For the Chicago Sinfonietta’s season-opening concert on September 14 at Chicago’s Symphony Center, Mei-Ann Chen will lead a program showcasing urban dance culture. The “eMotion” program will include a commissioned world premiere, an “orchestral dance mix” of music arranged by Sam Shoup incorporating five scenes from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake and the third and fourth movements of Symphony No. 1 by Florence Price, an African-American composer who lived in Chicago from 1927 to 1953. Performing in the premiere will be members of two Chicago hip-hop troupes: professional dancers from FootworKINGz and junior dancers of Kuumba Lynx. Shoup, a staff arranger for the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C. serves on the music faculty at the University of Memphis and Southwest Tennessee Community College. Also on the program—to be repeated at Wentz Concert Hall in Naperville on September 15—are Khachaturian’s Sabre Dance and Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances, Op. 45.
Posted September 12, 2013
