Music

Returning to our partnership with the Adrienne Arsht Center, we will be featuring a special collaboration with past collaborators Colombian duo Monsieur Periné. Despite their origins in Bogotá, NPR describes the Latin Grammy-winning group as embracing "1920s-era, guitar-driven jazz from the U.S.", bringing a blend of cultures and influences to the Nu Deco stage. The night will also include Sergei Prokofiev’s dramatic and Shakespearean-inspired ballet score "Romeo and Juliet", in addition to a new reimagining of The Beatles' legendary studio album Abbey Road.

Praised for his “unmistakable virtuosity,” University of Miami professor Svet Stoyanov is a driving force in modern percussion (The New York Times). He joins NWS Percussion Fellows in a transfixing program that is uniquely Miami. Michael Tilson Thomas—NWS’s Co-Founder and Artistic Director Laureate—evokes the sands of the tropics with a marimba-filled feature that draws on his own influences: Schubert, Beethoven and James Brown. Emmy Award-winning master of composition Garth Neustadter awakens sensibilities with his Seaborne, an urgent account of our endangered oceans that comes to life with by filmmaker Kjell Van Sice.

Join esteemed conductor William Eddins, Music Director Emeritus of the Edmonton Symphony, for this very special performance of orchestral works of Black American artists during the Harlem Renaissance. These performances are part of "I Dream a World: The Harlem Renaissance in Europe", which will focus on the artists who found success in Europe between 1917 and 1946, exploring the impact of World War I, the rise and spread of Nazism, and World War II on the spread of the Harlem Renaissance ideology and Black music in Europe.

NWS closes out 2022 with an afternoon of shimmering chamber works from northern climates, including by Scandinavia's finest. Composer Jean Sibelius is often credited with putting Finland on the musical map. His famed romantic melodies are center stage in his Serenata trio for strings. Danish composer Carl Nielsen's Wind Quintet, one of the most famous works of the genre, exudes his signature personality and charm. Norway is represented by Edvard Grieg’s lush melodies for strings and Mogens Andresen’s captivating modern dances for large brass ensemble. Ann Southam moves between senses of urgency and rest in her Quintet for piano and string quartet, while Jō Kondō creates a unique sonic landscape in An Insular Style.

New World Symphony Fellows invite you to a special concert of their own design. Celebrate the Mexican American experience through the Mayan creation story, which recounts God’s attempts in the formation of Man using clay, stone, wood and corn. El Maíz de mi Gente is an exploration of the evolution of Mexican music and visual art from the “Imagined Aztec Music” of Carlos Chávez to Federico Ibarra’s Second Symphony “Las antesalas del sueño”, and from ancient Mayan art to contemporary Mexican cinema.

Orion Weiss—“an effortlessly brilliant performer with technique to burn” (The Arizona Republic)—returns for an intimate afternoon of musical gems. Known for his affinity for chamber music, Weiss joins NWS Fellows for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s First Piano Quartet, a stormy drama with concerto-like virtuosity, and Lili Boulanger’s Of a Sad Evening, a work hidden for over 60 years by the composer’s sister and fellow composer, Nadia. Miami-based composer Dorothy Hindman asks “can we erase the past?” in her Untitled I, while Witold Lutosławski called his Dance Preludes his “farewell to folklore.” Joining in the performance are musicians from The Cleveland Orchestra.

New World Symphony celebrates 35 years with two triumphant performances led by the Vienna Philharmonic’s Christoph Koncz in the newly christened Michael Tilson Thomas Performance Hall. Hailed as a "revelation” and “breathtaking from start to finish” (NRC, Netherlands), Trinidadian soprano Jeanine De Bique makes her NWS debut in selections from Carl Maria von Weber’s opera Der Freischütz. Join in the hilarious hijinks of troublemaker Till Eulenspiegel in Richard Strauss’ dazzling tone poem before witnessing the world premiere of Fanfares from Uhrovec, a festive fusion of American and Bohemian traditions. Johannes Brahms, the ultimate romantic who once felt paralyzed by Beethoven’s shadow, found immediate success in his Third Symphony, a rich panorama of endless beauty.

With a “breathtaking conflation of grace and grit” (Cleveland Classical), violinist Jennifer Frautschi makes her anticipated NWS debut. Many listeners believe Ralph Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending is among the most beautiful pieces of music ever written. Inspired by a poem by George Meredith that describes a bird in flight, the work forms what the composer called a “pastoral romance for orchestra.” As a prolific composer who wrote for Harry Belafonte and Marvin Gaye, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson finds a rich source of inspiration in the spiritual “Calvary” for his First String Quartet. Low brass claim the spotlight in Kevin Day’s sizzling Ignition.

The NWS Percussion Fellows are ready to rock out on everything from drums, whistles and harmonicas and even to trash. Composer Nathaniel Stookey scavenged a city dump to create his symphony of garbage, Junkestra. Stookey joins the Fellows with instruments he created from bike wheels, bird cages and other recycled material. Kenji Bunch infuses his Concerto with jazz, blues and rock, propelling it to a rousing finale. By placing items inside of two pianos, George Crumb creates a fantastic sound world in Music for a Summer Evening (Makrokosmos III), praised as “so successful and openhearted, it is among the most frequently performed avant-garde chamber works.”

We Sing Joy! This South Florida holiday tradition will include classics such as O Come All Ye Faithful, Silent Night, Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, Do You Hear What I Hear, and more. These and other traditional performances promise to be filled with uplifting and joyous holiday music. For other music selections, I have chosen some entertaining, powerful, and exciting music for this concert, including a piece called “A World of Joy,” an arrangement composed by Gary Fry. The central theme is Joy to the World, but it intertwines other melodies sung in Swahili, English, and Spanish!