Pray Away

Orchestra
​11'

Ryan Lindveit · Pray Away (2018) for orchestra

Performances
​Yale Philharmonia
Julian Pellicano, conductor
Woolsey Hall, New Haven, CT
December 6, 2018

Symphony in C
Stilian Kirov, conductor
Rutgers-Camden Center for the Arts, Camden, NJ
May 4, 2019

Sioux City Symphony Orchestra*
Ryan Haskins, conductor
Orpheum Theater, Sioux City, IA
March 14, 2020

*cancelled due to COVID-19 pandemic

Pray Away is about unpeeling layers of personal shame to find authenticity. I found the idea of self-invention as self-reinvention, articulated by Didier Eribon in his memoir Returning to Reims, particularly inspiring: “Our past is still there in the present. So we remake ourselves, we re-create ourselves (a task that is never finished, always needing to be taken up again), but we do not make ourselves, we do not create ourselves.”