Fri 11/29 @ 7:30PM
Sat 11/30 @ 8PM
Sun 12/1 @ 3PM
The week’s Cleveland Orchestra program is pure Americana, featuring some of the most beloved and familiar music by early 20th-century American composers, inspired by different aspects of American culture and history.
The program opens and closes with pieces by Aaron Copland, starting with his 1944 Suite from Appalachian Spring, written for modern dancer/choreographer Martha Graham’s dance troupe and set in 19th-century Pennsylvania. And it closes with his 1958 Suite from The Tender Land, an opera about a farm family in the Midwest, inspired by Walker Evans’ photographs taken in the 1930s documenting the impact of the Depression on American workers and families.
In between the orchestra will play two pieces that draw on that most American of musical genres, jazz. Duke Ellington’s 1947 New World A-Comin’ expresses his hope for a better future, free of war, greed and bigotry. George Gershwin’s 1924 Rhapsody in Blue has been getting a lot of performances this year on its centennial. It brings together Gershwin’s classical and jazz influences. Canadian pianist Marc-André Hamelin is the soloist on Rhapsody in Blue. David Robinson conducts the orchestra.
Go here for tickets.
clevelandorchestra.com/copland/
Cleveland, OH 44106