forward – opening night

Sarah Kirkland Snider: Forward into Light (West Coast Premiere)
Jennifer Higdon: Duo Duel for Two Percussionists (Svet Stoyanov and Matthew Strauss, percussion) (West Coast Premiere | Festival Co-commission)
Sebastian Currier: Track 8 (West Coast Premiere)
Bora Yoon: The Wind of Two Koreas (West Coast Premiere)

Maestro Măcelaru kicks off the 61st season with an evening of West Coast premieres by composers Sarah Kirkland Snider, Jennifer Higdon, Sebastian Currier, and Bora Yoon.

Dubbed “one of the decade’s more gifted, up-and-coming modern classical composers” (Pitchfork), Sarah Kirkland Snider writes music of direct expression and vivid narrative. Her work Forward into Light is a meditation on perseverance, bravery, and alliance, inspired by the work of American women suffragists.

Master percussionists Matthew Strauss and Svet Stoyanov take center stage in the West Coast premiere of Duo Duel. This electrifying work was co-commissioned by the Cabrillo Festival. Dubbed “limb defying” and composed by the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Jennifer Higdon, Duo Duel showcases the full spectrum of percussion’s expressive power. Higdon composed the work specifically for Stoyanov and Strauss, two artists the composer praised for their “extraordinary technique and musicality.”

Grawemeyer Award–winning composer Sebastian Currier is known for writing “music with a distinctive voice” (New York Times) that is “lyrical, colorful, firmly rooted in tradition, but absolutely new” (Washington Post). His work, Track 8, draws inspiration from and parallels Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony, in what the composer calls a “Beethoven remix.”

The “genre-bending” (New Yorker) Korean-American composer, vocalist, and sound artist Bora Yoon offers up The Wind of Two Koreas, a work inspired by Stravinsky’s early orchestral works and his inspiration from Russian folklore. The Wind of Two Koreas excavates the idea of cultural blood memory and epigenetics—a recurring theme in Yoon’s work.

The evening begins with an outdoor Pre-Concert Talk by Music Director/ Conductor Cristi Măcelaru and guests. A special alfresco dinner will be prepared by Moveable Feast and served outside the Civic Auditorium; advance tickets required.