Naperville

Chicago Sinfonietta
Vinay Parameswaran, conductor

PROGRAMME

Frank: Elegia Andina (Andean Elegy)

Contreras: Alma Monarca (Monarch Soul)

Dvorak: Symphony No. 8

FOLK & SOUL is the second subscription concert of Chicago Sinfonietta’s 2024-25 Season. Guest Conductor Vinay Parameswaran collaborated with Music Director Mei-Ann Chen to bring audiences a program that contemplates ancestry, homelands and guiding spirits.

The concert opens with Gabriela Lena Frank’s Elegia Andina (Andean Elegy). The piece marks the composer’s first musical foray into exploring her diverse ethnic background, Chinese-Peruvian-Spanish (her mother) and Lithuanian-Jewish (her father). It draws on the Peruvian arca/ira zampoña panpipe to form musical elegiac poetry.

For the second season in a row, the works of Mexican Composer Juan Pablo Contreras are celebrated at the Sinfonietta. Newly commissioned Alma Monarca (Monarch Soul) explores the flight of two Monarch butterflies as they soar to their Mexican homeland near the Day of the Dead.

We close the evening with a genre-defining piece. Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8 is one of his best-known works, celebrated for its integration of Czech folk melodies with classical symphonic structure. The symphony, in four movements, exudes warmth, lyricism, and a joyful spirit, characteristic of Dvořák's style.