The Hopkins Symphony
Orchestra will celebrate the life of Harriet Tubman
with two performances of a new song cycle, first with a
free family concert on Saturday, Feb. 28, and then with a
full performance on Sunday, March 1, both in Shriver Hall
Auditorium on the Homewood campus.
Music director Jed Gaylin and the Hopkins Symphony
Orchestra will welcome composer/narrator Nkeiru Okoye and
soprano Kishna Davis to perform Okoye's Songs of Harriet
Tubman, which follows Tubman's life from childhood slavery
in Maryland to maturity as a liberator in the Underground
Railroad. The concerts will also feature Nikolai
Rimsky-Korsakov's Symphony No. 2 Antar, which tells the
legend of a pre-Islamic Arabian-Ethopian poet and
adventurer.
The program will be given in excerpted form as HSO's 17th
annual Free Concert for Children and Families, from 1 to 2
p.m. on Saturday. After that performance, the audience will
be invited onstage to meet the musicians and see their
instruments up close. The program will be performed in full
at 3 p.m. on Sunday, with a pre-concert talk by Okoye at 2
p.m.
Former Morgan State University professor Okoye is one of
the most-performed female African-American symphonic
composers in the United States. Her music has been praised
for its accessible style and the way it combines
contemporary classical, African-American, popular music and
West African influences. Songs of Harriet Tubman is one of
many compositions in which she celebrates African-American
women.
Baltimore Opera Competition winner Davis has won acclaim
throughout the United States and Europe for her
performances in opera, with orchestras and in solo
recitals. The Columbia, Md., resident holds degrees from
Morgan State University and the Juilliard School of Music.
She recently premiered Songs of Harriet Tubman with the
Western Piedmont Symphony in North Carolina.
Jed Gaylin, now in his 16th season as HSO music director,
also directs the Bay-Atlantic Symphony and the Cape May
Music Festival, both in New Jersey. He is principal guest
conductor of the National Film and Radio Philharmonic in
Beijing.
The Hopkins Symphony Orchestra, a program of the Johns
Hopkins University, is the only community orchestra in
Baltimore City. Each year, the HSO offers four symphonic
and three chamber concerts, and a special children's
concert. Orchestra members are Johns Hopkins students,
alumni, faculty and staff, as well as talented
Baltimore-Washington area musicians.
The Hopkins Symphony Orchestra is supported by a grant from
the Maryland State Arts Council. An agency of the
Department of Business & Economic Development, the council
provides financial support and technical assistance to
nonprofit organizations, units of government, colleges and
universities for arts activities. The Feb. 28 children's
concert has special support from the Mayor of Baltimore and
the Baltimore Office of Promotion & the Arts.
Featured in other upcoming 2008-2009 season concerts are
the winners of the 2008-2009 Johns Hopkins Concerto
Competition, Philip Wolf playing the Saint-Saens Cello
Concerto and Mengyu Lan playing the Chopin Piano Concerto
No. 1, Saturday, April 4; and Brahms' Symphony No. 4 and
Sanchez-Gutierrez's Ex Machina for Piano, Marimba and
Symphony Orchestra, featuring pianist Cristina Valdes and
marimbist Makoto Nakura, Sunday, April 26.
Admission to the Feb. 28 children's concert is free for
everyone; no tickets are needed. Admission to the March 1
concert is free for Johns Hopkins students. Tickets are $8
for other students, seniors (60+) and Johns Hopkins
affiliates. General admission is $10.
For more information, go to:
www.jhu.edu/jhso.
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