The New Haven Symphony Orchestra and Music Director Perry So (at far right) with performers and creative team for its concert of Beethoven’s Creature of Prometheus. Photo by Matt Fried, courtesy of New Haven Symphony Orchestra.
In the November 25 New Haven Arts, Lucy Gellman writes, “Sharmont ‘Influence’ Little … brought fire to Southern Connecticut State University on Sunday, as the New Haven Symphony Orchestra (NHSO) staged a thrilling, audacious, and fully reimagined take on Beethoven’s The Creatures of Prometheus with poetry, dance, and healing drums at the John Lyman Center for the Performing Arts. A collaboration with New Haven’s inaugural poet laureate and Tia Russell Dance Studio, the work became a conversation made for the moment, in which artists pushed back at a world upturned by violence…. ‘I had the opportunity to … think, what can we do together to tell a story that is kind of universal and extends through thousands of years of human history, but at the same time, can bring us back to the current moment and give us something to leave the theater with?’ New Haven Symphony Music Director Perry So said. ‘Something that reflects on the life that we’re living together.’… [Little’s poetry] threaded a narrative needle for the performance, the most striking parts of which placed poetry and dance in direct conversation with the symphony and with each other.”
