Uploaded January 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
This week, we continue our commitment to performing works by composers who have been historically overlooked. Music and Artistic Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin will lead the Orchestra in William Grant Still’s Symphony No. 2 (“Song of a New Race”) and Margaret Bonds’s The Montgomery Variations.
Composed in 1937, Still’s Second Symphony builds on themes established in his historic “Afro-American Symphony.” Where the “Afro-American Symphony” represented the struggle for Black Americans immediately following the Civil War, “Song of a New Race” depicts his vision of the next chapter in this history, one marked by a blending of cultures. Bonds’s The Montgomery Variations was composed in 1964 and is dedicated to Martin Luther King, Jr. Each movement depicts a different influential moment in the Civil Rights Movement, from the Montgomery Bus Boycott to the Birmingham Church Bombings.
Join us January 16–18 in Marian Anderson Hall to hear these powerful works paired with Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with Yuja Wang. For more information, visit philorch.ensembleartsphilly.org/tickets-and-events/2024-25-season/yuja-wang-returns.
This week, we continue our commitment to performing works by composers who have been historically overlooked. Music and Artistic Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin will lead the Orchestra in William Grant Still’s Symphony No. 2 (“Song of a New Race”) and Margaret Bonds’s The Montgomery Variations.
Composed in 1937, Still’s Second Symphony builds on themes established in his historic “Afro-American Symphony.” Where the “Afro-American Symphony” represented the struggle for Black Americans immediately following the Civil War, “Song of a New Race” depicts his vision of the next chapter in this history, one marked by a blending of cultures. Bonds’s The Montgomery Variations was composed in 1964 and is dedicated to Martin Luther King, Jr. Each movement depicts a different influential moment in the Civil Rights Movement, from the Montgomery Bus Boycott to the Birmingham Church Bombings.
Join us January 16–18 in Marian Anderson Hall to hear these powerful works paired with Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with Yuja Wang. For more information, visit philorch.ensembleartsphilly.org/tickets-and-events/2024-25-season/yuja-wang-returns.
