As part of its Shift mini-residency, the Albany Symphony’s new-music ensemble Dogs of Desire staged a free event at the Blind Whino SW Arts Club in Washington, D.C. Works by young composers were on the slate, along with jazz singer and new-music composer Theo Bleckmann and atmospheric visual accompaniment and lighting from video artist Hannah Wasileski. Photo by Jati Lindsay.
Orchestras were everywhere in Washington, D.C. this spring, as the Shift Festival of American Orchestras brought live music to unexpected venues like a community museum, a cool late-night club, and that most public of spaces, the massive Main Hall of D.C.’s iconic Union Station. And while many orchestras do “musical instrument petting zoos” for kids, the Shift festival suited the deed to the words when the National Symphony Orchestra presented a musical instrument petting zoo at—Carnival of the Animals, anyone?—the National Zoo.
The day before the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra’s Kennedy Center performance, the Caminos del Inka chamber ensemble and Music Director Miguel Harth-Bedoya, who was born in Peru, performed works that explored South American music at the National Museum of the American Indian (above). Caminos del Inka’s repertoire spans traditional, classical, and contemporary music from South America, particularly the Andean region, by composers such as Osvaldo Golijov, Gabriela Frank, Jimmy López, Diego Luzuriaga, and more. The concert was free and open to the public. Photo by Jati Lindsay.
Running from April 9 to 15, Shift celebrates the vitality, identity, and artistry of U.S. orchestras and chamber orchestras by creating a wide-ranging experience in the nation’s capital. The week-long festival is composed of mini-residencies, with each orchestra presenting education events, symposia, and community activities in venues around Washington, along with full-orchestra performances in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall. For the first Shift festival, in 2017, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Boulder Philharmonic, The Knights (Brooklyn, NY), and North Carolina Symphony came to town. This year’s festival featured the Albany Symphony, Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, and D.C.’s own National Symphony Orchestra. They performed new music, unusual repertoire, works that evoked the natural surroundings of their hometowns, and scores with personal connections to their music directors. Beyond that, Shift shone a spotlight on some of the ways that American orchestras are rethinking their relationships with their communities.
As part of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra’s mini-residency at the Kennedy Center during the Shift festival, the orchestra led a version of its signature “Second Chance Strings” program for local adults. Students from Indianapolis’s Metropolitan Youth Orchestra sat side-by-side with D.C. adults, teaching them the basics of holding and playing the instrument, culminating in an enthusiastic group performance of the Pachelbel Canon in D. Photo by Jati Lindsay.
Shift is co-presented by Washington Performing Arts and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in cooperation with the League of American Orchestras.
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The Albany Symphony’s program at the Kennedy Center focused on the impact of waterways on their surrounding communities. Among the works: Dorothy Chang’s mini-oratorio The Mighty Erie Canal (for children’s chorus and orchestra), as well as three works commissioned by the Albany Symphony: Joan Tower’s Still/Rapids and Michael Torke’s The Manhattan Bridges—both featuring pianist Joyce Yang—and Michael Daugherty’s Reflections on the Mississippi, a concerto for tuba and orchestra featuring guest soloist Carol Jantsch, principal tuba of the Philadelphia Orchestra (in photo). Photo by Tony Hitchcock. -
At the Kennedy Center Concert Hall (above), the Albany Symphony performed “The River Flows Through Us,” an evocative program exploring how bodies of water connect and influence their surrounding communities, examined through the history of the waterways of upstate New York. Led by Music Director David Alan Miller, the program featured, among other contemporary scores, Dorothy Chang’s The Mighty Erie Canal, a mini-oratorio for children’s chorus and orchestra with the National Cathedral School Chorus, Voices of Glassmanor, and the Children’s Chorus of Washington. Photo by Tony Hitchcock. -
At the Kennedy Center, the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra celebrated the rich cultural life of Fort Worth’s Latin American communities as well as Music Director Miguel Harth-Bedoya’s Peruvian heritage in a program juxtaposing music by composers from South America and the United States. Two works were inspired by literary connections: the East Coast premiere of Jimmy López’s orchestral suite Bel Canto—a Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra commission from López’s 2015 opera, based on Ann Patchett’s 2001 novel of the same name—and Leonard Bernstein’s Serenade, based on Plato’s “Symposium,” with violinist Augustin Hadelich. Also featured was RIFT, a symphonic ballet by Anna Clyne that was choreographed for dancers from Texas Ballet Theater (above), who shared the stage with the musicians. -
During the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra’s Shift mini-residency in Washington, D.C., Music Director Miguel Harth-Bedoya addresses the crowd during a free concert by the Caminos del Inka chamber group at the National Museum of the American Indian. The concert focused on traditional and contemporary music from South America. Photo by Jati Lindsay. -
The Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra brought its Teddy Bear Concerts to Busboys & Poets, a Washington, D.C. community space and restaurant, to introduce preschool and kindergarten students to the orchestra through an interactive performance featuring story, movement, and live music. Featuring five musicians from the ISO and narration, The Garden Symphony followed a ladybug’s search through the garden for her own special song and explored how music creates a sense of place and home. The event was free and open to the public. Photo by Jati Lindsay. -
At the Kennedy Center, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra showcased scores by composers from Poland, inspired by Music Director Krzysztof Urbanski’s heritage. Cellist Alisa Weilerstein joined the orchestra for Witold Lutoslawski’s Concerto for Cello and Orchestra; also featured was the rarely heard Credo by Krzysztof Penderecki. Pictured with the Indianapolis Symphony musicians are Urbanski (behind podium), vocalists Erin Wall, Renée Tatum, Alyssa Martin, Thomas Cooley, and Liudas Mikalauskas, and the Indianapolis Symphonic Choir and Indianapolis Children’s Choir. Photo by Tony Hitchcock. -
During Shift, musicians of the National Symphony Orchestra ventured to the Congressional Cemetery, a 206-year-old National Historic Landmark on Capitol Hill, to perform a free chamber music concert. Photo by Jati Lindsay. -
At the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, Music Director Gianandrea Noseda led the National Symphony Orchestra and vocalists (from left) Andrew Bogard, Rexford Tester, and Madison Leonard, in a program that drew inspiration from Noseda’s Italian heritage as well as his experience at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, where he held his first important conducting post. Photo by Scott Suchman.
This article originally appeared in the Summer 2018 issue of Symphony magazine.
