARING AND THE FOREST
an immersive ritual exploring migration, memory, and the spiritual ecology of place

for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano

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An immersive, ritual-based performance work combining chamber music, installation, and movement, The Clearing and the Forest unfolds as a meditation on place, migration, and the human search for safety and home. Incorporating botanical sculpture, lighting design, and costume, the work evokes an imagined ceremony of seeking and transformation. Commissioned and recorded by SOLI Chamber Ensemble and premiered at the McNay Museum of Art in San Antonio, TX.

“A thought-provoking musical essay on migration and the search for safety…soul-stirring music.” (BBC Music)
“One of today's most gifted and thoughtful composers.” (Textura)
“An immersive landscape.” (San Antonio Current)
“Complete and meaningful.” (San Antonio Express-News)
“Hope and gratitude mingled with solemnity and sorrow.” (A Closer Listen)
“The Clearing and the Forest Explores Migration Through Music, Movement, Scenery” (Texas Public Radio)
“Artist Interview: Composer Scott Ordway and Designer Erica Eliot” (San Antonio Current)

EXPANSE OF MY SOUL
a creative collaboration with Sasha Cooke, drawn from personal letters

for mezzo-soprano and piano

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Premiered at Stanford Live and Wigmore Hall by Grammy-winning mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, Expanse of My Soul (2024) is an intimate song cycle for voice and piano. Built from fragments of Cooke’s personal letters and shaped into abstract poetic form, the work unfolds as a meditation on love, memory, relationships, and the interior landscapes that define us. Quiet, searching, and emotionally direct, it reflects a new dimension in Ordway’s practice—rooted in collaboration, vulnerability, and the poetics of everyday lived experience.

LETTERS TO MY DAUGHTERS
a chamber work for cello, piano, and spoken letters

for cello, piano, and narrator

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Commissioned by cellist Josh Halpern and The Cultural Caravan (Boulder, CO), Letters to My Daughters is a 30-minute work that weaves spoken letters, cello, and piano into a meditation on fatherhood, memory, and the transmission of love across time. Equal parts musical performance and personal archive, the piece unfolds as a series of reflections addressed to the composer’s young daughters—at once intimate, poetic, and quietly universal.

NORTH WOODS
a choral meditation on wilderness, memory, and spiritual ecology

for treble chamber choir

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North Woods is a 15-minute work for treble chamber choir, commissioned by Lorelei Ensemble and premiered under the direction of Beth Willer. Built around fragments of Tacitus’ ancient writings on the northern edges of the Roman world, the piece evokes a mythic landscape infused with ethical and spiritual resonance—vast, frozen, and pure. Drawing on Ordway’s time living along the Maine coast, it reflects on the aesthetic power of northern wilderness, even as such landscapes are increasingly threatened by a changing climate. Structured in four movements and shaped by both fieldwork and memory, North Woods is a quiet act of ecological witness—meditative, reverent, and resonant. A commercial recording by Lorelei Ensemble will be released in 2025.

“Exquisite.” —New York Times
“An American response to Sibelius.” —Boston Globe
“Haunting and really lovely.” —Boston Musical Intelligencer
“Wild and distant, austere and stalwart.” —Boston Classical Review