Songs of hope

Hope for a better, more united, more empathetic world inspired the programming of this concert, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin. “I dare look up,” says Florence Price, the first African American composer, in her Song of Hope. Following in her footsteps, Margaret Bonds drew inspiration from the civil rights movement for her Montgomery Variations, dedicated to Martin Luther King. Unity is born of the bonds we forge and the bridges we build, whether between people or musical genres. Gershwin draws on this richness in his jazz-adjacent Piano Concerto, performed by one of the most acclaimed pianists of our time, Hélène Grimaud. This dynamic also comes through in the work of Bernstein, whose Chichester Psalms masterfully navigates the tension between optimism and pessimism, violence and compassion.