Composer

Guest conductor Lina Gonzalez-Granados makes her Atlanta Symphony Orchestra debut with a delightful mélange of music from the Americas. Classical meets jazz in George Gershwin’s irresistible mashup Rhapsody in Blue. Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz’s Kauyumari taps into folk music from the Huichol people, and the ASO presents a world-premiere by Atlanta’s own Joel Thompson, an Emmy-winning composer working at the intersection of art and social justice. The concert includes a musical travelogue by Gabriela Lena Frank and the snappy Danzón No. 2 by Arturo Márquez. French pianist Cédric Tiberghien makes his ASO debut.

EPSG:4326

Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue

Atlanta Symphony Hall

Tenor Russell Thomas, LA Opera's Artist in Residence, premieres a major new commission: a deeply personal, evening-length concert work created expressly for him by the Emmy Award-winning composer Joel Thompson with an original libretto by the celebrated poet Imani Tolliver.  

With Resident Conductor Lina González-Granados leading the LA Opera Orchestra, Fire and Blue Sky traces the origin story of an artist, a probing reflection on painful memories, deeply embedded, that reverberate into the present day. 

The concert will also feature an orchestral suite from Joel Thompson's opera, The Snowy Day.

Fire and Blue Sky

Los Angeles Music Center

Jaap van Zweden and the Orchestra reprise Joel Thompson’s To See the Sky, which they premiered in March. Also on the program: the Prelude to Wagner’s Die Meistersinger, full of lyricism and fanfare, and Brahms’s Fourth Symphony, in which joy and sorrow seem to be in constant battle.

Bravo! Vail: Jaap van Zweden Conducts Wagner, Joel Thompson, and Brahms

Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater

“Seven Last Words of the Unarmed” is inspired by the final words of seven unarmed black men: Kenneth Chamberlain Sr., Trayvon Martin, Amadou Diallo, Michael Brown Jr., Oscar Grant III, John Crawford III, and Eric Garner. Bookending the piece are two contrasting works by Lili Boulanger and Fauré’s expressive and beautiful Requiem.

Joel Thompson

Composer

Events

25 - 26 Apr, 2024

Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue · Atlanta Symphony Orchestra

Jun 6, 2024

Fire and Blue Sky · LA Opera

Jul 20, 2024

Bravo! Vail: Jaap van Zweden Conducts Wagner, Joel Thompson, and Brahms · New York Philharmonic

14 - 15 Mar, 2025

Requiem · Dayton Performing Arts Alliance

About

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