James Henshaw

Leo Melvin

The Outcry Ensemble

Sinfonia Smith Square

This concert opens Outcry: New World, a series exploring music shaped by the idea of America — its landscapes, its energy, and its cultural imagination.

The programme brings together three works written in the United States, spanning more than a century of American musical life. Celestis by Aaron Jay Kernis opens the evening with a glowing, expansive soundworld, its slow-moving textures and rich orchestration reflecting the breadth and confidence of contemporary American orchestral writing. 

That sense of space and clarity continues in Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring, a work that has become inseparable from the sound of America itself. Its open harmonies, folk-inflected melodies, and rhythmic vitality evoke community, movement, and possibility. 

Outcry – New World