Conducted by Cristian Măcelaru
Vivian Fung: America the Beautiful? (Festival Commission & world premiere)
Pedro Emanuel Pereira: Clarinet Concerto (Carlos Ferreira, Clarinet) (Festival Commission & world premiere)
Philip Glass: Symphony No. 15 Lincoln (Zachary James, Baritone) (West Coast premiere)
6:30PM • PRE-CONCERT PICNIC + TALK: A free outdoor pre-concert experience featuring a brass sextet and a special welcome by Music Director Cristian Măcelaru. Bring takeout or some snacks from home. Table seating available.
The 64th season kicks off with Music Director Cristian Măcelaru leading the Festival Orchestra and audience in a powerful meditation on the distance between national ideals and lived reality.
Vivian Fung‘s America the Beautiful? (Festival Commission & world premiere) opens the season with a work responding to the U.S. National Anthem through the lens of her intersectional identity as a dual Canadian-American citizen with Chinese familial lineage. The piece confronts the tension between patriotic tradition and the deeply imperfect struggle to uphold democratic values for all.
Pedro Emanuel Pereira‘s Clarinet Concerto (Festival Commission, world premiere), featuring clarinetist Carlos Ferreira, blends Portuguese musical traditions with experimental timbres and performative innovation, reimagining virtuosity for the present moment.
The program concludes with Philip Glass‘s Symphony No. 15 Lincoln (West Coast premiere)—featuring GRAMMY® award winning baritone Zachary James—is a six-movement symphony incorporating Abraham Lincoln’s own words, including the Emancipation Proclamation and reflections on law, power, and ambition. The work resonates forcefully with the urgencies of today.