NJSO Opens 2019–20 Season With Holst's THE PLANETS With NASA Imagery In HD

The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra and Music Director Xian Zhang open the 2019-20 season with a program pairing music and visuals in Holst's The Planets, with NASA imagery in HD, and the NJSO premiere of Sarah Kirkland Snider's Hiraeth, with an accompanying film by Mark DeChiazza. Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 opens the program.

Produced by scientist and filmmaker Duncan Copp, The Planets-an HD Odyssey projects high-definition satellite imagery as Zhang leads the Orchestra in Holst's masterwork. The NJSO celebrates voices from its own communities as the women of Newark Voices-a choir that debuted with Zhang and the NJSO on the 2018-19 season's opening weekend-return to bring an ethereal element to "Neptune, the Mystic."

New Jersey-based composer Sarah Kirkland Snider was inspired by the Welsh definition of nostalgia for her autobiographical work Hiraeth-music evoking her family's history, commissioned alongside a film by Mark DeChiazza. Of the film, Snider has said, "We set about re-creating some of my father's, uncle's and my childhood experiences in North Carolina. The result is something hazy and atmospheric, somewhere between memory and dream."

Performances take place on October 11 at 7:30 pm and October 13 at 3 pm at NJPAC in Newark and on October 12 at 8 pm at the Count Basie Center for the Arts in Red Bank. Concert tickets start at $20; student tickets are $10, available online one month in advance. Tickets are available for purchase at njsymphony.org or 1.800.ALLEGRO (255.3476).

Learn more at njsymphony.org/planets.