New York’s Albany Symphony and Music Director David Alan Miller will present the ASO’s fourteenth annual American Music Festival at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute from May 14 to 16, with Derek Bermel’s The Migration Series as its centerpiece. The Migration Series, inspired by a series of 60 paintings from 1941 by Harlem Renaissance painter Jacob Lawrence depicting the migration northward of millions of African Americans after World War I, is scored for jazz band embedded in a symphony orchestra and was created for and premiered by Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra in 2006. The Juilliard Jazz Orchestra will serve as jazz band at the Albany Symphony. The Museum of Modern Art in New York is currently exhibiting all 60 images of the Jacob Lawrence collection; ASO patrons may attend a private tour in May. Also on the program with The Migration Series will be Michael Daugherty’s Flute Concerto (“Trail of Tears”), about the forced migration of the Cherokee Nation during Andrew Jackson’s presidency. Other works exploring the theme of migration are Clint Needham’s We Are All from Somewhere Else and Andrea Reinkemeyer’s Liquid Heart.
Posted April 29, 2015
