Tina Davidson's Memoir LET YOUR HEART BE BROKEN To be Released as an Audiobook

Composer and author Tina Davidson’s memoir, Let Your Heart Be Broken, will be available in audiobook format on all major platforms starting August 12, 2025 via publisher Boyle & Dalton. The audiobook, read by Davidson herself, features her music woven throughout, interspersed in sections where she discusses the compositions’ creation. This rare look inside a composer’s creative process juxtaposes recordings of Davidson’s music, memories, journal entries, and insights into the life of an artist and mother at work. Let Your Heart Be Broken was published in hardback and paperback in 2023.

Davidson, a highly regarded American composer, creates music that stands out for its emotional depth and lyrical dignity. Lauded for her authentic voice, The New York Times has praised her “vivid ear for harmony and colors.”

Her extraordinary life story begins with her adoption at age three-and-a-half from Sweden by a visiting American professor. As the oldest of five children, she lived in Turkey, Germany, and Israel before becoming a prolific pianist and composer.

But something about her birth remained hidden—until she returned to Sweden years later and contacted the adoption agency. "Come," said the voice on the phone, "I have information for you." Along her life journey, Davidson meets Ernest Hemingway and Carl Sandburg, survives an attack by nomads in Turkey, and learns her birth father is a world-famous scientist.

“To create this memoir, I relied heavily on my memory, family stories of my childhood, and pulled from my journals, editing for clarity,” Davidson writes. “These I piece together side by side like patchwork – my growing up next to my artistic process, my evolving understanding of my life and origins next to the music I create. Writing, however, is more vulnerable, truer to life's storytelling. Composing is in a world of its own – both emotion and energy; I camouflage myself, wrap myself in a language that has no direct translation. Writing reveals me naked.”

Throughout, there is the thread of music, an ebb and a crescendo of a journey out of the past and into the present, through darkness and into the light. Compositions highlighted in Davidson’s remarkable memoir include her pieces It Is My Heart Singing for string quartet and piano (1996); Fire on the Mountain for vibraphone, marimba, and piano (1993); I Hear the Mermaids Singing for violin, cello, and piano (1990); Bleached Thread, Sister Thread for string quartet (1991); Cassandra Sings, written for the Kronos Quartet in 1989; and more. These works and others are embedded in the new audiobook.

About Tina Davidson

Over her forty-five year career, Davidson has been commissioned by well-known ensembles such as National Symphony Orchestra, OperaDelaware, Roanoke Symphony, VocalEssence, Kronos Quartet, Cassatt Quartet, and public television (WHYY-TV). Her music has been widely performed by many orchestras and ensembles, including The Philadelphia Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Relâche Ensemble, and Orchestra 2001.

Davidson was commissioned by Grammy Award-winning violinist Hilary Hahn as part of her In 27 Pieces project. The work, Blue Curve of the Earth, was released on Deutsche Grammophon in 2013, and again in 2018 on Hahn’s new album, Retrospective.

Long-term residencies play a major role in Davidson’s career. As composer-in-residence with the Fleisher Art Memorial (1998-2001), she was commissioned to write for the Cassatt Quartet, Voces Novae et Antiquae, and members of the Philadelphia Orchestra. She also created the city-wide Young Composers program to teach inner city children how to write music through instrument building, improvisation, and graphic notation. She was composer-in-residence as part of the innovative Meet The Composer “New Residencies” with OperaDelaware, the Newark Symphony and the YWCA in Delaware (1994-97). During this residency, she wrote the critically acclaimed full-length opera, Billy and Zelda, as well as created community partner programs for homeless women, and with students at a local elementary school.

The recipient of numerous prestigious grants and fellowships, Davidson was the first classical composer to receive a $50,000 Pew Fellowship. She has been awarded four Artist’s Fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, CAP grants from the American Music Center and numerous Meet the Composer grants. Her work, Transparent Victims, was selected by the American Public Radio as part of the International Rostrum of Composers, held at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris.

Tina Davidson’s music can be heard on Deutsche Grammophon, Albany Records, CRI, Mikrokosmik, Callisto, and Opus One recording labels. Her second solo album, It is My Heart Singing, was released on Albany Records and features three works for strings performed by the Cassatt Quartet. I Hear the Mermaids Singing was released on CRI’s Emergency Music label and includes six of her chamber works.

Tina Davidson was born in Stockholm, Sweden and grew up in Oneonta, NY and Pittsburgh, PA. She received her BA in piano and composition from Bennington College in 1976 where she studied with Henry Brant, Louis Calabro, Vivian Fine and Lionel Nowak. She founded the Philadelphia Chapter of the American Composers Forum and served as its director from 1999-2001. She was president of the New Music Alliance, a national organization, which has been responsible for the New Music America Festivals. She organized a nation-wide festival entitled “New Music Across America,” which ran in 18 cities in the U.S., Canada, and Europe. In 1992 she wrote a widely-circulated article on women in music for Ms Magazine. She lives in central Pennsylvania.