Sounds From Home

This program, rescheduled from this fall, centers around our complex and ever-evolving sense of home. It opens with the world premiere of Elegy for Solo Oboe by composer Chen Yi (a BandQuest and ChoralQuest composer), who was born in Guangzhou, China and settled in the United States, where she is a Professor of Composition at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. The piece was written for and will be performed by Principal Oboe Cassie Pilgrim, whose family hails from the same region of China. The program also features excerpts from Florence Price’s String Quartet No. 2, infused with African American dances and Black idioms of the mid-20th century.

Principal Flute Julia Bogorad-Kogan performs a solo work by James Lee III, inspired by his long relationship with Brazilian music. Composer and musician PaviElle French reprises a movement from A Requiem for Zula, a symphony commissioned and premiered by the SPCO that revisits her upbringing in Saint Paul’s Rondo neighborhood. The program closes with Antonín Dvořák’s American String Quartet, a piece written after the composer moved to the United States, that blends Czech influences with popular American music.

Date & Time: Saturday, April 10, 2021 at 8pm CST.

Live stream the event here.