Don’t miss the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in an all-American extravaganza from their illustrious home venue in Amsterdam! Susanna Mälkki leads a program entitled “Made in America,” exploring American identity across three rare, well-chosen works. Opening the evening is A Short Piece for Orchestra by 20th-century African-American composer Julia Perry, a neoclassical work of complex and frenetic rhythms tempered by profound lyricism. Next up is the formidable Violin Concerto by John Adams, a revolutionary piece for the instrument whose exceptional melodic richness complements a marvelously original rhythmic frame. Ferociously difficult and rarely played, it is interpreted with brio and assurance by virtuoso violinist Leila Josefowicz. Finally, the concert closes with Charles Ives’s Symphony No. 2, an evocative blend of European influences and New England folklore. PROGRAM Perry: A Short Piece for Orchestra; Adams: Violin Concerto; Ives: Symphony No. 2
San Francisco Symphony – Season Opening Gala 2021
Feel the energy as the great San Francisco Symphony welcomes its new music director Esa-Pekka Salonen with its 110th season Reopening Night, filled with jazz and dance from special guests. To kick of the evening, Slonimsky’s Earbox is a virtuosic piece composed in 1995 by Bay Area composer John Adams, full of cascading phrases of minimalist patterns being played with remarkable precision and energy by the orchestra. Alonzo King’s choreography for the four movements of Alberto Ginastera’s Ballet Suite Estancia is a joyride. The dancers of the Alonzo King LINES Ballet excel themselves at athletic jumps and limber, airy movements within the explosive last dance of the suite, the ‘Malambo’. Gaia, a 27-minute opus by the jazz legend Wayne Shorter forms the centerpiece of the evening and features the extraordinary bassist and vocalist Esperanza Spalding. The evening evolves into a true night of enchantment with ‘Noche de incantamiento’ by Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas who wrote a percussion extravaganza with his music to the film La noche de los Mayas in 1939.
LSO: Jonathan Stockhammer conducts Adams, Debussy & Ravel
Sunrises, seascapes and blue Californian skies: it’s all about colour as the LSO presents 20th-century favourites by Ravel, Debussy and John Adams. Dawn breaks in paradise, and in Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé you can hear every flurry of birdsong and glint of dew. Debussy gazes at the English Channel, and hears new worlds of sonic colour. And in 1980s San Francisco, John Adams imagines a supertanker rising from the sea and rocketing into the shining Pacific sky. PROGRAM Adams: Harmonielehre; Debussy: La mer; Ravel: Daphnis and Chloé – Suite No 2