Festival: Voices of Loss, Reckoning, and Hope

Lucia Lin and Bracha Malkin, violins
Rebecca Gitter, viola
Owen Young, cello
Charles Overton, harp
April Sun, piano
Michael-Thomas FOUMAI Printing Kapa and Defending Kalo, for harp and violin
BEETHOVEN String Quartet No. 10 in E-flat, Op. 74
STILL Ennanga, for harp, piano and string quartet

Dr. Kabria Baumgartner (Tufts University), panelist
Dr. Kerri Greenidge (Northeastern University), panelist
Dr. Kendra Taira Field (Tufts University), panelist

Since the late 19th century, Boston has been home to many African American composers, musicians, and performers from the likes of Flora Batson, Robert Nathaniel Dett, Matilda Sissieretta Joyner Jones, and Roland Hayes. Long before Boston’s Symphony Hall opened in 1900, these performers found support within Black communities across the diaspora, and cultivated a Black artistic tradition embedded in the legacy of African descended musicians in Boston’s contemporary classical music scene. Join scholars Dr. Kerri Greenidge, Dr. Kendra Field, and Dr. Kabria Baumgartner in lecture and discussion about Boston’s classical music history and the African descended musicians, performers, and composers who have shaped it.

American conductor André Raphel leads this first program in a series exploring complex social issues. The centerpiece of these concerts is Philadelphia jazz pianist and composer Uri Caine’s gospel and popular music-based The Passion of Octavius Catto, which tells of the 19th-century civil rights leader’s fight for justice. In four movements, “Longing,” “Sorrow,” “Humor,” and “Aspiration,” William Grant Still’s 1930 Afro-American Symphony, his best-known work, is a blues-tinged panorama of the composer’s heritage.

After the performance, Uri Caine and André Raphel will take questions from the audience. See what else makes this Casual Friday concert special >

Festival: Voices of Loss, Reckoning, and Hope is supported by the generosity of the Elinor V. Crawford Living Trust, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Richard Saltonstall Charitable Foundation.

Support for these performances of “The Passion of Octavius Catto” has been generously provided by Vita L. Weir and Edward Brice, Jr., and Pamela Everhart and Karl Coiscou.

Andre Raphel, conductor
Uri Caine Trio
Uri Caine, piano
Mike Boone, bass
Clarence Penn, drums
Barbara Walker, vocalist
Catto Chorus

STILL Symphony No. 1, Afro-American

Uri CAINE The Passion of Octavius Catto

Castle of Our Skins
Matthew Vera, violin
Annie Rabbat, violin
Ashleigh Gordon, viola
Lev Mamuya, cello
Special Guest Student Performers from Project STEP

WHITE (arr. Rita POFIRIS) Spiritual from From the Cotton Fields, Opus 18
PRICE Negro Folksongs in Counterpoint for string quartet
TILLIS Spiritual Fantasy No. 12 for string quartet (25 mins)
Anthony R. GREEN Catto’s Courage
(featuring special guest student performers from Project STEP)

A Spiritual Fantasy highlights African American composers who had a woven connection with Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and William Grant Still: Clarence Cameron White was born five years after Coleridge-Taylor and later studied with him; Florence Price was born six years before Grant Still and grew up as neighbors in Arkansas; Frederick Tillis was born the same year audiences first heard Grant Still's Afro-American Symphony. All were greatly influenced by the Negro Spiritual, a truly unique expression of African American strength, resilience, and community. A Spiritual Fantasy explores these themes in music, knowing the same sense of strength, resilience, and community were pivotal forces that inspired civil rights activist Octavius Catto, whose story is told in the BSO's later performance of The Passion of Octavius Catto.

Co-Presented with Boston Conservatory at Berklee

American conductor André Raphel leads this first program in a series exploring complex social issues. The centerpiece of these concerts is Philadelphia jazz pianist and composer Uri Caine’s gospel and popular music-based The Passion of Octavius Catto, which tells of the 19th-century civil rights leader’s fight for justice. English composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s charming potpourri Petite Suite de Concert dates from about 1911. In four movements, “Longing,” “Sorrow,” “Humor,” and “Aspiration,” William Grant Still’s 1930 Afro-American Symphony, his best-known work, is a blues-tinged panorama of the composer’s heritage.

Festival: Voices of Loss, Reckoning, and Hope is supported by the generosity of the Elinor V. Crawford Living Trust, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Richard Saltonstall Charitable Foundation.

Support for these performances of “The Passion of Octavius Catto” has been generously provided by Vita L. Weir and Edward Brice, Jr., and Pamela Everhart and Karl Coiscou.

André Raphel, conductor
Uri Caine Trio
Uri Caine, piano
Mike Boone, bass
Clarence Penn, drums
Barbara Walker, vocalist
Catto Chorus

COLERIDGE-TAYLOR Petite Suite de Concert
STILL Symphony No. 1, Afro-American
---- Intermission----

Uri CAINE The Passion of Octavius Catto

The BSO’s principal players and special guests present a program of chamber works exploring themes of cultural and musical identity. The concert will include spoken introductions by composers, as well as a post-performance discussion.

Festival: Voices of Loss, Reckoning, and Hope is supported by the generosity of the Elinor V. Crawford Living Trust, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Richard Saltonstall Charitable Foundation.

with BSO members Associate Principal Flute Elizabeth Klein, violinist Lucia Lin, and cellist Alexandre Lecarme
and Jorge Soto, conductor
Charles Overton, harp
Joy Cline Phinney, piano

KAY Sonata for bassoon and piano
Michael-Thomas FOUMAI Printing Kapa and Defending Kalo, for harp and violi
James Lee III Chôro sem tristeza for flute solo
Jessie MONTGOMERY Sgt. McCauley for winds and strings

This is a free, ticketed event.

For this season’s final "What I Hear" event, American composer Anthony Davis curates a program of chamber music in connection with the BSO's performance of his You Have the Right to Remain Silent later that evening. New England Conservatory musicians perform a program including his works Middle Passage, Still Waters III, and the aria “They Wanted a Girl” from his opera Amistad, along with Alvin Singleton’s Be Natural, for strings. BSO Artistic Administrator Eric Valliere moderates a conversation with the composer.

David Sterling Brown, panelist
Anthony Davis, panelist
Terrell Donnell Sledge, panelist
Keith Hamilton Cobb, panelist
David C. Howse, panelist
Robert Manning, Jr., panelist

A Private Conversation in Public

The Right to "Remain" Silent vs the Right to Fully Express

Six Black men, all creative professionals, discuss amongst themselves a question: What expression, however pressing, however relevant, do we make public, and what are we liable to encounter as a consequence? Relating to the BSO’s performances of Anthony Davis’s You Have the Right to Remain Silent, panelists include the Pulitzer Prize Winner Composer Anthony Davis, Shakespeare and critical race studies scholar David Sterling Brown, Ph.D.; actor and community arts advocate Terrell Donnell Sledge; Emmy nominated actor Keith Hamilton Cobb; a recognized leader in the Boston arts and theatre scene, David C. Howse; and NAACP Theatre Award winner Robert Manning, Jr. We invite the BSO audience to be present and to listen to them as they discuss the nuance between public expression and consequences as it pertains to racial injustice: The Right to "Remain" Silent vs. The Right to Fully Express.

In the second program of a series of concerts exploring complex social issues, conductor Thomas Wilkins leads clarinetist Anthony McGill in Anthony Davis’ concerto You Have the Right to Remain Silent, a musical response to a tense encounter with law enforcement in a case of mistaken identity. Margaret Bonds’ spiritual-based Montgomery Variations is a 1963 tribute to Montgomery, Alabama, and to Martin Luther King. William Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony was a huge success upon its premiere at New York’s Carnegie Hall in 1934 with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Leopold Stokowski. The symphony’s themes are taken from the melodies of spirituals.

Festival: Voices of Loss, Reckoning, and Hope is supported by the generosity of the Elinor V. Crawford Living Trust, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Richard Saltonstall Charitable Foundation.

Thomas Wilkins, conductor
Anthony McGill, clarinet

BONDS Selection from Montgomery Variations (I. Decision; II. Prayer Meeting; III. March)
Anthony DAVIS You Have the Right to Remain Silent, for clarinet and orchestra
Intermission
DAWSON Negro Folk Symphony

Arielle Gray (WBUR), moderator
Julia Wolfe, composer
Dr. Jane Kamensky (Harvard University), panelist
Dr. Robyn C. Spencer-Antoine (Lehman College), panelist

Julia Wolfe’s Her Story captures the ongoing struggle for women’s voices in America. Lorelei joins forces with the Boston Symphony to tell this important history. Moderated by WBUR’s Arielle Gray, Wolfe and a panel of scholars discuss the history and process of building this spectacular work. From a letter of Abigail Adams to the words of Sojourner Truth, Her Story is a personal and emotional response to the ongoing quest for equal rights.

In this third concert in a series exploring complex social issues, frequent guest Giancarlo Guerrero leads American composer Julia Wolfe’s BSO co-commissioned Her Story, featuring the Lorelei Ensemble women’s vocal group. Originally commissioned to commemorate the centenary of women’s right to vote in the U.S., the piece broadly speaks of the continuing struggle for women’s rights. The three movements of Polish composer Henryk Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs movingly contemplates the anguish of the separation of a mother from her child.

Festival: Voices of Loss, Reckoning, and Hope is supported by the generosity of the Elinor V. Crawford Living Trust, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Richard Saltonstall Charitable Foundation.

GÓRECKI performed with English supertitles

Giancarlo Guerrero, conductor
Aleksandra Kurzak, soprano
Lorelei Ensemble
Beth Willer, conductor
Eliza Bagg, soprano
Taylor Boykins, alto
Sarah Brailey, soprano
Meg Dudley, soprano
Christina English, alto
Stephanie Kacoyanis, alto
Michele Kennedy, soprano
Emily Marvosh, alto
Sophie Michaux, alto
Sonja DuToit Tengblad, soprano
Anne Kauffman, stage director
Jeff Sugg, scenic, lighting, and production designer
Márion Talán De La Rosa, costume designer
Andrew Cotton, sound designer

GÓRECKI Symphony No. 3, Symphony of Sorrowful Songs
Intermission
Julia WOLFE Her Story, for vocal ensemble and orchestra (Co-commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Andris Nelsons, Music Director; the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Nashville Symphony, the National Symphony, and the San Francisco Symphony. The Boston Symphony Orchestra commission is through the generous support of the New Works Fund established by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency, and the Morton Margolis Fund.)