January 6, 2009
A Celebration of the Lincoln-Darwin Bicentennial, Our Sense of Home and Respighi’s Rome
La Jolla, Calif. (January 6, 2009) — The La Jolla Symphony and Chorus (LJS&C) continues a season-long exploration of the DNA of Music in a concert titled “Home,” with special guests Cecil Lytle and Renee Calvo. The program, conducted by Steven Schick, features Aaron Copland’s Lincoln Portrait, Ottorino Respighi’s Pines of Rome, and two premieres: Anthony Davis’ Amistad Symphony and Nee Commission-winner Rick Snow’s new work on Charles Darwin, Darwin Portrait.
“‘Home’ is a concert about exactly that: how people identify their place with music,” says Schick. “On the most basic level this might mean a national anthem or patriotic folk song. But home can be ‘sounded’ in many ways. Aaron Copland, a quintessentially American composer, portrayed his home with the open harmonies and uncluttered canvas typical of his mid 20th-century style and sharpened that image by quoting the words of Abraham Lincoln in Lincoln Portrait.
“Anthony Davis amplifies the multiple and sometimes conflicting images of home from the African-American perspective,” says Schick of this symphonic suite drawn from Davis’ opera Amistad about a slave ship whose capture by the slaves it was carrying in 1839 became a potent symbol for the growing abolitionist movement.
Nee Commission-winner Rick Snow “is a gifted young composer whose sophisticated compositions represent the wealth of possibilities in the American music scene,” continues Schick. In Darwin Portrait, Snow offers a musical evocation of Darwin’s achievement and its reverberations.
The concert concludes with Italian composer Respighi’s homage to home in the brilliant Pines of Rome known for its vivid musical imagery of both contemporary Italy and its classical past.
The performances take place February 7–8, 2009 in Mandeville Auditorium at UCSD. Concert times are 8:00 p.m. on Saturday and 3:00 p.m. on Sunday. Individual tickets are $26 general, $22 senior, and $15 student. Group discounts are available. Parking is free. A pre-concert lecture is offered one hour prior to concert times. To purchase tickets or for more information, call the LJS&C office at (858) 534-4637.
The La Jolla Symphony & Chorus, San Diego’s oldest and largest community orchestra and chorus, is a non-profit musical performing group dedicated to inspiring San Diego with the joy of music. Its 110-person orchestra and 130-person chorus perform groundbreaking orchestral and choral music along with traditional favorites from the classical repertoire. During the 54th season, maestro Steven Schick shares the podium with David Chase, LJS&C choral director, performing works by Mahler, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Copland, Elgar, and more.
