Springfield Symphony features the work of American women composers — and more
As it celebrates its 75th anniversary season, the Springfield Symphony Orchestra (SSO) is also taking time to honor the music of significant American women composers, as well as a work inspired by a key female figure from fiction.
On Saturday, Feb. 2, the orchestra will perform pieces by U.S. composers Amy Beach, Joan Tower and Jennifer Higdon. The concert, which takes place at 7:30 p.m. at Symphony Hall in downtown Springfield, will also feature “Scheherazade,” the 1888 synphony named after the famous female character from “One Thousand and One Nights,” the classic folktale collection from the Middle East.
Amy Beach, born in New Hampshire in 1867, was the first U.S. woman to compose and publish a large orchestral work — her “Gaelic” Symphony, premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1896. On Saturday, SSO will perform Beach’s piano-based “Bal Masque, Op. 22,” which concert organizers call “the signature work of the high matriarch of American women composers.”
Also on tap are “6th Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman” by the Grammy-winning Joan Tower (born in 1938), a piece that’s considered something of a response to Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man,” and Tower’s “Sequoia,” an ode to the giant trees in the western U.S.
In addition, SSO will perform “blue cathedral” by Jennifer Higdon (born in 1962), who’s won two Grammy Awards and a Pulitzer Prize for her compositions.
Kevin Rhodes, the Springfield orchestra’s music director, said he was struck by how many “exciting new pieces” of classical music have been written by U.S. women composers and thought SSO needed to give some of them some “special attention, given their relative absence [at] concerts for most of the history of concert music.”
“Scheherazade,” meantime, was composed by Russia’s Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in 1888 and based in part on his study of pictures from “One Thousand and One Nights”; he named the piece after the female character of the same name from the stories, a young woman who uses her intelligence, charm and knowledge of the arts to outwit a dangerous Persian king.
Tickets for the concert are $22 and can be purchased at Symphony Hall before the show, or by phone at (413) 733-2291. Visit springfieldsymphony.org. for more information and ticket options.
Still going strong after all these years
They first gained international attention when they sang on Paul Simon’s “Graceland” album in 1986. But Ladysmith Black Mambazo, the South African male choral group that sings in styles native to that country, has been performing much longer than that — well over 50 years.
The acclaimed singers, who come to Northampton’s Academy of Music Theatre on Wednesday, Feb. 6, now have a new generation of performers who, working with the veterans, have continued the group’s trademark harmonies, intricate dance moves and engaging onstage banter. After winning numerous awards, including five Grammys, Ladysmith Black Mambazo is carrying on the deep traditions — musical and cultural — of black South Africa.
And since “Graceland” introduced them to a wider audience, the singers have performed with many Western musicians, including Stevie Wonder and Dolly Parton, and their music has appeared in numerous films; they were a favorite of the late Nelson Mandela, the South African president and storied civil rights leader.
The Academy show is at 7:30 p.m.; doors open at 7. Tickets are $25-$45; visit aomtheatre.com to purchase.
— Steve Pfarrer