Happy Monday! We highlight a few important upcoming performances for you!
Michelle Cann, pianist
On November 6–9 pianist Michelle Cann performs Florence Price’s Piano Concerto in One Movement with the New Jersey Symphony, under the direction of Tito Muñoz. Performances will take place in Newark, Princeton, and New Brunswick. The program will also include works by George Gershwin, Aaron Copland, and Carlos Simon.
Cann is recognized as a leading interpreter of Florence Price’s piano music. She performed the New York City modern premiere of the Piano Concerto in One Movement with The Dream Unfinished Orchestra (July 2016), and the Philadelphia premiere with The Philadelphia Orchestra (February 2021). Her 2023 recording of the concerto with the New York Youth Symphony won a GRAMMY Award for Best Orchestral Performance. In addition to her brilliant work on the music of Florence Price, we can also look forward to her forthcoming premiere of a new piano concert by Valerie Coleman with the National Symphony. The premiere is currently scheduled for June 2026. Exciting news!!
Enjoy Cann’s recording of Price’s Concerto in D Minor in One Movement, recorded in 2023 with members of the United States Air Force Band’s Symphony Orchestra.
On November 9th, the Community Women’s Orchestra (Oakland, CA) will perform the premiere of June Bonacich’s The Ten-Woman Bicycle as well as Joan Tower’s Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman No. 4 to celebrate the beginning of its 40th season. The program will also include short selections by Richard Wagner and Franz Schubert. The text of Bonacich’s piece began as a feminist fable published in Ms. Magazine by Tricia Vita, and later as a book with illustrations by Marion Crezée; the CWO commissioned it as an orchestral work to celebrate their 40th anniversary. Tower’s Fanfares 1–6 are perennially popular, both at orchestral concerts and concerts specifically celebrating women composers. N. 4 is the first of two in the series that require the forces of a full orchestra (the other is N. 6). This recording was made by the Interlochen Arts Academy in 2009.
Bohdana Frolyak, composer
On November 6th, the New York Philharmonic will perform the U.S. premiere of Bohdana Frolyak‘s Let There Be Light. (Its world premiere happened at the BBC Proms in 2023.) The program will also include works by Copland, de Hartmann, & Britten. Let There Be Light takes much of its inspiration from the war between Russia and Ukraine of the past few years, as well as from the fin de siècle repertoires of Ravel and Stravinsky. The dense harmonies and layered, atmospheric writing make for a piece that doesn’t trade in many of the usual musical tropes about wartime—jarring bangs and fanfares and sudden tempo changes—though they have an ominous low background from the strings and winds in common. The piece is all the more expressive for the fact that the conflict was ongoing when she wrote the piece (and, of course, the conflict continues.
Bohdana Frolyak is a teacher and social activist in addition to being one of Ukraine’s foremost composers. She has written for ensembles large and small, from orchestral and choral works to chamber and solo compositions. She is a graduate of the Mykola Lysenko State Music Academy (Lviv, 1991) and Lviv Academy of Music (1998). She teaches composition at the Mykola Lysenko National Music Academy in Lviv.
Below is a recording of the BBC Proms premiere in 2023, performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Dalia Stasevska.
On November 11, the LA Phil New Music Group (members of the LA Philharmonic) will perform their program Recovecos (“nooks” or “hidden corners”), which highlights the music of Caribbean and Latin American composers. It will include pieces by Nathalie Joachim, Tania León, Angélica Negrón, Amanda Hernández , and Lido Pimienta (also Christian Quiñones, Juan Andrés Vergara, and Daria Donovan Thomas). The program will explore themes of memory, nostalgia, longing, catharsis, joy, and healing, asking what it means to belong to more than one space or home simultaneously. It is part of the Green Umbrella New Music Series. Of the pieces on the program, two are world premieres (Hernández’s Recovecos and Pimienta’s Corazón) and one is a world premiere arrangement (Donovan Thomas’s Volver, Volver).
Let us know about important upcoming concerts and what you’re listening to! Email us at info@wophil.org.