Photo by Michael Morel
By Natasha Anderson
Xiayin Wang, soloist
Returning to Thomas Wolfe Auditorium on Saturday, February 12, the Asheville Symphony presents a program titled Roaring Rhapsody that celebrates Black History Month with moving works by Will Marion Cook and William Grant Still, alongside Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and Dvorák’s New World Symphony.
The performance will be the second concert of ASO’s 2021-2022 Masterworks Season, bringing to the stage American symphonic music inspired by Black songs and spirituals—a uniquely American musical tradition.
“Black American composers such as Harry T. Burleigh, Florence Price, George Walker and William Grant Still helped to define the American sound as we know it, often using settings of Black songs, hymns and spirituals as the foundations for their musical works,” says ASO executive director Daniel Crupi. “Their music, alongside that of contemporary Black composers such as Jessie Montgomery, Adolphus Hailstork and Jonathan Bailey Holland, are cornerstones of what we now consider to be the American musical voice.”
Under the direction of ASO music director Darko Butorac, the concert transports audience members to 1920s New York to explore distinctive musical masterpieces. Each of the four works on the program has an important place in the development of this sound. Dvorák’s New World Symphony, one of the most popular symphonies of all time, was a catalyst to inspire American musicians to write works with material rooted in the US, especially in the tradition of the African American spiritual. Will Marion Cook, a student of Dvorák, wrote the first Black Broadway hit in 1903: In Dahomey. William Grant Still’s first symphony, Afro-American, wove his experience as a Black musician into the tapestry of a traditional European symphony. Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, a concerto for piano and orchestra that is firmly rooted in jazz, rounds out the concert.
“Roaring Rhapsody is a celebration of the diversity of great American orchestral music,” says Butorac. “Just like our nation, the musical history of America is a whirling melting pot of influences.”
The concert features guest piano soloist Xiayin Wang. Wang has released numerous celebrated recordings and performed throughout the world, from New York’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, to music centers in South America, Europe and Asia. Her discography has received international acclaim, with her most recent Chandos recording of Tchaikovsky and Scriabin piano concerti earning accolades.
Thomas Wolfe Auditorium is at 87 Haywood Street, Asheville. Tickets for Masterworks 2: Roaring Rhapsody start at $25 for adults and $15 for youth (prices vary by seating section). Tickets can be purchased online at AshevilleSymphony.org, by phone at 828.254.7046, in person at the Asheville Symphony office at 27 College Place, Suite 100, or at the Harrah’s Cherokee Center Asheville Box Office.
