Korsantia Plays the “Emperor”

This program features three composers who, each in their own way, call for unity and peace. American composer Valerie Coleman writes an anthem for kindness and humanity that fights injustice and racism. New Bedford’s favorite Alexander Korsantia performs the majestic Fifth Piano Concerto of Beethoven – perhaps the most famous humanist composer. The NBSO concludes the season with Shostakovich’s 10th Symphony, a piece full of pain, terror, and, finally – immense joy. Using his own initials translated into musical notes, Shostakovich signifies the triumph of the individual over a terrorizing and dehumanizing regime.

Exotic Tales

Inspired by the colorful symphonic masterpiece “Scheherazade” by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, the Cape Symphony will reimagine the beloved art of storytelling, our deepening interest in the rich culture of the Middle East, and the endless strength and intellect of the female spirit.

“Scheherazade" is a symphonic suite based on the tales from One Thousand and One Nights, also known as The Arabian Nights, a collection of stories that include the adventures of Aladdin and Sinbad the Sailor. This classic favorite is famous for big, bold sonic colors and sweeping melodies, and features the violin as the imaginative Scheherazade herself.

The Cape Symphony collaborates with the renowned public radio program The Moth for the very first time. We will partner to create a modern-day storytelling experience about hope, survival, and the power of imagination. Since its launch in 1997, The Moth, produced in Woods Hole and New York City, has presented thousands of stories told in front of live audiences around the country. Many of us are familiar with The Moth through the Peabody Award-winning The Moth Radio Hour, which airs on over 500 stations nationwide including our own CAI, and The Moth Podcast.

Our Moth storyteller will be award-winning writer Wang Ping. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, Ping was born in Shanghai, China. She will share how she survived the oppression of the Chinese cultural revolution and discovered beauty and hope through the stories and music of another world. Ping will be accompanied by the Cape Symphony performing an original score by Chinese-American composer Laura Fan.

The Cape Symphony has also commissioned the Iranian composer Niloufar Shiri to create a new and updated “Scheherazade” story with roots in authentic and traditional Persian music. Niloufar will perform on the Kamancheh, a traditional Iranian string instrument, and will be writing music that is inspired by ancient melodies that are thousands of years old.

Exotic Tales

Inspired by the colorful symphonic masterpiece “Scheherazade” by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, the Cape Symphony will reimagine the beloved art of storytelling, our deepening interest in the rich culture of the Middle East, and the endless strength and intellect of the female spirit.

“Scheherazade" is a symphonic suite based on the tales from One Thousand and One Nights, also known as The Arabian Nights, a collection of stories that include the adventures of Aladdin and Sinbad the Sailor. This classic favorite is famous for big, bold sonic colors and sweeping melodies, and features the violin as the imaginative Scheherazade herself.

The Cape Symphony collaborates with the renowned public radio program The Moth for the very first time. We will partner to create a modern-day storytelling experience about hope, survival, and the power of imagination. Since its launch in 1997, The Moth, produced in Woods Hole and New York City, has presented thousands of stories told in front of live audiences around the country. Many of us are familiar with The Moth through the Peabody Award-winning The Moth Radio Hour, which airs on over 500 stations nationwide including our own CAI, and The Moth Podcast.

Our Moth storyteller will be award-winning writer Wang Ping. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, Ping was born in Shanghai, China. She will share how she survived the oppression of the Chinese cultural revolution and discovered beauty and hope through the stories and music of another world. Ping will be accompanied by the Cape Symphony performing an original score by Chinese-American composer Laura Fan.

The Cape Symphony has also commissioned the Iranian composer Niloufar Shiri to create a new and updated “Scheherazade” story with roots in authentic and traditional Persian music. Niloufar will perform on the Kamancheh, a traditional Iranian string instrument, and will be writing music that is inspired by ancient melodies that are thousands of years old.

Mahler’s Farewell

In the first half of this unique concert, Yaniv and the NBSO will take apart Mahler’s last symphony and look at it through the musician’s lens, using live demonstrations and explanations from the stage. After intermission, they will perform the entire symphony, Mahler’s swan song, and perhaps his most personal work.

Gluzman Plays Beethoven

One of today’s leading violinists, Vadim Gluzman brings his artistry to perform Beethoven’s immortal violin concerto, a piece full of beauty and invention that is born out of four drum strikes. English music rounds out this program: Anna Clyne’s masterful treatment of the orchestra in Masquerade, and William Walton’s First Symphony – arguably the greatest symphony written in the 20th century, full of intoxicating rhythms and virtuosic orchestral playing.

Sacred Portraits

JENNIFER HIGDON | Blue Cathedral
CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS | Piano Concerto No. 5 "The Egyptian"
PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY | Symphony No. 6

Sacred Portraits

JENNIFER HIGDON | Blue Cathedral
CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS | Piano Concerto No. 5 "The Egyptian"
PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY | Symphony No. 6

Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, Leon Botstein and The Orchestra Now kick off the spring 2023 season with an ultra-Romantic concert featuring Berlioz’s epic tale of an artist’s passion for a beautiful woman, Symphonie fantastique, and Henselt’s remarkably beautiful Piano Concerto, which was debuted by Clara Schumann in 1844.

Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, Leon Botstein and The Orchestra Now kick off the spring 2023 season with an ultra-Romantic concert featuring Berlioz’s epic tale of an artist’s passion for a beautiful woman, Symphonie fantastique, and Henselt’s remarkably beautiful Piano Concerto, which was debuted by Clara Schumann in 1844.

Evelyn Glennie

World-renowned percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie returns to join your Albany Symphony for a thrilling concerto by Kamran Ince on a program also featuring a new work by American composer Harriet Steinke, and one of the greatest orchestral finales of all time in Jean Sibelius’ awe-inspiring Symphony No. 5.

Evelyn Glennie

World-renowned percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie returns to join your Albany Symphony for a thrilling concerto by Kamran Ince on a program also featuring a new work by American composer Harriet Steinke, and one of the greatest orchestral finales of all time in Jean Sibelius’ awe-inspiring Symphony No. 5.

New Year’s Day Party

Celebrate the launch of 2023 in style. Join us for a mix of beautiful music in the tradition of the annual Vienna New Year’s Day concert, including Strauss waltzes and polkas, Broadway classics (including "On the Street Where You Live" from My Fair Lady and "No One is Alone" from Into the Woods), light opera tunes you'll recognize, and contemporary hits from James Taylor and Sara Bareilles.

The Many Moods of Christmas

A favorite holiday tradition for families across the Capital Region, this concert is designed to inspire, celebrate, and unite us in the spirit of the season. This concert is framed by the mesmerizing O Magnum Mysterium by Morten Lauridsen and all-time favorite The Many Moods of Christmas by Robert Shaw and Robert Russell Bennett, and will also feature John Rutter’s spectacular Gloria. Join us for traditional carols with the Concert Chorus and Orchestra Pro Musica!

Holiday Pops

Yaniv Dinur, conductor and emcee

Appearances by the Southeastern Massachusetts Youth Orchestra and the Showstoppers

Share the joy of the season with friends and family at the best holiday concert in town! Our magnificent orchestra plays all your seasonal favorites, and the Showstoppers and Southeastern Massachusetts Youth Orchestra members join in for a performance that will make everyone merry!

Our family-friendly atmosphere, the festively decorated theater, and your choice of performance times make this the perfect holiday outing. The children’s matinee at 3:30 features a gift for each child, while the 7 PM concert features a bit more music. Both performances are approximately one hour long, with no intermission.

PLEASE BRING A NON-PERISHABLE ITEM FOR OUR FOOD DRIVE TO BENEFIT THE UNITED WAY OF GREATER NEW BEDFORD.

TICKETS: $10–$43 through the Zeiterion box office at 508-994-2900 or online by clicking below. Students 22 and under always $5 by visiting the box office at 684 Purchase Street, New Bedford.

Holiday Pops

Yaniv Dinur, conductor and emcee

Appearances by the Southeastern Massachusetts Youth Orchestra and the Showstoppers

Share the joy of the season with friends and family at the best holiday concert in town! Our magnificent orchestra plays all your seasonal favorites, and the Showstoppers and Southeastern Massachusetts Youth Orchestra members join in for a performance that will make everyone merry!

Our family-friendly atmosphere, the festively decorated theater, and your choice of performance times make this the perfect holiday outing. The children’s matinee at 3:30 features a gift for each child, while the 7 PM concert features a bit more music. Both performances are approximately one hour long, with no intermission.

PLEASE BRING A NON-PERISHABLE ITEM FOR OUR FOOD DRIVE TO BENEFIT THE UNITED WAY OF GREATER NEW BEDFORD.

TICKETS: $10–$43 through the Zeiterion box office at 508-994-2900 or online by clicking below. Students 22 and under always $5 by visiting the box office at 684 Purchase Street, New Bedford.

Live-streamed Concert with The Orchestra Now

RSVP here: https://www.theorchestranow.org/event/carmen-vivaldi/

TŌN resident conductor Zachary Schwartzman leads an arrangement of orchestral music from Bizet‘s classic opera Carmen by Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin, and a concerto for strings by Vivaldi. Also on the program are a work by Frank Martin and a memoriam for composer Benjamin Britten by Arvo Pärt.

Tune into this YouTube premiere live at 8pm EST, or watch it later, both at this link: https://youtu.be/hcIw6q8WXFE

Join us in anticipation of the winter solstice, which is tomorrow December 21st. This winter has come at the end of a really tough year, and 2021 will most likely be just as trying. But let's not forget the opportunity of the solstice: it is not just a seasonal timestamp marking the "beginning" of winter (winter has definitely already begun in any case...anyone else get 10-20 inches of snow last week??) It also marks the moment the days begin getting longer in the Northern Hemisphere and is a chance to take stock of where we are and to go forward with compassion for ourselves and others. Also, on this solstice Jupiter and Saturn will be closer in the night sky than they have been in several centuries, so get out and look at the stars!

We hope you enjoy this program and have a winter solstice celebration of your own. Some of these works carry messages of longing and fatigue, others of hope and celebration. Still even others are about absolutely nothing at all - nothing very serious, at least.

Program:

Emily Buehler, horn

Lucas Button, cello

Concert Étude for Horn by Esa-Pekka Salonen (b. 1958)

Lamentations Black/Folk Song Suite for Cello by Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson (1932-2004)

II. Song Form

III. Calvary Ostinato

Second Suite for Cello by Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)

V. Ciaccona

I Threw A Shoe At A Cat for Horn by Catherine Likhuta (b. 1981)

1. Theme

2. Waltz

3. Yazz

4. Finale

RSVP here to watch the livestream

Part of TŌN’s Fisher Center concert series

This concert pairs three works from the early 20th Century—including R. Strauss‘ elegiac Metamorphosen, written in the final months of WWII—with Handel‘s baroque Water Music Suite, composed for one of King George I’s royal water parties that took place on the River Thames on 7.17.1717.

Lucas is particularly excited to be playing Arnold Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony No. 1 on this program!

RSVP here to watch the live stream of this concert

Presented by The Orchestra Now, Bard Music Festival, and Bard College Conservatory of Music

The centerpiece of Program Four is the Violin Concerto in G by Joseph Bologne, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges.

Violin soloist Ashley Horne, a member of both the American Symphony Orchestra and the Harlem Chamber Players, can also be seen in Le Mozart noir, a PBS documentary about the composer’s life.

The son of a slave and a planter in French Guadeloupe, Chevalier de Saint-Georges was not only the first known classical composer of African ancestry, but also an accomplished violinist, champion fencer and colonel of the first all-Black military regiment in Europe.

Bookending his concerto are orchestral arrangements of Solitude and Sophisticated Lady, two mid-century masterpieces by the inimitable Duke Ellington, and the Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta by Béla Bartók, subject of the 1995 festival.

Presented by The Orchestra Now, Bard Music Festival, and Bard College Conservatory of Music

“Out of the Silence” opens with two works by the great William Grant Still. The first African-American to have a symphony performed by a major U.S. orchestra, and the subject of a 2009 retrospective curated and conducted by Botstein at Lincoln Center, Still is represented by his meditative miniature Out of the Silence, from Seven Traceries and the evocative tone poem Serenade.

Program One also features a piece by one of Nadia Boulanger’s many distinguished students: the elegiac Lyric for Strings by George Walker, the first African-American winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music and “one of the greatest composers of our time” (Fanfare magazine).

The concert concludes with TŌN’s account of the exuberant String Symphony No. 8 by Felix Mendelssohn, subject of the Bard Music Festival’s second season in 1991