About this Piece

Ladders was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic for a concert celebrating The Great Wall of Los Angeles—Judy Baca’s monumental mural that traces the layered, complicated history of the city. Six composers were invited to give musical voice to sections of the mural, with the resulting works accompanied by an original film by director Alejandro G. Iñárritu. The portion that I responded to depicts an early chapter of LGBTQ+ history, with scenes of police forcing queer people back into the closet, a meeting of the Daughters of Bilitis, and a gathering of masked members of the Mattachine Society, watched from the edges by silhouetted officers.

Founded in Los Angeles in 1950, the Mattachine Society was one of the first sustained LGBTQ+ organizations in the United States. Its members—often forced to conceal their identities—advocated for dignity, legal reform, and community at a time when queer life was pushed underground. The masks shown in the mural echo the secrecy that shaped their earliest meetings and the quiet courage required simply to gather.

The title Ladders is drawn from The Ladder, the groundbreaking publication of the Daughters of Bilitis that appears in this segment of the mural. The magazine served as one of the first rungs toward visibility for queer women, carrying the voices of a community determined to define itself despite immense pressure to remain unseen. I was drawn to the metaphor embedded in that name: ladders as steps upward, toward openness; as structures built by many hands; and as an emblem of the slow, collective ascent toward hard-fought joy.

The mural’s imagery is heavy with surveillance, fear, and resistance, reflecting the reality for so many queer people throughout history. As a gay man with my own scars, I understand why so much LGBTQ art centers tragedy. Yet even within such circumstances, there has long been a capacity for collective joy—a resilience that not only kept hope for a better future alive but also played a vital role in the community’s survival. For this piece, I felt drawn to that enduring brightness and love—light that exists not apart from the darkness, but often in defiance of it. Ladders is therefore a celebration informed by the mural’s darkness, and this music honors those whose perseverance built the rungs that allow queer people like me to live more openly today.

The music climbs, spins, sidesteps, and often breaks into dance. Dance, in queer culture, has long been both celebration and escape. Here, echoing sonorities ripple outward like the reverberations of past trailblazers, and the score itself is built from canons and imitative counterpoint—musical lineages in which each new voice enters bearing the shape of the last, reshaping it, lifting it, and passing it on. The piece dances through the highs and lows, through the rising and falling of chords, and through reverberant textures that stack and build, ultimately arriving breathless at a new day.

—Viet Cuong