American Symphony Orchestra To Present FORGING AN AMERICAN MUSICAL IDENTITY At Carnegie Hall

Music director Leon Botstein leads the American Symphony Orchestra (ASO) on Friday, January 30 at 8 PM at Carnegie Hall in a program celebrating the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The performance highlights the forging of an American musical identity in the 19th and 20th centuries with a diverse selection of seldom-heard works.

Soloists feature soprano Anna Thompson, Resident Artist at the Academy of Vocal Arts and a recently named 2025 Sullivan Foundation award-winner; two-time Grammy Award-winning mezzo-soprano J'Nai Bridges, who makes her house debut this season in the title role of Carmen at Teatro Real in Madrid; Grammy Award-winning tenor Freddie Ballentine, making a 2026 return to the Metropolitan Opera as Sportin' Life in Porgy & Bess; and bass Alan Williams, who joins the New York Philharmonic this season to sing Saariaho's Oltra mar with conductor Thomas Adès on the podium.

American Symphony Orchestra can next be heard in a program featuring Hector Berlioz's arrangement of Carl Maria von Weber's Der Freischütz—sung in French with recitatives composed by Berlioz—on April 16 at Carnegie Hall. 

Forging an American Musical Identity

Friday, January 30, 2026, at Carnegie Hall, Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage

Pre-concert Talk at 7 PM

Concert at 8 PM

American Symphony Orchestra

Leon Botstein, Music Director

Anna Thompson, soprano

J'Nai Bridges, mezzo-soprano

Freddie Ballentine, tenor

Alan Williams, bass

Bard Festival Chorale

James Bagwell, Music Director of the Bard Festival Chorale

Dudley Buck: Festival Overture (on the American National Air, “The Star-Spangled Banner”)

Harry T. Burleigh: “Go down, Moses,” “Behold that Star!,” “Swing low, sweet chariot”

Richard Wagner: Großer Festmarsch (American Centennial March)

George Bristow: Symphony No. 5, “Niagara”

The program begins with two works of celebration: American composer Dudley Buck's Festival Overture, a seven-minute piece for full orchestra, was written in 1879 to celebrate Independence Day and is based on the melody of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” which the composer called the “American National Air.” He was for many years organist, choirmaster, and assistant conductor of the Theodore Thomas Orchestra in New York. The premiere of Richard Wagner's American Centennial March was specially commissioned from the famed German opera composer for the Declaration of Independence's centennial celebration in 1876 in Philadelphia. President and Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant were in attendance, although Wagner was not. Also featured on the program are three spirituals arranged and orchestrated by innovative composer Harry T. Burleigh: “Go down, Moses,” “Behold that Star,” and “Swing low, sweet chariot.” America's first prominent Black composer, Burleigh's legacy is honored here for his important influence and major contributions to American concert music and the history of American art song. The concert's centerpiece is George Bristow's massive “Niagara Symphony” in its first performance since the work's 1898 world premiere, performed by the Manuscript Society at Carnegie Hall. The choral symphony was inspired by poet Charles Walker Lord's verses on Niagara Falls.