On This Occasion, We Rise

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Dates:	Sunday, October 27, 2024 - Sunday, October 27, 2024
Hours:	3:00 PM
Ages:	Kids, Teens, Adults
In/Outdoor:	Indoor
Cost:	Free
Category:	Music & Concerts

Fanfare Politeia · Kimberly K. Archer

Marching Song of Democracy · Percy Grainger

Lincoln Portrait · Aaron Copland (Tr. Walter Beeler), Featuring Joy Arcolano

Migration, Symphony No. 2 · Adam Schoenberg

Kimberly K. Archer (1973 - ) currently serves as Professor of Composition at Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville, Illinois.

She teaches composition, orchestration, analysis, counterpoint, and music theory.

Written in 2021, Fanfare Politeia is an homage to the origins of our democracy, and to the ancient sources that Madison, Hamilton, Jefferson, and Adams drew upon in their conceiving and writing of our Constitution.

Politeia is a Greek word derived from polis (city).

Aristotle used the term to represent concepts such as citizens’ rights and constitutional government, while Plato’s examination of justice – a book which we now call The Republic, in English – was actually entitled Politeia in the original Greek.

Percy Aldridge Grainger (1882-1961) was an Australian-born composer, arranger and pianist.

In the course of a long and innovative career, he wrote works of great originality and vitality, drawing on folk and popular idioms.

In the early years of the 20th century, he played a prominent role in the revival of interest in British folk music.

The musical material dates from the summer of 1901 (when Grainger was working in Germany), December, 1908 (when Grainger was in Australia) and the summer of 1915 (when Grainger was back in New York City, U.S.A.).

The final scoring of the original version for chorus, orchestra and organ was made in the summer of 1915, the spring and summer of 1916, and the spring of 1917 (New York City).

The work was also inspired by In a Backward Glance O’er Travel’d Roads (prose epilogue to Leaves of Grass) by Walt Whitman which speaks of democratic values.

Often referred to as the “Dean of American composers,” Aaron Copland (1900-1990) was a composer, critic, writer, music educator, pianist, and later a conductor of his own and other American music.

The open, slowly changing harmonies in much of his music are typical of what many people consider to be the sound of American music, evoking the vast American landscape and pioneer spirit.

Conductor Andre Kostelanetz commissioned Copland to write a musical portrait of an “eminent American” for the New York Philharmonic.

Copland chose President Abraham Lincoln, and used material from speeches and letters of Lincoln, as well as original folk songs of the period, including: Camptown Races and On Springfield Mountain.

Copland finished Lincoln Portrait in April 1942, providing a rich musical palette for the framing of Lincoln’s own words and a few independent observations about this U.S. president.

The first performance was by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra on 14 May 1942, with William Adams as the narrator.

Our narrator for the Lincoln Portrait, Joy Lamberton Arcolano, joined the Boston Conservatory in 2015 and is an assistant professor of theater, specializing in voice and speech.

Emmy Award-winning and Grammy®-nominated Adam Schoenberg (1980 - ) has twice been named among the top 10 most performed living composers by orchestras in the United States.

Completed by Schoenberg in 2022, Symphony No. 2: Migration was commissioned by the Wind Ensemble at the Sarah and Ernest Butler School of Music and Performing Arts at The University of Texas in Austin and is dedicated to Jerry Junkin.

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300 Hammond Pond Parkway, Chestnut HIll, MA, 02467 map
Phone: 5088633309