UC Davis Symphony Orchestra

Gershwin famously folded jazz—exploding in popularity at the time—into the orchestra with the piano at center. Brewbaker took inspiration from 12th-century poet Sufi, asking: Is the violinist playing the violin or the violin playing the violinist? Eliza Brown vividly connected, in one ten-minute soaring work, her mother’s favorite music with Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, with the essence of both her own (and her mother’s) musical spirit.