Music to Remember

Artistic Director and Conductor Jose-Luis Novo has created an artistic program focused on themes of memory, community, hope, and unity that can only be described as an emotional experience. "We're boldly exploring the powerful aspect of the human connection to our native lands and communities," he said.

We begin with Carlos Simon’s This Land. Simon is composer-in-residence at the Kennedy Center for the Arts and Assistant Professor at the College of Performing Arts at Georgetown University. This Land was inspired by the poetry of Jewish-Russian poet Anna Lazarus, a passionate immigration activist. Her poem “The New Colossus”, written in 1883, compares the Statue of Liberty to the ancient Greek Colossus of Rhodes, presenting this "new colossus" as a patroness of immigrants rather than a symbol of military might. Carlos notes: “Lush, bright harmonies in the strings are used to represent hope and unity.”

Pianist Gabriela Montero will perform as soloist for Edvard Grieg’s celebrated Piano Concerto. Winner of the 4th International Beethoven Award, Montero is a committed advocate for human rights, whose voice regularly reaches beyond the concert hall. She was named an Honorary Consul by Amnesty International in 2015 and recognized with Outstanding Work in the Field of Human Rights by the Human Rights Foundation for her ongoing commitment to human rights advocacy in Venezuela. In January 2020, she was invited to give the Dean’s Lecture at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute and has spoken and performed twice at the World Economic Forum in Davos. She was also awarded the 2012 Rockefeller Award for her contribution to the arts and was a featured performer at Barack Obama’s 2008 Presidential Inauguration.

Finally, we present the United States première of Boris Pigovat’s Holocaust Requiem, in memory of the 1941 Babi Yar massacre in Kyiv, Ukraine. That horrible event was the first and best-documented of the massacres that occurred at the hands of the Nazis in 1941, killing more than 33,771 Jewish people over two days. The première will be performed September 29th and 30th, 2023, on the 82nd anniversary of the massacre. Peter Minkler of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra will be the featured viola soloist.

Pigovat, originally from Ukraine but currently living and working in Israel, lost his grandparents and aunt in the Babi Yar massacre. The music speaks to his family’s pain, and that of all people who have experienced loss due to the horrors of invasion, war, and genocide. Each movement of the Requiem is named after the Latin Mass text, the emotional symbols of sorrow, suffering, and hope expressed purely instrumentally but led by the ‘human’ voice of the viola.

Masterworks Ii Pepe Plays Ponce

RAVEL, REVUELTAS & PONCE WITH GUITARIST PEPE ROMERO

7:30 pm

NOVEMBER 3 & 4, 2023

Maryland Hall

G. Rossini, Overture to Il barbiere di Siviglia

M. Ponce, Concierto del Sur, Pepe Romero, guitar

S. Revueltas, Homenaje a Federico García Lorca

M. Ravel, Ma Mère l’Oye (Mother Goose)