Zeneba Bowers, founding artistic director of the Alias Chamber Ensemble and assistant principal second violin at the Nashville Symphony, “has emerged in the past year as a kind of unofficial mayor of Nashville’s progressive classical music community,” writes John Pitcher in Thursday’s (10/19) Nashville Scene (Tenn.). Alias is focusing “attention this season on the theme of immigration. Alias’ 2017-18 series [is] … devoted entirely to the music of composers, past and present, who immigrated to the United States [including] a 100th-anniversary performance in February of [Irving Berlin’s] ‘God Bless America,’ which the celebrated composer Gabriela Lena Frank has arranged specifically for Alias…. Berlin arrived at Ellis Island at age 5 after fleeing with his family from anti-Jewish pogroms in Russia.” Other spotlighted composers will include Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Miklós Rózsa, Karim Al-Zand, and Piotr Szewczyk. “Nashville’s … Hispanic community alone makes up 10 percent of Davidson County’s population…. Nashville’s arts groups have taken notice of these demographic shifts. Last year, the Nashville Symphony received a grant of $959,000 for its Accelerando education program, which is dedicated to training the next generation of minority classical musicians…. [Alias’s] first free community concert [will reach] out to community members from organizations like Conexión Américas.”
Posted October 23, 2017
Pictured: Young musicians in the Nashville Symphony’s Accelerando education program
