Sarah Dutcher — Letters to the Afternoon

Letters to the Afternoon is an eight-song suite comprising the inaugural release from pianist and composer Sarah Dutcher. Composed over the past year and recorded while 40 weeks pregnant with her first child, Letters to the Afternoon expresses familiar feelings of comfort and stability, as well as the inevitable uncertainty that stems from contemplating the future.

Letters is anchored by transient moments relating to earthly themes of time change, seasons, and weather. Dutcher composes based on memories that are small in scale but large in emotional breadth — “Our Little Town” references her childhood growing up in a small town in Georgia, while “Cambrian Morning” draws its inspiration from a train ride along the Cambrian coast of Wales during her college years. 

Dutcher’s compositional style reflects traditional jazz standards and the work of classical French composers Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, and Gabriel Fauré. Taking inspiration from Debussy’s quietly descriptive song titles and penchant for experimental piano techniques, Dutcher composed these pieces with the intention that they be performed by other pianists and accessible to intermediate players. Dutcher also draws upon the harmonic language and memorable melodies of established jazz repertoire, resulting in a harmony of stimulating piano textures and bright rhythms with a keen ear towards tunefulness. In utilizing a three-part ABA song structure, Dutcher announces a theme, makes a departure, and finishes with a slightly varied return — marking both a reflection on her past and a gaze towards her future. 

Sarah Dutcher is a solo and collaborative pianist, instructor, and composer formerly based in New York City and currently residing in Gainesville, GA. She specializes in new works and has performed premieres of new music by current composers at Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Museum, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and internationally in Italy and Portugal. Her vocal piece “Sleep” was commissioned and performed by members of the Grammy-winning ensemble Roomful of Teeth and was nominated for Best Composition of the Year by the the Austin Critics’ Table. She holds a Masters in Performance from Hunter College CUNY, where she studied with Dr. Geoffrey Burleson, and received her B.M. in Piano Performance and B.A. in English from The University of Georgia in Athens, where she studied piano with Dr. Martha Thomas and pedagogy with Dr. Pete Jutras. Other projects include the vocal duo Due Signore with soprano Stephanie Granade and synth duo Beyond Thyme with William Kennedy. She has been teaching private lessons for students of all ages for over a decade.

Marking the dawn of a new decade and the two-month birthday of her son, Letters to the Afternoon releases on January 1, 2021 in multi-format digital download. Two years and five months later, Letters to the Afternoon receives its long-awaited release on cassette tape on May 5, 2023. The tape features two new compositions on the b-side — entitled Hidden Skies — and is accompanied by a wooden botanical stamp.

Go ahead, send us a letter. We’ll write back.