Variations on America

Overview

Surveying disparate realizations of the American dream, Variations on America opens our season with thought-provoking works spanning more than a century. Charles Ives’ witty and irreverent title work opens the program, taking the audience through many musical twists and turns on the familiar tune “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee,” including a sinuous barbershop setting, a jaunty European cavalry march, and a Spanish-inspired dance.

Works by African American composers take center stage, beginning with Carlos Simon’s Sweet Chariot, a sensuous melding of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” with Gregorian plainchant that muses on the spiritual’s deeper meaning about death and the afterlife.

Requiem for the Unarmed, Kevin Day’s memorial to the countless Black lives lost due to racial injustice, characterizes the composer’s response to the death of George Floyd through chilling, obfuscated harmonies and subtle nods to “Dido’s Lament” and Mozart’s Requiem.

Premiered in the segregated South of 1950, Ulysses Kay’s Solemn Prelude is a lamenting, contrapuntal work, written using simple musical materials to observe the characteristic qualities of the full concert band. The music of Kay’s teacher, Paul Hindemith’s monumental Symphony in B-flat, closes the program with its bombastic Fugue, the chittering woodwinds abruptly silenced by the brass and percussion with a powerful final cadence.

Program

Artists