American Voices: Rhapsody in Blue

Program:

William Grant Still – Afro-American Symphony No. 1

George Gershwin – Rhapsody in Blue

Stewart Goodyear, piano

Florence Price – Symphony No. 1 in E Minor

Inside of eight short years, American composers produced three masterpieces – all of them in completely different styles and written with distinctive voices. This concert celebrates this great American explosion by combining all three of them into one special evening of music.

Our centerpiece is Gershwin’s iconic Rhapsody in Blue, played by one of the great pianists of our generation, Stewart Goodyear. (Fun Fact: The famous clarinet glissando at the beginning wasn’t written by Gershwin; it was a prank his clarinetist played on him at the first rehearsal, and it stuck!)

Arkansan William Grant Still — also known to many as the “Dean of African-American Composers” — wrote his tremendously emotional and satisfying Symphony No. 1 in 1930, infused with both the blues and traditional spirituals, and it was the first symphony by a Black American to be performed by an established orchestra, in 1931. Two years later, and finishing out our concert program, Arkansas native Florence Price became the second composer to achieve that status when her gloriously infectious Symphony No. 1 was performed by the Chicago Symphony in 1933.

If you don’t want to miss out on the concert everyone will be talking about, this one is mandatory!