Wallace Baine - Lookout Santa Cruz
“It’s going to be a tremendously emotional moment for all of us to connect again with the community,” he said. “We’re going to be sharing a program that is designed to be as cathartic as possible to what’s going on, in terms of how we can share these moments of mourning and celebration.”
“I’d love to start with the happiest, most joyful we’re-back moment,” said Stewart. “But it was very important to me that the Barber ‘Adagio’ be the first sounds that come from the stage to really honor the traumatic side of what so many people have been going through publicly or inwardly for the last two years.”
Stewart is focusing on diversity of repertoire. January’s “Rites of Passage” features a performance of “Unburied, Unmourned, Unmarked,” by Carmel Valley-based African American composer John Wineglass. The piece is based on the African slave trade and features a libretto written by historian Edda L. Fields-Black. The narration of the piece will come courtesy of Santa Cruz gospel/blues singer Tammi Brown.
Similarly, in February, the Symphony will fuse the spirit of Beethoven with the power of Amanda Gorman’s poem “The Hill We Climb,” famously read by the author at the Presidential inauguration in January. That concert will feature a variety of cultural expressions, from a piece by South Korean composer Unsuk Chin to a dance piece from Mexican composer Jose Pablo Mancayo titled “Huapango” and performed on stage by Watsonville’s celebrated dance troupe Esperanza Del Valle.
