Submitted by The Concord Orchestra
The Concord Orchestra presents “Love Lingers” at 8 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 1, and Saturday, Dec. 2 at the Performing Arts Center at 51 Walden St, in Concord.
The orchestra, conducted by its new Music Director Zeke Fetrow, performs a program of Jennifer Higdon’s Blue Cathedral, Jeff Beal’s The Paper Lined Shack, and Sergei Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet Suite No. 2. Soprano Ann Moss is soloist for The Paper Lined Shack. A pre-concert talk by the conductor is scheduled for Saturday at 7:15 p.m.
Among the talented Orchestra members are Sarah Kiel and Alexia Schulz who live in Bedford.
Jeff Beal’s The Paper Lined Shack is a five-song cycle based on a memoir written by his great-grandmother Della, about her and her husband’s experiences in the early 1900s on a farm in Idaho. The songs depict young Della playing with her siblings, the family planting a garden and raising their own food, dealing with poverty, staying warm in the winter, and Della managing to keep her family together after becoming a widow. Ann Moss describes the music as “beautiful, with lush vocal lines which soar and lift the heart and envelope the audience in the incredibly warm description of a family and their life and a mother’s love for her children.”
Blue Cathedral debuted in the year 2000, and in the years since then, it has been performed more frequently than any other new work. It is composer Jennifer Higdon’s heartfelt and uplifting meditation on life, as she reflected on the death of her younger brother.
According to Higdon’s program notes for the piece, she imagined a glass cathedral in the sky, where the cathedral represents “beginning, endings, contemplation, knowledge and growth.”
Sergei Prokofiev received a commission to write a ballet based on Romeo and Juliet from the Leningrad Opera and Ballet Company in 1934. After spending months working on the project, the company cancelled it when a new manager took over. In order to have the music heard, Prokofiev arranged the music into two orchestral suites and a piano transcription. Eventually, after revisions required by the Soviet authorities, the ballet was performed in the Soviet Union in 1940 by the Kirov Ballet.
This program has applied for support from the Acton-Boxborough, Bedford, Carlisle, Concord, and Lincoln Cultural Councils, local agencies that are supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency.
Tickets for adults and seniors are $25. Admission for youth under 18 is free. For tickets and information, phone 978-369-4967 or visit www.concordorchestra.com.
Loading ...
