The hero’s journey, with the question it usually skips
Who gets to undertake this journey, and what counts as success?
The concerto is made for the hero’s journey. The soloist is the hero, with a struggle and, eventually, a triumph. The orchestra stands in for society, nature, or any obstacle on the way. What the story rarely asks is who gets to be the hero, and whether one person remaking the world in their own image is worth celebrating at all.
A Thousand Faces takes up an ancient story in a contemporary setting. Like Orpheus, Dante, or Inanna, the cellist descends further into a mythological underworld with each movement, searching for truth. This underworld looks a lot like ours: hyperconnected but disjointed, full of opinionated and easily influenced voices, open to charismatic leaders and seductive lies.
Her way through is to reject traditional ideas of success, walking away from power and influence just as they come within reach. That refusal opens a real hero’s journey toward a new reality rooted in self-knowledge, generosity of spirit, and collective action.
Each movement takes the cellist deeper into a distorted echo chamber of voices, influence, and persuasion.
When power and influence are closest, she walks away from them. That is the turn the whole piece is built around.
Self-knowledge, generosity of spirit, and collective action: a different answer to what a hero is for.
Built to stand beside the great hero stories
Set next to works from the past, the new concerto lets an audience hear the arc of the journey stay the same while the hero, and the journey itself, change with the times.
The concerto is scored for amplified cello and orchestra and is designed to work with reduced or chamber-sized forces. Scoring and amplification details are available on request.
A composer of wonder and dread, a cellist who commissions the new
Ellis Ludwig-Leone, composer
Ludwig-Leone writes music that joins warm, naturalistic textures with moments of thorny complexity, and pays special attention to the place where wonder and dread meet. The New Yorker praised his “knack for simultaneously expressing beauty and crisis.”
He first reached international audiences as the creative force behind San Fermin, and has since written widely for concert hall and stage. His music has been performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra, the BBC Concert Orchestra, and New York City Ballet. North Woods, a 20-minute orchestral work, was commissioned for the Bangor Symphony Orchestra. His dance-driven opera The Night Falls was named one of The New York Times’ Best Dance Performances of 2023.
He received the Ellis-Beauregard Composer Award in 2024 and co-founded Better Company Records in Brooklyn.
Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir, cello
Born in Reykjavík, Sæunn is a fearless explorer of sound who weaves together tradition and innovation. The Los Angeles Times noted her “emotional intensity.” She has appeared as soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and Iceland Symphony, and at venues including Carnegie Hall, the Barbican Centre, and Disney Hall.
A passionate advocate for new music, she has premiered concertos by Veronique Vaka and Halldór Smárason, whose Nú gives the soloist an entirely improvised part. Quake, the concerto Páll Ragnar Pálsson wrote for her, was nominated for a 2021 Grammy. Her recording of the Bach solo suites, Marrow, has drawn international praise.
An Ensemble Connect alum, she brings classical music into communities and schools, and is Artistic Director NYC of the Tertulia concert series.
Commission it together
Five to seven chamber orchestras and festivals each take a share of the commission. Every partner gets a place in the work’s first chapter and a distinctive new concerto for its own audience, at a fraction of the cost of commissioning alone.
Participation levels, fees, and the full timeline are in the consortium prospectus, which we share on request.
Join us for the first chapter
Tell us a little about your orchestra or festival and we’ll send the prospectus, with participation levels and the timeline toward a June 2027 premiere.
