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Béla Fleck and American Excellence – Burlington
September 27 @ 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm
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Note there is a limited quantity of $10 student and music teacher tickets available for this concert.
VSO’s 90th anniversary at the Flynn kicks off with an all-American program and two living greats: virtuoso banjoist Béla Fleck and composer Adolphus Hailstork. Fleck makes his East Coast debut with his catchy arrangement of Rhapsody in Blue for banjo, and this concert marks the VSO’s premiere performance of William Grant Still’s Symphony No. 1. Still’s symphony includes narrated epigraphs written by Paul Laurence Dunbar; these and works by other prominent Black writers will be narrated by Ashley Snow. Conducted by VSO Music Director Andrew Crust.
The concert begins at 7:30 p.m. and is preceded at 6:30 p.m. by Musically Speaking, a free pre-concert discussion that provides entertaining insight into the evening’s program with Vermont Public classical radio host James Stewart.
PROGRAM
Adolphus Hailstork – An American Port of Call
George Gershwin – An American in Paris
Intermission
George Gershwin – Rhapsody in Blue (arranged for banjo by Béla Fleck)
William Grant Still – Symphony No. 1 (“Afro-American”)
This concert is generously sponsored by The TD Bank Foundation, the Vermont Community Foundation Concert Artists Fund, McSoley McCoy & Co., Vermont Public, Vermont Humanities, the State of Vermont, and VSO’s Endowment Funds and JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) Fund.
