Sunday, April 13, 3:00 pm, Cary Hall
Conductor's talk 2:00 pm
Jonathan McPhee, conductor
Robert Sheena, English horn
| Copland | Our Town |
| Daugherty | Spaghetti Western |
| North | Suite from A Streetcar Named Desire |
| Ellington | Harlem |
These American composers applied their classical training to the worlds of popular music and film to create rich new works that audiences love. Copland's Our Town, from his movie score, is a perfect example. Michael Daugherty, inspired by the spaghetti westerns of the sixties, chose the English horn, played here by BSO principal Robert Sheena, to represent "The Man with No Name" moving though musical landscapes reminiscent of the wild west. North paints psychological portraits of each character in his score for the film version of A Streetcar Named Desire, while Duke Ellington's descriptive tone poem Harlem reveals the influence of Gershwin, Stravinsky, and Debussy on his work.
