Boston Symphony Orchestra to Present VOICES OF LOSS, RECKONING, AND HOPE Festival in March

Boston Symphony Orchestra will present VOICES OF LOSS, RECKONING, AND HOPE Festival March 3-18.

Three-week festival explores stories of identity and social justice with compelling music, including works by living composers Uri Caine, Anthony Davis, and Julia Wolfe

BSO concerts to be complemented by a related series of free events in conjunction with the Tanglewood Learning Institute, encompassing chamber music, guest speakers, and panel discussions designed to spark ideas and conversation on essential issues of our time

Ticket prices for the BSO season performances during the Voices festival will be $50 for orchestra floor seats and $25 for balcony seats

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The Boston Symphony Orchestra has dedicated three weeks of its 2022-23 season to a festival entitled Voices of Loss, Reckoning, and Hope. Concerts led by BSO Germeshausen Youth and Family Concerts Conductor Thomas Wilkins and guest conductors Giancarlo Guerrero and André Raphel feature works by American composers Margaret Bonds, Uri Caine, Anthony Davis, William Dawson, William Grant Still, and Julia Wolfe, as well as Polish composer Henryk Górecki and English composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor-music intended to provoke dialogue on social change.

Featuring a diverse range of guest conductors, composers, and performers, the Voices festival expands upon the BSO's commitment to cultural relevancy, equity, and inclusion through musical and related educational programs that explore themes of racial equity and women's rights and inequities in the criminal justice system.

BSO Festival Performances

The centerpiece of the Voices festival's first BSO season program, on March 3-5-to be led by American conductor André Raphel-is an oratorio centered around the Reconstruction-era civil rights activist and African American educator Octavius Catto, whose fight for justice resulted in his murder in Philadelphia on Election Day, 1871.

Philadelphia jazz pianist and composer Uri Caine's gospel and popular music-based The Passion of Octavius Catto features the Uri Caine Trio (Uri Caine, piano, Mike Boone, bass, Clarence Penn, drums), vocalist Barbara Walker, and the Catto Chorus, made up of singers from churches and gospel choirs throughout greater Boston who join the BSO's own Tanglewood Festival Chorus. Completing the program are English composer Coleridge-Taylor's four-movement Petite Suite de Concert (1911) and Still's 1930 Afro-American Symphony-a blues-tinged panorama evoking the composer's heritage. The third movement of Still's symphony is based on a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar, "An Ante-Bellum Sermon," on the subject of emancipation and citizenship for Blacks in America.

The concert on March 3 at 8 p.m. is the third "Casual Friday" concert of the season, offering a shorter program (the Caine and Still works only) with no intermission, reduced pricing, remarks from the stage by an orchestra member, "conductor cam" seating, and post-concert Casual Conversation, during which the performers take audience questions. BSO Associate Principal Trumpet Thomas Siders will introduce this concert. Uri Caine and André Raphel will answer questions from the audience.

For the second Voices festival BSO program, on March 9-11, Thomas Wilkins, BSO Germeshausen Youth and Family Concerts Conductor, leads Anthony Davis' concerto You Have the Right to Remain Silent, a musical response inspired by an intense encounter the composer had with law enforcement involving a case of mistaken identity, with clarinetist Anthony McGill (the New York Philharmonic's first African American principal player) as soloist.

You Have the Right to Remain Silent depicts in four movements the stages of Interrogation, Loss (emotional reaction to the trauma), Incarceration, and the "othering" of the citizen via the clarinet soloist's emotionally dynamic interaction with the ensemble. Improvisation, stemming from Davis' roots in jazz, honor one of the composer's heroes, bassist / composer / bandleader Charles Mingus, who experienced racism throughout his career.

Opening the program are selections from Margaret Bonds' 1963 spiritual-based Montgomery Variations-about the crucial first decade of the mature civil-rights movement-a tribute to Montgomery, Alabama, and to Martin Luther King, Jr. Closing the program is William Dawson's Negro Folk Symphony, which uses thematic material inspired by spirituals throughout. Dawson's work garnered popular and critical acclaim at its premiere at Carnegie Hall in 1934 by the Philadelphia Orchestra and Leopold Stokowski.

Highlighting the third and final BSO program of the Voices festival, on March 16-18, is Julia Wolfe's BSO co-commissioned Her Story, for vocal ensemble and orchestra, which invokes the words of historical figures and the spirit of pivotal moments-from a letter written by Abigail Adams to words attributed to Sojourner Truth, public attacks directed at women protesting for the right to vote, and political satire-to pay tribute to the centuries of ongoing struggle for equal rights, representation, and access to democracy for women in America.

Featuring the Lorelei Ensemble (Beth Willer, Artistic Director), under the direction of frequent guest Giancarlo Guerrero, with stage direction by Anne Kauffman, scenic, lighting, and production design by Jeff Sugg, and costume design by Márion Talán de la Rosa, Her Story is the latest in a series of compositions by Wolfe-who draws inspiration from folk, classical, and rock alike-that highlight monumental and turbulent moments in American history and culture, and the people-both real and imagined, celebrated and forgotten-that defined them.

A major co-commissioning project among the Boston, Nashville, Chicago, San Francisco, and National Symphony orchestras, Her Story was originally scheduled to be performed throughout the country during the 2019-20 season, until it was delayed due to the pandemic. Opening the program is Polish composer Henryk Górecki's Symphony No. 3, Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, which contemplates the pain of a mother mourning the loss of a son at war and features soprano Aleksandra Kurzak. The performances of Górecki's Symphony No. 3, Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, also falls under the season theme of musical perspectives on the tragedies of war and conflict.

Quote from Anthony Fogg, William I. Bernell Vice President, Artistic Planning:
"The three weeks of programs that make up the BSO's Voices festival bring together a number of works that take as their inspiration the struggle to preserve and strengthen both musical and social identity. The grief of personal loss through war and social unrest finds voice in compositions of highly contrasting language and style."

Free Events Related to the Festival

The Tanglewood Learning Institute (TLI) presents programming featuring guest speakers, panel discussions, and chamber music concerts that encourage dialogue on social change by expanding on the subjects covered by the Voices festival's featured works.

All of these events are free, and attendance for those being held in other venues is on a first come, first served basis. Events taking place at Symphony Hall (marked with •) require tickets (for the season performances) or advance registration (for other programs).

Featured on March 3 in a free Community Chamber Concert are two works by Hawaii-based composer and educator Michael-Thomas Foumai, Printing Kapa and Defending Kalo, for violin and harp; rounding out the program are Ennanga for harp, piano, and string quartet by pioneering American composer William Grant Still, and Beethoven's String Quartet No. 10 in E-flat, Op. 74 (Boston's Fenway Center, 1:30 p.m.).

Also on March 3, local scholars Dr. Kabria Baumgartner, Dr. Kerri Greenidge, and Dr. Kendra Taira Field discuss the importance and influence of Boston-based African American musical artists (Symphony Hall, 5:30 p.m.). Free event, but tickets are required. See below for information on reserving tickets.

On March 4, Concert: A Spiritual Fantasy will be performed by Castle of Our Skins (Matthew Vera, violin; Annie Rabbat, violin; Ashleigh Gordon; viola; Lev Mamuya, cello) with special guest student performers from Project STEP (String Training Education Program). The work explores the African American qualities of strength, resilience, and community in music, pivotal forces that inspired the Philadelphia civil rights activist whose story is told in The Passion of Octavius Catto. Co-presented with the Boston Conservatory at Berklee (Studio 106 at Boston Conservatory at Berklee, 6 p.m.).

Another free event, the March 7 performance by the Boston Symphony Chamber Players, features music by American composers exploring themes of cultural and musical identity and performed by BSO principal players. The program includes Anthony Davis' song was sweeter even so, Ulysses Kay's Sonata for bassoon and piano, James Lee III's Chôro sem tristeza for flute solo, and Jessie Montgomery's Sgt. McCauley for winds and strings (Symphony Hall, 7:30 p.m.). The concert includes composer introductions, as well as post-performance discussion. Free event, but tickets are required. See below for information on reserving tickets.

For the March 9 "What I Hear" event, composer Anthony Davis curates a program of chamber music in connection with the BSO's performance of his You Have the Right to Remain Silent later that evening. New England Conservatory musicians perform a program including his works Middle Passage and Still Waters III. A collaboration between the BSO and NEC, "What I Hear" is a series of free, hour-long programs featuring performances by NEC students and composer conversations with BSO Assistant Artistic Administrator Eric Valliere (New England Conservatory, 5:30 p.m.).

On March 11, creative professionals David Sterling Brown, Anthony Davis, Terrell Donnell Sledge, Keith Hamilton Cobb, David C. Howse, and Robert Manning, Jr., gather to explore the challenges that Black men face in expressing themselves in public (Symphony Hall, 5:30 p.m.). Free event, but tickets are required. See below for information on reserving tickets.

Closing the festival on March 18, the composer of Her Story, Julia Wolfe, is joined by scholars Dr. Jane Kamensky and Dr. Robyn C. Spencer-Antoine for a discussion of this groundbreaking new composition (Symphony Hall, 5:30 p.m.). Free event, but tickets are required. See below for information on reserving tickets.

TICKET INFORMATION FOR FREE RELATED EVENTS

How to reserve tickets for the free related events at Symphony Hall during Festival: Voices of Loss, Reckoning, and Hope

All of the related events are free; however, those taking place at Symphony Hall (marked with •) require advance registration for complimentary tickets. To register to attend, please visit the Voices Festival webpage or call Ticketing and Customer Service at 617-266-1200.

VOICES FESTIVAL PROGRAM LISTINGS

Community Chamber Concert

Friday, March 3, 1:30 p.m.
Fenway Center, Boston

Free admission

Lucia Lin and Bracha Malkin, violins

Rebecca Gitter, viola

Owen Young, cello

Charles Overton, harp

April Sun, piano

Michael-Thomas FOUMAI Printing Kapa and Defending Kalo, for harp and violin

BEETHOVEN String Quartet No. 10 in E-flat, Op. 74

STILL Ennanga, for harp, piano and string quartet

Panel Discussion

Friday, March 3, 5:30 p.m.

Symphony Hall

• Free ticketed event

Dr. Kabria Baumgartner (Tufts University), panelist

Dr. Kerri Greenidge (Northeastern University), panelist

Dr. Kendra Taira Field (Tufts University), panelist

Since the late 19th century, Boston has been home to many African American composers, musicians, and performers from the likes of Flora Batson, Robert Nathaniel Dett, Matilda Sissieretta Joyner Jones, and Roland Hayes. Long before Boston's Symphony Hall opened in 1900, these performers found support within Black communities across the diaspora, and cultivated a Black artistic tradition embedded in the legacy of African-descended musicians in Boston's contemporary classical music scene. Join scholars Dr. Kerri Greenidge, Dr. Kendra Field, and Dr. Kabria Baumgartner in lecture and discussion about Boston's classical music history and the African-descended musicians, performers, and composers who have shaped it.

BSO Season Performance

Friday, March 3, 8 p.m. (Casual Friday)

Saturday, March 4, 8 p.m.

Sunday, March 5, 2 p.m.

Symphony Hall

André Raphel, conductor*

Uri Caine Trio

Uri Caine, piano

Mike Boone, bass

Clarence Penn, drums

Barbara Walker, vocalist*

Catto Chorus

COLERIDGE-TAYLOR Petite Suite de Concert (March 4 & 5 only)

STILL Symphony No. 1, Afro-American

Uri CAINE The Passion of Octavius Catto

* BSO Debut

Special Festival Concert

Concert: A Spiritual Fantasy

Saturday, March 4, 6 p.m.

Studio 106 at Boston Conservatory at Berklee

132 Ipswich Street, Boston
Free admission

Castle of Our Skins

Matthew Vera, violin

Annie Rabbat, violin

Ashleigh Gordon, viola

Lev Mamuya, cello

Special Guest Student Performers from Project STEP

A Spiritual Fantasy highlights African American composers who share a connection to Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and William Grant Still. Clarence Cameron White was Still's student; his contemporary Florence Price was his neighbor in Arkansas; Frederick Tillis was born the same year audiences first heard Grant Still's Afro-American Symphony. All were greatly influenced by the Negro Spiritual, a truly unique expression of African American strength, resilience, and community. A Spiritual Fantasy explores these qualities in music, pivotal forces that inspired the Philadelphia civil rights activist whose story is told in The Passion of Octavius Catto.
Co-presented with Boston Conservatory at Berklee

Special Festival Concert

Tuesday, March 7, 7:30 p.m.

Symphony Hall

Boston Symphony Chamber Players

with Jorge Soto, conductor (Montgomery)

• Free ticketed event

Ulysses KAY Sonata for bassoon and piano
Anthony Davis song was sweeter even so for ensemble

James Lee III Chôro sem tristeza for flute solo

Jessie MONTGOMERY Sgt. McCauley for winds and strings

Open Rehearsal for High School Students
Thursday, March 9, 10:30 a.m.

Symphony Hall

• Contact group sales for tickets

Thomas Wilkins, conductor

Anthony McGill, clarinet*

BONDS Selection from Montgomery Variations (I. Decision; II. Prayer Meeting; III. March)

Anthony Davis You Have the Right to Remain Silent, for clarinet and orchestra [Pre-rehearsal talk, 9:30-10 a.m., Robert Kirzinger with Anthony Davis]

DAWSON Negro Folk Symphony

* BSO Debut

"What I Hear"

Thursday, March 9, 5:30 p.m.

New England Conservatory's Williams Hall

Free admission

American composer Anthony Davis curates a program of chamber music in connection with the BSO's performance of his You Have the Right to Remain Silent later in the evening. NEC musicians perform a program including his works Middle Passage and Still Waters III. BSO Artistic Administrator Eric Valliere moderates a conversation with the composer.

BSO Season Performance

Thursday, March 9, 7:30 p.m.

Friday, March 10, 1:30 p.m.

Saturday, March 11, 8 p.m.

Symphony Hall

Thomas Wilkins, conductor

Anthony McGill, clarinet

BONDS Selection from Montgomery Variations (I. Decision; II. Prayer Meeting; III. March)

Anthony Davis You Have the Right to Remain Silent, for clarinet and orchestra

DAWSON Negro Folk Symphony

Panel Discussion

Saturday, March 11, 5:30 p.m.

Symphony Hall

• Free ticketed event

David Sterling Brown, panelist

Anthony Davis, panelist

Terrell Donnell Sledge, panelist

Keith Hamilton Cobb, panelist

David C. Howse, panelist

Robert Manning, Jr., panelist

A Private Conversation in Public: The Right to "Remain" Silent vs the Right to Fully Express

Six Black men, all creative professionals, discuss amongst themselves a question: What expression, however pressing, however relevant, do we make public, and what are we liable to encounter as a consequence? Relating to the BSO's performances of Anthony Davis' You Have the Right to Remain Silent, panelists include the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Anthony Davis; Shakespeare and critical race studies scholar David Sterling Brown, Ph.D.; actor and community arts advocate Terrell Donnell Sledge; Emmy-nominated actor Keith Hamilton Cobb; a recognized leader in the Boston arts and theatre scene, David C. Howse; and NAACP Theatre Award-winner Robert Manning, Jr. We invite the BSO audience to be present and to listen as they discuss the nuance between public expression and consequences as it pertains to racial injustice.

BSO Season Performance

Thursday, March 16, 7:30 p.m.

Friday, March 17, 1:30 p.m.

Saturday, March 18, 8 p.m.

Symphony Hall

Giancarlo Guerrero, conductor

Aleksandra Kurzak, soprano

Lorelei Ensemble

Beth Willer, conductor

Anne Kauffman, stage director*

Jeff Sugg, scenic, lighting, and production designer*

Márion Talán de la Rosa, costume designer*

GÓRECKI Symphony No. 3, Symphony of Sorrowful Songs

Julia Wolfe Her Story, for vocal ensemble and orchestra (BSO co-commission)

* BSO Debut

Panel Discussion

Saturday, March 18 at 5:30 p.m.

Symphony Hall

• Free ticketed event

Julia Wolfe, composer

Dr. Jane Kamensky (Harvard University), panelist

Dr. Robyn C. Spencer (Lehman College), panelist

Julia Wolfe's Her Story captures the ongoing struggle for women's voices in America. The Lorelei Ensemble joins forces with the Boston Symphony to tell this important history. Julia Wolfe and a panel of scholars discuss the history and process of building this spectacular work. From a letter of Abigail Adams to the words of Sojourner Truth, Her Story is a personal and emotional response to the ongoing quest for equal rights.

Perspectives on the Tragedies of Wars and Conflicts

The BSO's 2022-23 season focuses on music's unique power to impart a deeper understanding of our common humanity. In addition to Festival: Voices of Loss, Reckoning, and Hope, four programs focus on the themes of wartime and tragedy, creating a common thread to provoke thought and reflection.

The January 5-7 concerts included the U.S. premiere of Ella Milch-Sheriff's The Eternal Stranger, a monodrama inspired by a dream Beethoven had, in which a refugee, "the other" in a foreign land, cannot overcome the hate directed toward him with his love for humankind.

The March 16-18 performances feature Górecki's Symphony No. 3, Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, with soprano Aleksandra Kurzak, about a mother searching for her son killed in the Silesian uprisings, among other subjects.

On May 4-6, the season's final Andris Nelsons-led program features Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No. 13, Babi Yar, a five-movement denunciation of Stalinism-an intense, dark work, based on poems by Yevgeny Yevteshenko, that includes a movement memorializing a Nazi massacre of Ukrainian Jews. The remaining movements depict "gallows humor," the perseverance of Soviet women, suppression ("Fears are dying out in Russia"), and the hypocrisy of bureaucrats.

Also thematically connected is the April 30 performance of Osvaldo Golijov's Falling Out of Time. Composed in 2019, this "tone poem in voices" by the Argentine-born American composer is based on an experimental novel by David Grossman-who lost his son in the second Lebanon war-about parents' grief at the loss of a child. The Golijov work is composed for a multicultural, multistylistic instrumental ensemble, including electric guitar, pipa, traditional strings, percussion, and synthesizer. Presented in association with Celebrity Series of Boston, the semi-staged performance features vocalists Biella da Costa and Nora Fischer.

Recorded BSO Performances are available to video stream for free on BSO NOW

The three BSO season programs that are part of the Voices festival this March will be recorded for BSO NOW, the BSO's free online video streaming platform. Their respective release dates are March 16 (for the March 5 performances), March 23 (for the March 11 performances), and March 30 (for the March 18 performances), all at noon.

In addition, the recent January 21 BSO performance featuring guest conductor Karina Cannelakis and guest soloist Nicola Benedetti is now available to stream on BSO NOW.

The upcoming February 12 BSO performance with Music Director Andris Nelsons conducting and guest soloist Sheku Kanneh-Mason will be available to stream on BSO NOW on March 2 at noon.

HOW TO PURCHASE TICKETS AND DISCOUNTED PROGRAMS

2022-23 BSO Tickets

Tickets to the 2022-23 BSO season may be purchased through bso.org, by calling 888-266-1200, or by visiting the Symphony Hall Box Office.

Ticket prices for the BSO season performances during the Voices festival will be $50 for orchestra floor seats and $25 for balcony seats.

New Thursday-evening start time, three-concert Sunday series and four-concert Casual Fridays series continue, and popular discounted programs return

Thursday evening BSO performances to begin at 7:30 p.m., in response to patron feedback

BSO continues its Sunday-afternoon series on February 12 and March 5 with a new start time of 2 p.m.

For Casual Fridays, continuing for the eighth season, patrons are encouraged to wear casual attire and enjoy shorter programs, informal conversations with BSO members, and special Conductor-Cam seating

BSO's highly successful $25 tickets for people under 40 returns in 2022-23

$30 College Card available throughout the season

$10 Rush Tickets program, offering significantly discounted tickets to concertgoers on the day of concert since the orchestra's inception, continues for select performances throughout the year

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