A new work by Carlos Simon, a U-M alumnus and Kennedy Center composer-in-residence, opens the concert. Fate Now Conquers was inspired by a journal entry in one of Beethoven’s notebooks and is based on the same harmonic structure as the second movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.
Elena Urioste, who won first place in the Sphinx Competition’s Junior Division in 2002 and repeated the feat in the Senior Division five years later, is the violin soloist for Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Violin Concerto, “bring[ing] the work everything it deserves: a rich, glowing tone, rhythmic panache, shedloads of charisma, and a tenderness that cradled the slow movement as if it were the most precious jewel in the world.” (The Arts Desk)
Steeped in American folk music, spirituals, and church hymns, Florence Price’s first symphony reflects her experience as a Black woman raised in the post-Civil War South. The premiere of her symphony in Chicago in 1933 marked the first time a major American orchestra had performed a work written by an African American woman composer.
Programme:
Carlos Simon Fate Now Conquers
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Violin Concerto in G minor, Op. 20
Florence B. Price Symphony No. 1 in E minor
Violin: Elena Urioste
Conductor: Andrew Grams