July 21: Andris Nelsons conducts Carlos Simon, Barber, Ellington and Gershwin featuring Nicole Cabell, soprano and Aaron Diehl, piano

Andris Nelsons, conductor
Nicole Cabell, soprano
Aaron Diehl, piano

Carlos SIMON Motherboxx Connection
BARBER Knoxville: Summer of 1915, for soprano and orchestra
ELLINGTON New World A-Coming, for piano and orchestra
GERSHWIN An American in Paris

Available on demand July 21-September 30

BSO Music Director Andris Nelsons is joined by the dynamic soprano Nicole Cabell for this all-American program. The BSO premiered Samuel Barber’s gorgeously nostalgic Knoxville: Summer of 1915, based on a text by James Agee, in 1948. Complimenting Barber’s small-city observations is George Gershwin’s exuberant, jazzy, and occasionally homesick tone poem An American in Paris. The multifaceted American pianist Aaron Diehl joins the orchestra for Duke Ellington’s New World A-Coming, transcribed from Ellington’s 1943 Carnegie Hall performance. Opening the program is Washington, D.C.-based composer Carlos Simon’s Motherboxx Connection, a 2021 piece inspired by the Afrofuturist-leaning artist collective Black Kirby.