The Princeton Symphony Orchestra's 2023-2024 Season Opens With FORWARD INTO LIGHT

The Princeton Symphony Orchestra’s (PSO’s) 2023-2024 Season opens September 9-10 with Princeton-based composer Sarah Kirkland Snider’s inspirational work Forward Into Light, inspired by women suffragists, and Henri Tomasi’s expressive Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Orchestra, performed by 2022 Avery Fisher Career Grant winner Steven Banks. William Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony, one of the first full-length works by a Black composer to be performed by a major US orchestra, completes the program.

Edward T. Cone Music Director Rossen Milanov conducts the performances which take place Saturday, September 9 at 8pm and Sunday, September 10 at 4pm at historic Richardson Auditorium. Sunday’s concert includes a pre-concert talk by Maestro Milanov at 3pm.

Saxophonist Steven Banks was awarded the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2022 and was a chosen artist for WQXR’s Artist Propulsion Lab. He was the first saxophonist to be awarded First Prize at the Young Concert Artists Susan Wadsworth International Auditions. Banks has appeared with The Cleveland Orchestra, Montreal Symphony, Utah Symphony, Colorado Symphony, Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, and Aspen Festival Orchestra, and has enjoyed working with such conductors as Franz Welser-Most, Xian Zhang, Nicholas McGegan, Rafael Payare, John Adams, Peter Oundjian, Jahja Ling, Matthias Pintscher, Alain Altinoglu, and Roderick Cox. In 2023 and 2024 Banks will premiere and tour with a commissioned concerto from Grammy-winning composer Billy Childs. His primary saxophone teachers have been Taimur Sullivan, Otis Murphy Jr., and Galvin Crisp. He holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, as well as a Master of Music degree from the Northwestern University Bienen School of Music.

Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Forward Into Light was inspired by the American women suffragists Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Frances E.W. Harper, Ida B. Wells, Zitkála-Šá, Mabel Lee Ping-Hua, and others who believed in equal rights for women. Henri Tomasi’s two-movement saxophone concerto offers an intriguing dialogue between soloist and orchestra as well as a rich soundscape integrating diverse influences and musical styles. William Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony recalls orally transmitted African American folk songs, and is an important work of African American classical music.

Single tickets are now available for all 2023-24 Princeton Symphony Orchestra orchestral concerts as well the PSO’s popular Holiday POPS! concert. Additional guest artists featured this season are 2022 Grammy Award winners violinist Jennifer Koh and Metropolitan Opera star Anthony Roth Costanzo, trailblazing pianist Sara Davis Buechner, the Westminster Symphonic Choir, and the 2023 Grammy Award-winning trio Time For Three.

Performances take place on Saturdays at 8pm and Sundays at 4pm at Richardson Auditorium. 6-Concert Subscriptions start at $180. Youths 5-17 receive a 50% discount with an adult purchase. To subscribe or purchase single tickets to any classical concert or Holiday POPS! (Saturday, December 16, 3pm & 6pm), visit the Princeton Symphony Orchestra website at princetonsymphony.org or call 609-497-0020.

Programs, artists, dates, and times are subject to change.