At the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s March 9 concert, in foreground from left: Thomas Wilkins, Anthony Davis, and Anthony McGill. Photo by Winslow Townson.
“With three different full-orchestra programs and a slew of ancillary events all devoted to exploring the intersection of music, history, legacies of exclusion, and the promise of change, [‘Festival: Voices of Loss, Reckoning and Hope’] is the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s most concentrated and ambitious attempt at socially engaged programming in well over a decade,” writes Jeremy Eichler in Friday’s (3/10) Boston Globe (login may be required). “So far it’s also been full of rarely heard, intriguing, and often flat-out excellent music…. [Such] events angle music and its history outward toward a reckoning with society’s profound rifts, and toward the possibilities for healing…. Last week’s revelatory program … was anchored by Uri Caine’s ‘Passion of Octavius Catto,’ at once a moving and musically satisfying experience as well as a brilliant example of the art form’s ability to rescue and reanimate a worthy yet forgotten 19th-century life … This week’s concerts, meanwhile, draw attention to a more contemporary manifestation of age-old prejudice … Both the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Anthony Davis, and the New York Philharmonic’s principal clarinetist Anthony McGill, have experienced the terror of being pulled over by armed police for the offense of ‘driving while black.’… Davis explored the inner reverberations of his encounter in a 2007 work, ‘You Have the Right to Remain Silent,’ performed on Thursday night by McGill and the BSO under the baton of Thomas Wilkins.” Also on the program were works by Margaret Bonds and William Dawson. The festival runs through March 18.
