Kazem Abdullah

Program

RESPIGHI Botticelli Triptych
‍TCHAIKOVSKY Variations on a Rococo Theme
‍MOZART Symphony No. 41 in C Major ("Jupiter")

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Ravel's delightful Piano Concerto in G, filled with the sounds of American Jazz and Spanish Basque folk music, serves as the centerpiece of this multimedia concert exploring New World Encounters, and the influences of Jazz on three major European composers - Paul Hindemith, Igor Stravinsky, and Maurice Ravel. This scripted program also includes Stravinsky's Symphony in Three Movements, excerpts from Hindemith's Symphonic Metamorphosis, and music from the famed Woody Herman band.

Iconic American pianist Lara Downes joins Maestro Kazem Abdullah in a celebration of American music. Irving Fine’s energetic Toccata Concertante opens a program that includes a preview performance of a brand new concerto by the dean of American composers, Adolphus Hailstork. George Gershwin’s beloved An American in Paris brings the concert to a joyous conclusion.

Anthony Davis’s groundbreaking and influential opera, which premiered in 1986, arrives at the Met at long last. Theater luminary and Tony-nominated director of Slave Play Robert O’Hara oversees a potent new staging that imagines Malcolm as an Everyman whose story transcends time and space. An exceptional cast of breakout artists and young Met stars enliven the operatic retelling of the civil rights leader’s life. Baritone Will Liverman, who triumphed in the Met premiere of Fire Shut Up in My Bones, sings Malcolm X, alongside soprano Leah Hawkins as his mother, Louise; mezzo-soprano Raehann Bryce-Davis as his sister Ella; bass-baritone Michael Sumuel as his brother Reginald; and tenor Victor Ryan Robertson as Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad. Kazem Abdullah conducts the newly revised score, which provides a layered, jazz-inflected setting for the esteemed writer Thulani Davis’s libretto.

Fazil Say, piano

L. Boulanger — D'un matin de printemps
Ravel — Piano Concerto in G Major
Copland — Symphony No. 3

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Music by Anthony Davis; Libretto by Thulani Davis; Story by Christopher Davis

Activist. Orator. Husband. Leader. One of the most misunderstood figures in US history, Malcolm X was an icon of the civil rights movement. Get to know the man through a series of biographical vignettes that follow Malcolm X from his interrupted childhood in Lansing, Michigan to his tragic murder in Harlem. With a score by Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer Anthony Davis (Central Park Five) that fuses elements of modernism, minimalism, and jazz, X produces a sound world that is unmistakably individual.

‍Humperdinck: Prelude to Hansel and Gretel‍

‍Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto

‍Sibelius: Symphony No. 5

Sirena Huang, violin

British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor dazzles his way through Liszt’s colorful First Piano Concerto. The program begins with Roland furieux, a symphonic poem by Augusta Holmès, a composer with close ties to Liszt and Saint-Saëns in the late 19th century. Indianapolis born conductor Kazem Abdullah concludes with Saint-Saëns brilliant organ symphony, a piece that was dedicated to Liszt.