From Hope to Jubilation​​​​​

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   In September 2022, I received the dreaded phone call that my father had suffered an internal hemorrhage and only had days to live. My husband and I immediately traveled to Canada to be by my father's side. A few days later, he passed away. My mother, already fighting cancer and kidney failure, died two weeks later, unable to survive the shock of losing the love of her life, her husband of 51 years.

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   Before she departed, I played for my mom a piece for solo piano I had composed weeks earlier, and I asked her to name it. She named it Hope.

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   My parents were my parental soulmates, and my heart broke into a million pieces when they died. And yet, in the midst of my deepest hearbreak and most profound sorrow, I experienced my greatest joy. After trying to have a baby for almost three years, and after suffering a traumatic miscarriage in 2021, a few months after both my parents passed away, my husband and I conceived our daughter. Nine months later, I gave birth to a healthy baby girl!

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   In 2024, I co-orchestrated Hope with Rafael Rodriguez, turning it into what I had always imagined it to be: a powerful pianistic and orchestral expression of a triumphant hope. I then performed and recorded Hope Orchestrated with Raniero Palm and his orchestra, with a team of more than 50 musicians, engineers, producers, advisors, mentors, and media professionals coming together from across South and North America and overseas to make my orchestral dream come true. 
 

    Hope Orchestrated is a musical expression of the season of exultation that emerges from unbearable loss and tragedy — where pain gives way to solace, where grief leads to a new unexpected hope, and where hope becomes new life and jubilation. - Mary Dawood Catlin