Let’s revel for Ravel on his 150th birthday year! We’ll celebrate this French composer and fabulous orchestrator, Maurice Ravel, with fan favorites and pieces that are new to our orchestra repertoire. Opening with the too rarely-performed, lively, and colorful Alborada del gracioso, the program progresses through a homage to French Baroque composer François Couperin for chamber orchestra and the Mother Goose Suite, orchestrated by the composer from a two-hand piano piece. The magnificent and contemporaneous Piano Concerto in G has a jazzy blues component, and features pianist Marika Bournaki. We end on a high note with 1928 top hit, Boléro, featuring the orchestra as soloists and together.

RAVEL – Alborada del gracioso
RAVEL – Tombeau de Couperin
RAVEL – Mother Goose Suite
RAVEL – Piano Concerto
RAVEL – Boléro

Special Guest: Marika Bournaki, piano

Sheku and Isata Kanneh-Mason convey the sheer joy of classical music. Together, these siblings are unmissable.

 Consider the first half of this program its own “mechanical symphony!” A sonic palette that celebrates humans in motion, the repertoire includes works by contemporary composer Stefan Thompson on the hustle and bustle of tourists in his native Bahamas, the machinistic whirs of Russian iron and steel factories as wrought by Alexander Mosolov and Sergei Prokofiev, and the chugging, churning charm of 20th century land travel through the imaginations of Arthur Honegger and John Adams. In the second half, four pulsing strokes of the timpani transition us from the composed clamor of machines to Beethoven’s broad and lyrical Violin Concerto, featuring guest violinist Nathan Amaral.

THOMPSON – Jitneys and Cruiseships
MOSOLOV – Iron Foundry
HONEGGER – Pacific 231
PROKOFIEV – The Steel Step Suite
ADAMS – Short Ride in a Fast Machine
BEETHOVEN – Violin Concerto

Special Guest: Nathan Amaral, violin