The Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago’s Millennium Park, home of the Grant Park Music Festival and the Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus. Inset: Imani Winds performed at the festival on June 25.
In Thursday’s (6/26) Chicago Classical Review, Landon Hegedus writes, “After a (literally) stormy start to the Grant Park Music Festival’s 2025 season, the clouds have parted for Giancarlo Guerrero. The festival’s new artistic director and principal conductor faced torrential rain and oppressive heat in the first concerts of his premiere season, performing admirably … while demonstrating facility in … hearty European fare and the American repertoire that is his (and the festival’s) stock in trade…. In Mozart’s ‘Paris’ Symphony (No. 31), Guerrero abstained from beating time throughout much of the exterior movements, opting for restrained gestures to keep the propulsive tempi floating … Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis opened the program…. Guerrero’s reading found its mark, serving up equal parts of fine-grained intensity and measured transparency … The evening’s central offering was a work entitled ‘Phenomenal Women,’ featuring the venerable woodwind quintet Imani Winds and composed by … Valerie Coleman. Composed in 2018, the work is a portrait gallery of five Black women celebrated for their outstanding contributions to their fields: Maya Angelou, Katherine Johnson, Serena Williams, Michelle Obama, and Claressa Shields…. Coleman’s neo-Romantic vernacular borders on the cinematic, and proves a fitting tonal palette for evoking her chosen subjects.”
