July 10, 2019 6:00-8:00pm
“Season Tune-Up” Party

July 17, 2019 at 7:00pm
Symphonic Space Odyssey: 50th Anniversary of the Moon Landing

*Moved to NEC’s Jordan Hall (30 Gainsborough St, Boston, MA 02115,) Wednesday, July 17 at 7:00 PM.

July 31, 2019 at 7:00pm
Deep River

*Concert moved to Thursday, August 1, 2019 at 7pm at the DCR’s Hatch Shell.

African American spirituals—revered today as essential anthems of the American experience—sing of oppression while glorifying freedom. Boston Landmarks Orchestra performs a selection of songs and spirituals by African American composers. We Need to Talk by Fred Onovwerosuoke shines light on race relations through the prism of music and poetry. The songs will be followed by a concert suite of excerpts and narration from Jerome Kern’s 1927 musical Show Boat. The musical introduced racial themes in forward-looking ways on the Broadway stage. Today it remains a beloved classic of American musical theater, while provoking both admiration and controversy.

The program features the One City Choir, a large symphonic choir comprising committed and passionate singers from all of Boston’s 23 neighborhoods and surrounding communities. The choir takes its name from the words of Boston civic leader Hubie Jones, who has advocated that “Boston can be one city through arts and culture.”

The concert is the culmination of a series of discussions and outreach events focusing on the history of race relations on the Broadway stage, and the role that African American music has played in shaping American culture. A panel discussion will be announced shortly, and will feature Emmett G. Price III, Dean and Executive Director of the Institute for the Study of the Black Christian Experience at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, Landmarks Orchestra board member and former Boston Public Schools Executive Director for the Arts Myran Parker-Brass, as well as Milton Wright, retired District Court Judge, Landmarks Orchestra Trustee and Music Director of Black Nativity.

Boston Landmarks Orchestra | Christopher Wilkins, conductor
One City Choir | David F. Coleman, Choirmaster
Coro Allegro | David Hodgkins, Artistic Director
Members of New England Spiritual Ensemble
Sirgourney Cook, soprano
Jennifer Ellis, soprano
Carolyn Saxon, soprano
Myran Parker-Brass, mezzo-soprano
Tai Oney, countertenor
Jonas Budris, tenor
Matthew DiBattista, tenor
Davron S. Monroe, tenor
Alvy Powell, bass-baritone
Milton Wright, bass

William Grant Still Festive Overture 
George Walker Lyric for Strings
Traditional Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel
Traditional, arr. Bonds Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho
Traditional, arr. Bonds I Got a Home in that Rock
Traditional, arr. Bonds He’s Got the Whole World in His Hand
Traditional, arr. Michael Tippett Deep River (from A Child of our Time)
R. Nathaniel Dett The Chariot Jubilee (1919)
Fred Onovwerosuoke “We Need to Talk” from A Triptych of American Voices: A Cantata of the People
Jerome Kern Show Boat in Concert

  American Sign Language (ASL) Team: Adrianna Neefus (Coordinator), Sho Grant, Christopher Robinson, Erin Sanders-Sigmon, and Shana Gibbs (Coach)

Deep River Program Book

Rain Date: Thursday, August 1, 2019. If it rains on August 1 as well, the concert will be held at First Church in Cambridge 11 Garden St, Cambridge, MA 02138.

August 14, 2019 at 7:00pm
Annual Green Concert

Boston Landmarks Orchestra and the New England Aquarium present a moving and thought-provoking orchestral program paired with videos of the environmental impacts of climate change. Stunningly evocative music accompanies dramatic landscapes captured in film and photography. David Arnold’s photographic essay on climate change astounds with its beauty and shocks with its implications. The music of Vaughan Williams’s Sinfonia antartica—first conceived as a film score—accompanies a new film shot entirely in Antarctica. Reverence for nature and a sense of foreboding reverberate in Dvořák’s masterpiece, his seventh symphony.

Boston Landmarks Orchestra | Christopher Wilkins, conductor
In partnership with New England Aquarium
Photographic Essay by David Arnold
Cassandra Extavour, soprano

Modest Mussorgsky Night on Bald Mountain
Ralph Vaughan Williams Sinfonia antartica (Symphony No. 7)
Samuel Barber Adagio for Strings
Antonín Dvořák Symphony No. 7 in D minor, Op. 70

  American Sign Language (ASL) Team: Adrianna Neefus, Christopher Robinson, and Stephanie “SJ” Hakuline (Coach)

Annual Green Concert Program Book 

Rain Date: Thursday, August 15, 2019. If it rains on August 15 as well, the concert will be held at First Church in Cambridge 11 Garden St, Cambridge, MA 02138.

August 21, 2019 at 7:00pm
Landmarks Dance Night

*Concert moved to August 22, 2019 at 7pm at the DCR Hatch Memorial Shell on the Esplanade.

Landmarks Dance Night brings music to move by from diverse cultures to the Hatch Shell. Love, magicians, and ghosts haunt the flamenco ballet, El amor brujo, inspired by tales of the Romani people. The rhythms of Haiti and Vodou culture, and the drumming of the West African diaspora inspire Bostonians of disparate backgrounds to dance, from amateurs to established professionals. The brilliant young professionals of Boston Ballet II close the 2019 season performing to The Dance of the Hours, a perennial Arthur Fiedler favorite.

Students from Conservatory Lab Charter School perform with Boston Landmarks Orchestra and soloists from Castle of our Skins. Students from Camp Harbor View will cap off a summer of unlocking creativity with a performance of a new work they will co-compose with musicians Jake Gunnar Walsh and Devin Ferreira and choreographer Chanel Thompson. Special lighting and commissioned projections will illuminate the surfaces of the Hatch Shell behind and around the orchestra.

Boston Landmarks Orchestra | Christopher Wilkins, conductor
Visuals by MASARY Studios 
Ann McMahon Quintero, mezzo-soprano
Boston Ballet II
Camp Harbor View
Jean Appolon Expressions
Yosi Karahashi, flamenco dancer
Castle of our Skins, Ashleigh Gordon, Executive & Artistic Director
Conservatory Lab Charter School

Johannes Brahms Hungarian Dances No. 5 in G minor & No. 6 in D major
Florence Price Juba Dance & Finale from Symphony No. 1
Manuel de Falla El amor brujo (1925 version)
Jake Gunnar Walsh & Devin Ferreira Full Circle
Anthony Green Choucoune
Traditional, orch. Grau Papa Loko
Franz Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2
Amilcare Ponchielli ‘Dance of the Hours’ from La Gioconda

Sponsored by:

Dance Night Program Book

Tuesday, July 23, 2019 from 6:00-8:00pm
WBUR CitySpace
Who Should Sing “Ol’ Man River”?
Portraying Race Through Musical Theatre and the Concert Stage in 2019

*This event is free to attend, but seating is limited.
Reserve your seat here.*

Jerome Kern’s iconic 1927 musical Show Boat has both a storied past and a controversial history. Unlike most Broadway musicals of its time, Show Boat put black and white performers side-by-side. Bringing black and white onto the same stage revealed the mixed-race roots of American popular music and Show Boat stimulated creative artists and performers to renegotiate the color line as expressed in the American musical. But the musical and its various movie adaptations were not without controversy. Black characters were sometimes portrayed as little more than comic caricatures, and there was a tradition of casting many of the African-American roles with white actors in blackface. The original lyrics and dialogue freely use language that is considered simply unacceptable today. But noted performers such as Paul Robeson made text changes—sometimes subtle but significant—which have now become part of the performing tradition.

In anticipation of our July 31 concert which will include spirituals, music by contemporary and historical African American composers, and selections from Show Boat, we are proud to present a community discussion which will look at how race has been portrayed in musical theatre and the concert stage over the years. The panel will also address the broader topic of how race relations continue to be an undercurrent of American music in 2019.

Panelists will include:

• Emmett G. Price III, Dean and Executive Director of the Institute for the Study of the Black Christian Experience at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary
• Ashleigh Gordon, violist and Artistic and Executive Director of Castle of Our Skins
• Todd Decker, Chair of Music Professor of Musicology, American Culture Studies; Washington University in St. Louis; author of Show Boat: Performing Race in an American Musical (Oxford University Press, 2013) and Who Should Sing “Ol’ Man River”?: The Lives of an American Song (Oxford University Press, 2015
• David F. Coleman, Director of Choral Music at the Dana Hall School in Wellesley and director of the 225-voice Tufts University Third Day Gospel Choir.
• Alvy Powell, bass-baritone; American bass-baritone opera singer and a former member of the U.S. Army Chorus. He is known for his performances at presidential events and for performing the role of Porgy in the George Gershwin opera Porgy and Bess; Powell appeared at Carnegie Hall in 2008, singing the part of Joe in Show Boat.
• Christopher Wilkins, Music Director of Boston Landmarks Orchestra
• David Hodgkins, Music Director of Coro Allegro