Festival Orchestra

This concert highlights the music of three American composers. First up is Florence Price’s Ethiopia’s Shadow in America, which charts the arrival of Africans in America. Then, superstar soprano Julia Bullock sings a Sun Valley Music Festival commission, the world premiere of Jessie Montgomery’s Five Freedom Songs based on traditional African American spirituals. And finally, Ms. Bullock will narrate Aaron Copland’s iconic Lincoln Portrait, featuring excerpts from President Lincoln’s speeches, in particular, the Gettysburg Address.

Welcome to the sunny side of Mahler. This symphony, his shortest, brightest, and most performed, leaves behind the brooding, tumultuous, and vast soundscapes of the others for blue skies and childlike innocence. The first symphony to end with a solo vocalist accompanied by orchestra, it builds to the final movement, which depicts “The Heavenly Life.” Soprano Julia Bullock joins the orchestra to sing these verses describing an innocent and serene view of heaven.

Cellist Alisa Weilerstein “is a throwback to an earlier age of classical performers . . . she inhabits a piece fully and turns it to her own ends” (New York Times). For this performance she’ll tackle Schumann’s cello concerto, a piece in which “the romantic quality, the vivacity, the freshness and humor…are indeed wholly ravishing.” This review came from Clara Schumann, who would have known. The program opens with Jennifer Higdon’s beautiful blue cathedral, a piece she wrote in memory of her younger brother, incorporating references to their life together.

The Villalobos Brothers join the Festival Orchestra for an evening of Latin-inspired music. Acclaimed as one of today’s leading Contemporary Mexican ensembles, the trio of violinists, singer-songwriters, and composers have performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and at the 60th Anniversary of the United Nations. Their original compositions fuse and celebrate the richness of Mexican folk music with the intricate harmonies of jazz and classical music. Following the concert with the Festival Orchestra, they’ll move to the lawn, lay down some backtracks, and lead a dance party to Afro-Colombian beats.