In Laurie Anderson’s song, Remember, I Created You, we hear Anderson’s voice reading a poem addressed to one’s father, interspersed with instructions for the pianist Adam Tendler. Tendler explains: “Laurie read dozens of pages of testimony I wrote about my father's and my complex relationship, and collected photographs of him and us as well. She then shaped the piece by feeding these materials into an A-I program she developed with the Machine Learning Institute, Adelaide Australia.”
The song is included in Inheritances, an album of music performed by acclaimed pianist Adam Tendler, that addresses the death of his father who had left him a large sum of money with which he produced the album. He commissioned a broad spectrum of today’s most sought after composers—also his friends—to compose piano works exploring the theme of ‘inheritance’ itself. He told The New York Times, “The goal for Inheritances, from the start, had been to provide a vessel through which I could connect to my elusive father, process my grief and reconcile with my past. But I also hoped that writing these pieces would provide a similar vessel for the composers, and ultimately that this shared experience would extend to our listeners.”
Inheritances was produced by Grammy-winning engineer Judith Sherman, this much-anticipated album features new works by an all-star lineup including Laurie Anderson Devonté Hynes, Nico Muhly, inti figgis-vizueta, Pamela Z, Ted Hearne, Angélica Negrón, Christopher Cerrone, Marcos Balter, Missy Mazzoli, Darian Donovan Thomas, Sarah Kirkland Snider, Scott Wollschleger, Mary Prescott, Timo Andres, and John Glover.