Thu 1/9 @ 7:30PM
Sat 1/11 @ 8PM
Sun 1/12 @ 3PM
Brush up your French before you go to Severance Music Center this weekend, because you might want to stay in the mood by chatting in that language during intermission.
Of the four pieces on the program, three were written by French composers, while the fourth piece was written by an American composer in tribute to France’s best-known city, Paris. The evening opens with Darius Milhaud’s jazz-influenced 1923 La création du monde (“The Creation of the World”), a short ballet based on an African creation myth, written at a time when French artists were becoming fascinated by African folk art and culture. It also features another short ballet piece from the same time period, Francis Poulenc’s Suite from Les biches, written in 1924
In between those pieces, they’ll play 54-year-old French composer Guillaume Connession’s A Kind of Trane, which premiered in 2015; this is the Cleveland Orchestra’s premiere of the piece. It will feature 31-year-old sax player/educator Steven Banks (pictured), who is currently on the faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Music. The orchestra will then conclude with George Gershwin’s 1928 An American in Paris. The program will be conducted, appropriately, by a Frenchman: Stéphane Denève, currently music director of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra.
Get tickets here.
Cleveland, OH 44106