Enchanting a Mythical Forest

Stacy Garrop is a contemporary American composer whose music often tells stories drawn from myth, history, and lived experience. Based in Chicago, she has built a reputation for writing works that are both dramatically expressive and immediately accessible to audiences. Her career began in academia, with degrees from the University of Michigan, the University of Chicago, and Indiana University, followed by a long tenure teaching composition before she turned her full attention to freelancing. Today, her pieces are performed widely across the country by leading orchestras, ensembles, and soloists, establishing her as one of the prominent voices in American concert music.

The Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra commissioned Garrop to write the Song of Orpheus to open its 2023–24 season in its longtime home, the Beaux-Arts Orpheum Theater. Garrop chose to center the work on Orpheus himself, the legendary musician of Greek mythology whose playing could move nature, charm animals, and even persuade stones to dance. By invoking this figure, the piece became a tribute not only to the myth but also to the orchestra and its venue, connecting the ensemble’s present-day artistry to the enduring power of music across centuries. Garrop also included spotlight moments for piccolo, bass clarinet, viola, cello, and harp, the five instruments whose players were founding members of the orchestra and remain active at the premiere.

Cast in a single movement of about seven-and-a-half minutes, Song of Orpheus follows the arc of a mythic dawn performance. The opening evokes the quiet strum of Orpheus’ lyre, with delicate figures in the strings and winds suggesting the world just beginning to stir. Gradually, the music expands as creatures awaken and join the dance. Sprightly rhythms in the woodwinds, broad gestures in the strings, and a heavy-footed march in the lower instruments paint the image of animals and even rocks responding to song. The piece builds toward a jubilant climax in which the whole orchestra seems swept up in Orpheus’ music. The ending does not thunder away but instead recedes, the last echoes of a melody carried far into the distance.