May 5 2024

Spring Concert: "Transformations"

• 3:00 PM
• Scottish Rite Masonic Museum (directions)

33 Marrett Road Lexington MA 02421 - free parking

Pre-Concert Talk 30 minutes prior to performance

Enjoy this afternoon of transformative music, opening with a 1906 opera overture, The Wreckers, by English composer and member of the women's suffrage movement, Ethel Smyth, whose amazing music is now, a century later, gaining its due recognition. Musical variations and transformations are explored in Copland's treatment of the famous Shaker melody Simple Gifts, as well as the wonderful 2010 composition by New England Conservatory composition faculty member Michael Gandolfi, Flourishes and Meditations on a Renaissance Theme. Meghan MacFadden conducts the "riotously funky" Blow it Up, Start Again, for which the score's program note indicates, if the system isn't working anymore, then do what Guy Fawkes tried and go anarchist: blow it all up, and start again. Local middle school and high school students join the MetWinds for performances of selected works, including Old Home Days by American renegade and New England's own master of musical transformation, Charles Ives.

The Wreckers Overture	Ethel Smyth/arr. Morrison
Variations on a Shaker Melody	Aaron Copland
Flourishes and Meditations on a Renaissance Theme	Michael Gandolfi
Americans We	Henry Fillmore
Blow it Up, Start Again Meghan MacFadden, assistant conductor	Johnathan Newman
The Liberty Bell March	J. P. Sousa/ed. U.S. Marine Band
A Little Tango Music	Adam Gorb
Old Home Days	Charles Ives/arr. Elkus
Metamarch	Steve Bryant