As the classical music world approaches the 100th anniversary of George Gershwin’s most famous piece of music, “Rhapsody in Blue,” YOSA is celebrating with a concert called “American Rhapsodies.”
Pianist Michelle Cann solos with YOSA for this concert, and says the Gershwin piece “is really quintessential to the flavor of what we, define, as I would say, American music. And Gershwin was a big part of that in terms of helping to define that fusion of cultures. I mean, you hear jazz influences... coming from Black American, you know, musical idioms.”
The concert pairs Gershwin’s rhapsody with Florence Price’s piano concerto. Price, a Black woman in America, wrote her concerto less than a decade after Gershwin, though it’s not as well known, for reasons of race and gender, according to Cann.
YOSA’s concert opens with music by Leonard Bernstein, and also features the Texas premiere of a suite from Jennifer Higdon’s opera “Cold Mountain,” based on the novel of the same name by Charles Frazier.
The concert takes place Sunday, January 28 at 7 p.m. at the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts. Tickets and details at: https://www.tobincenter.org/americanrhapsodies
