Location: The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, Dekelboum Concert Hall
Mei-Ann Chen, music director of the Chicago Sinfonietta, makes her NOI+F conducting debut for an evening of works rich with concept and complexity. We begin with the “sturm und drang” (storm and stress) of Grammy-nominated contemporary composer Anna Clyne's boisterous Restless Oceans, a natural lead-in to Claude Debussy's symphonic masterpiece La mer (The sea). One of the most influential and regularly performed works of the contemporary era, the frolicking sway and spontaneous tumult of La mer found its inspiration in French and Japanese visual art of the late 19th century and from the peaks and crashes of Debussy's own intensely stormy personal life. The second half begins with Outburst, an exuberant and declamatory introduction from composer Michael Abels that ushers in Bela Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra. The 1943 Concerto was Bartók's final completed work and likely his best known. A still-audible openness to the influence of popular music and its resounding clarity of narrative have made the concerto a timeless point of access for orchestral newcomers.
This event is part of the 2024 The National Orchestral Institute + Festival.