The 62nd season kicks off with Maestro Măcelaru leading the Festival Orchestra in works by Vivian Fung, Helen Grime, Nina Young, and Karim Al-Zand. Beginning our season, Berkeley-based, JUNO Award-winning, Canadian composer Vivian Fung‘s West Coast premiere of Parade captures the essence of community amid solitude, reflecting on the journey from isolation to togetherness experienced during the pandemic. Inspired by the San Francisco Lunar New Year parade, Fung intertwines chaos and melancholy with empathy and gratitude, echoing the spirit of celebration amidst adversity. The West Coast premiere of Helen Grime‘s Violin Concerto, featuring the virtuosic talents of Leila Josefowicz, embarks on a mesmerizing experience of contrasts. Composed as one continuous movement, the Violin Concerto falls into three main sections connected by dreamlike interlinking passages. Violent, virtuosic music covering the whole range of the violin is contrasted with more delicate and reflective material. Nina Young’s Tread softly, receiving its West Coast premiere, was created for the centennial of the 19th Amendment, reflecting on the Women’s Suffrage movement and ongoing struggle for gender equality and representation. This work considers the cycles of progress and backlash in women’s fight for suffrage, with patterns of melodies that continue to build and dissipate. Tunisian-born, Canadian-American composer Karim Al-Zand’s world premiere of Al Hakawati, featuring the captivating soprano Miriam Khalil, is a journey into the essence of storytelling. Translated as “the Storyteller”, it is an enchanting exploration of “the stories we tell, and why we tell them.” This work is based on scenes from an opera in progress –a project that will start at Cabrillo Festival and then move throughout the world.