Classical

Most overtures act as musical synopsis hinting at themes or motives to come. Others are completely unique and have little, if any, reference to the forthcoming program. This performance will feature some of the most well-known overtures from Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro to Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story.

Hewitt | The Battle of Trenton Wu, Wang, Liu | Little Sisters of the Prairie. Wu, Liu | Spring River Flowers and Moonlight Night
-Cao Yue, pipa Decruck | Symphonie Orientale Ó Riada | Mise Éire

Our season finale opens with James Hewitt’s The Battle of Trenton and explores the attitudes, mistakes and reasons people emigrated to America. Those stories are represented through the music immigrants brought with them, enriching our nation despite the challenges they faced. While the stories are as varied as was America’s attitude toward immigrants, these stories are important because all those who came to America looked for a new beginning and hope for the future — which has been America’s promise.

Trav'ling Home:

American Spirituals, 1770-1870

The Boston Camerata’s pioneering programs of early American music have brought pleasure to thousands of music lovers, and have helped to clarify and define our country’s rich and diverse cultural identity. It traces migratory currents and flows of early American song, largely spiritual but also secular. Among the various communities participating in this rich American mosaic we encounter the Puritans of New England, the Shakers and their visionary monodies, Amish and Mennonites of Pennsylvania, and the newly-freed African-American religious communities. The musical sources of this program are drawn from European and New World oral traditions, hymns, psalms and chants in English, German dialects, early songbooks of Black churches, as well as gems from the still largely unpublished Shaker manuscript archive at Sabbathday Lake, ME.