Among its activities in the 2018-19 season, the American Composers Orchestra will perform two concerts in Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall, the first featuring world premieres by Valerie Coleman and Alex Temple, and the second featuring the U.S. premiere of Du Yun’s Where We Lost Our Shadows. On November 2, Music Director George Manahan conducts the ACO and Imani Winds in Valerie Coleman’s Phenomenal Women Concerto for Wind Quintet and Orchestra, inspired by Maya Angelou’s poem and book Phenomenal Woman. Also on the program will be Alex Temple’s Three Principles of Noir, a commissioned premiere, and Joan Tower’s Chamber Dance (1973). On April 11, the orchestra will perform Morton Feldman’s Turfan Fragments (1980), Gloria Coates’s Symphony No. 1 (1973), and Du Yun’s Where We Lost Our Shadows. Du Yun’s work—a co-commission among ACO, Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, London’s Southbank Centre, and Cal Performances—is a musical response to the refugee crisis in Europe, with videography documenting the crisis by Khaled Jarrar; text for the work is from the poem Vehicles in the Dark by the Palestinian poet Ghassan Zaqtan, and performers will include vocalists Helga Davis and Ali Sethi and percussionist Shayna Dunkleman.
Posted February 12, 2018
