The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra is in the midst of its annual “One City, One Symphony” initiative, this year featuring world premieres by Jonathan Bailey Holland, Kristin Kuster, and T.J. Cole based on poems by Maya Angelou, to be performed on November 13 and 14. The concerts will also feature Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 (“New World”) with actress/playwright/director Regina Taylor (I’ll Fly Away; Courage Under Fire; Clockers) as narrator. The CSO’s “One City, One Symphony” project was launched in 2012 with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, and includes free neighborhood listening parties, broadcasts, and community activities. This year’s theme is Freedom, commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery. The CSO this year ran a Freedom Poetry Contest, asking community members to submit poems describing what freedom means to them, with winning poems read at the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County. Listening parties featuring CSO musicians and staff in conversation with leaders from the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center are being held in area libraries as well as at MYCincinnati, a free youth orchestra program in the Price Hill neighborhood. The concerts will be recorded for a February 7, 2016 broadcast on Cincinnati Public Radio station WGUC.
Posted November 5, 2015
