Composer Adolphus Hailstork, whose JFK: The Last Speech will be performed by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in early October.
In Tuesday’s (9/26) Dallas Morning News, Scott Cantrell writes, “Sixty years after the Dallas assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra is memorializing the president with a new work by veteran American composer Adolphus Hailstork. Titled JFK: The Last Speech, it’s being performed Oct. 6-8 on a program also including Samuel Barber’s Toccata Festiva, for organ and orchestra, and Rachmaninoff’s Third Symphony. Guest conductor will be Peter Oundjian. Kennedy’s last speech was in Fort Worth, on the morning before his Dallas assassination on Nov. 22, 1963. But an October 1963 speech at Amherst College in Massachusetts, in part honoring the late poet Robert Frost, has been billed as his last major speech. Hailstork’s work incorporates excerpts of Kennedy’s words, and his quotations of Frost, some spoken by narrator Eric Owens, some sung by soprano Janice Chandler-Eteme.”
