In the year 2021, I began studying Lili Boulanger’s Trois Morceaux for Piano just as I approached my 24th birthday. In the preceding 15 months, I, along with the rest of the world, had been forced to grapple with my own mortality. As the COVID-19 pandemic spread around the world, people of all ages, many even younger than myself, did not survive. This confrontation with mortality is one with which Lili Boulanger was all too familiar; after a lifetime of chronic illness, she died at only 24 years old. This realization of coincidence – that I had happened upon her music at just the age of her death – inspired me to think more deeply about my own life and musical journey. At 24 years old, I had spent my life waiting to be “good enough” to be an “artist,” unsure if my musical ideas would be positively received or if I was even worthy of the title “professional;” but what if 24 years was all the time I had? This question was the motivation for my Lili Boulanger project.

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Despite heartfelt efforts from her sister Nadia, Lili Boulanger’s legacy as a groundbreaking composer is largely relegated to a footnote in the music history books. Perhaps had she lived long enough to have a full career, her accomplishment as the first woman to win the Prix de Rome would not be so easily forgotten. With a renewed emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion in the arts, we have begun to see more marginalized composers programmed regularly by symphony orchestras and soloists. Even so, recordings of these works are few and far between. This project serves as the first complete recording of Lili Boulanger’s instrumental catalogue (excluding works which feature vocalists or full orchestras). With this album as the first of my professional career, I am saying proudly that YES, I am an artist; I will not wait for someone else to tell me I am “good enough,” because Lili Boulanger certainly didn’t.