Does folk music belong in an orchestra? Yes! This program features a century of American composers continuing to answer Antonín Dvořák's 1893 proposition that "American" symphonic music should come from the folk material of early America — specifically pointing to Black spirituals and Native American influences. From Amy Beach's use of Irish melodies in her Gaelic Symphony, to Julia Perry's use of Black spirituals in her Three Spirituals, to the sounds of México, and with the newest composers of today (Professor Laurie San Martin), the symphony orchestra is for everyone who wants to make it their own.

About the Composers

• Julia Perry (1924–1979) was an American composer, pianist, and conductor born in Kentucky and raised in Akron, Ohio. Trained at Juilliard and at Tanglewood, where she studied with Aaron Copland and Luigi Dallapiccola, she became the first Black woman to have an orchestral work performed by the New York Philharmonic. Three Spirituals for Orchestra reworks traditional African American spirituals using 20th-century compositional techniques.
• Chris Castro is a composer and double bassist from Brooklyn, New York, and Assistant Professor of Music at Chapman University. He is a recipient of Chamber Music America's 2021 Classical Commissioning Award, where one of the jurors described his music as "On par with Varèse," giving him the nickname "The New Colossus of Sounds." Castro has a Ph.D. in composition and theory from UC Davis, and a bachelor's in Music from the Juilliard School in both double bass and composition.
• Amy Beach (1867–1944) was a largely self-taught American composer and pianist who became the first American woman to have a symphony performed by a major orchestra. Her "Gaelic" Symphony (1896), written partly in response to Dvořák's call for American composers to draw on folk material, wove Irish folk melodies into a large-scale Romantic symphonic form.