Sep, 11
2023
Entertainment, Free News Articles, Regional Events

The Lowell Chamber Orchestra Inaugurates Fifth Season with a Concert that Redefines the Symphony

LOWELL, Mass. -- The Lowell Chamber Orchestra opens its fifth season Saturday, September 16, 2023, with music that redefines the symphony as genre. The evening will feature music by Brittney Benton, Yoko Nakatani, Vincent Persichetti, and Arnold Schönberg, bringing a historical approach to the ever changing façade of this genre.

Both Benton and Nakatani are very active composers who were commissioned by the Lowell Chamber Orchestra back in 2020 - at the height of the pandemic - to write works for "Lowell Threads," an initiative by the Lowell Chamber Orchestra to enlist composer into writing works around a particular genre. In this case, Nakatani, Benton, and two other composers, were asked to write works in response to the eccentric chamber symphonies of Darius Milhaud. The results was the album "Miniature Symphonies." On Saturday, the Lowell Chamber Orchestra will perform in public these two pieces since the recording's release in 2021.

The concert begins with Nakatani's one-movement "La Giclée" takes its inspiration from the joy of children as they splash through water, and produced a homage to George Gershwin in a short work that requires an unusual seating arrangement. Benton's "The Sentinel" is the musical telling of a fantastic tale in which a stone golem guards the entrance to a town, and the different movements as the creature slumbers, awakens. The evening will end with Arnold Schönberg's Chamber Symphony No. 1, the work that started a trend in which composers had to learn to use much smaller forces than usual because of World War I.

The concert will also feature Adam Gallant, principal trumpet of the Lowell Chamber Orchestra, as a soloist in Persichetti's "The Hollow Men." This piece, while not technically a symphony, encompasses the profoundly deep meaning of the T. S. Eliot poem that inspired it.

As always, the Lowell Chamber Orchestra is presenting this concert for free, but donations are most necessary in order to keep its mission of providing the best of classical music without a socio-economic boundary to the Lowell population.

For more information, please visit https://lowellchamberorchestra.org/events/.

MINIATURE SYMPHONIES

Saturday, September 16th, 7:30 p.m.

Richard and Nancy Donahue Academic Arts Center

240 Central Street

Lowell, MA

MULTIMEDIA:

VIDEO (YouTube): https://youtu.be/LYjVrtT3v1Q

Related link: https://lowellchamberorchestra.org/

This news story was published by the Neotrope® News Network - all rights reserved. ID:NEO2022

Jul, 05
2023
Entertainment, Free News Articles, Regional Events

Lowell Chamber Orchestra announces fifth season, largest yet

LOWELL, Mass. -- The Lowell Chamber Orchestra has officially announced its fifth season, which will be comprised of seven concerts starting in September of this year, and running all the way until June of next year.

This season will be the most ambitious yet in LCO's history in many ways - not only there will be more concerts than ever in one season, but also will feature more living composers, more soloists, will perform in new venues, will encompass some of the most challenging chamber orchestra repertoire, and will collaborate with not one, but two other musical groups.

Three women composers will be the center of the living composers' feature. All of them commissioned by the LCO for different projects - Brittney Benton and Yoko Nakatani, who were previously commissioned for LCO's "Lowell Threads" initiative, and currently Betsy Schramm, whose piece will be premiered in December. The other two living composers are the winners of the LCO's annual international call-for-scores: this year, two composers tied and agreed to share the prize - Cory Brodack and Martin Schreiner. Both of them were selected after an anonymous process of selection from over 180 scores.

Three soloists will be featured with the ensemble this season, two of them members of the orchestra itself. Principal chair trumpet player Adam Gallant will perform Persichetti's "The Hollow Men," and concertmaster Katharina Radlberger will perform Mozart's Concerto No. 3 in G major. The third soloist is the winner of LCO's International Concerto Competition, Taiwanese marimbist Nikki Huang, based currently in Canada. She will be featured in Séjourné's Concerto for marimba.

Each concert of the season is centered around an iconic work of the classical tradition, chosen for its historical importance. In September, audiences will hear Schönberg's First Chamber Symphony, which changed how the symphony was defined as a genre; In December, Charles Ives' Third Symphony, a Pulitzer Prize winning score, depicting a very traditional American gathering in the inimitable style of Ives; In February, Bartók's mesmerizing "Music for String Instruments, Percussion and Celesta," made famous in Kubrik's film "The Shining." Finally, May culminates the season with the monumental Requiem by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, through a first time collaboration with Boston Cecilia, and its music director, Michael Barret, who will conduct one of its two performances.

"This is a celebratory year for us." says LCO's Music Director Orlando Cela. "We managed to remain active and relatively unscathed during the pandemic, and now in our fifth year, we are looking to share much more with our audiences."

As usual, the concerts are free to the public, although donations are requested from those who can afford them - LCO is committed to demolish the socio-economic barriers to classical music by providing the best professional grade classical music concerts without an onerous financial burden.

Visit http://lowellchamberorchestra.org/events to find out the details of the next season.

Related link: https://lowellchamberorchestra.org/

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Apr, 25
2023
Awards and Honors, Business, Entertainment, Free News Articles

Lowell Chamber Orchestra announces the winners of its Call-for-Scores and Concerto Competition

LOWELL, Mass. -- The Lowell Chamber Orchestra congratulates composers Cory Brodack and Martin Max Schreiner for winning the orchestra's 2023 Lowell Chamber Orchestra Call-for-Scores, and marimba player Wei-Hsing Nikki Huang, for winning the 2023 Lowell Chamber Orchestra Concerto Competition.

In this third edition of the call for scores, two composers tied for first place. Both winners agreed to split the monetary prize, as well as the free year of publishing through Universal Edition's scodo. The seven judge panel chose both winners after two rounds, the last round completely anonymous, from among 182 entries, written by professional composers, students, amateurs, and ranging in a wide variety of genres - opera scenes, sinfoniettas, concertos, and diverse combinations of chamber ensembles.

The second edition of the concerto competition was also comprised of two rounds. The first round, being virtual, was comprised of about 140 videos of an eclectic and varied mix of instruments. Twelve finalist were invited to participate, one coming from as far as Japan. Huang, who will be heard performing in the LCO concert of February 3rd, 2024, is a Taiwanese artist based in Toronto. The second prize winner was a 12-years-old violinist who impressed with his technical mastery.

The Lowell Chamber Orchestra produces these competitions as part of their mission to promote the advancement of contemporary music, and give opportunities to young performers at the beginning of their performing careers. All of the LCO concerts are completely free and provide the Lowell greater area with a professional ensemble producing extremely high quality concerts without a socio-economic barrier.

Please consider donating to our end-of-season appeal by clicking here: https://lowellchamberorchestra.org/endofseasonappeal

For more information about the winners, click on the links below:

2023 Lowell Chamber Orchestra Call-for-Scores: https://lowellchamberorchestra.org/2023-call-for-scores

2023 Lowell Chamber Orchestra Concerto Competition: https://lowellchamberorchestra.org/2023-concerto-competition

Related link: https://lowellchamberorchestra.org/

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Nov, 21
2022
Entertainment, Free News Articles, General Editorial, Regional Events

Lowell Chamber Orchestra’s December performance contemplates immigration, history

LOWELL, Mass. -- Nearly forty percent of Americans can trace at least one ancestor to Ellis Island, and the Lowell Chamber Orchestra will present a work based on three actual stories of the famous islands that encompass the immigrant experience.

Composer Gabriele Vanoni spent half year researching for his work "Island of Peoples," a multimedia composition based around three true stories from Ellis Island that are just as relevant today as they were when they happened, since they deal with struggle, pain and sadness, but also joy, love, friendship, and faith.

"My family has a connexion with Ellis Island because in the museum, you can look up for passengers," says Vanoni, "And I found the record. I found the ship where they came. When I got to passengers' search looking for my family's history, I found out about the Ellis Island Oral Histories.I found this amazing collection of stories of people who basically just left their country without knowing what to expect."

These stories are told and unfold intertwined around a few common traits: the longing for home, the perils of traveling for days, and the cultural, social and human uncertainties of the new world, through the fabric of musical mastery that only Vanoni can delivery.

When asked to describe his work "Island of Peoples," Vanoni says "What you're gonna hear is basically three snapshots. This is a multimedia work in which you will have electronic music interludes with some media projection, and you're gonna have three works for ensemble, which are snapshots of three stories."

While the ensemble is very small - flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion - Vanoni's orchestration makes it a perfect vessel to express the many feelings imbued in the stories. Soprano Mary Mackenzie and tenor Kartik Ayysola are the vocalists who bring to life the three stories, sometimes singing, sometimes speaking.

Vanoni decided on three particular stories because "it was important to give a little bit of a glimpse of the experience to the listener. The scenes do follow pretty much like a trip. So the first section talks about leaving the country. Then the interviews and the middle section talks about being on Ellis Island. And the end of it is just the legacy, if you wish: the history and the future if you wish."

Like all Lowell Chamber Orchestra concerts, the performance is free and open to the public, and will take place on: Saturday, December 17, 2022, 7:30 p.m., at Middlesex Community College's Richard and Nancy Donahue Academic Arts Center (240 Central Street, Lowell, MA).

This concert is part of Middlesex Community College's "A World of Music Concert Series."

Please click the link below for more information:

https://lowellchamberorchestra.org/island-of-peoples-fundraiser

VIDEO (YouTube): https://youtu.be/D94wBi0gmzw

Related link: https://lowellchamberorchestra.org/

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Aug, 22
2022
Business, Entertainment, Free News Articles, Product Launches

The Lowell Chamber Orchestra releases ‘Miniature Symphonies,’ a pandemic-defeating album

LOWELL, Mass. -- he Lowell Chamber Orchestra announces the release of its second album, "Miniature Symphonies," a project started at the height of the pandemic, and designed to keep selected composers and musicians active at a time of insecurity in the performing arts.

The album is part of an initiative by the Lowell Chamber Orchestra's Music Director Orlando Cela called "Lowell Threads," a way to pay homage to the textile history of the city of Lowell. The orchestra commissions a new way to showcase new composers alongside a set of works by a well-known composer, a genre, a style, etc., and programs them next to each other, allowing for a multidimensional experience akin to a fabric of new works crisscrossing with established masterpieces. In the case of these album, four living composers - Brittney Benton, Yoko Nakatani, Quinn Mason, and Kevin L. Scott - were commissioned to write a piece matching the instrumentation of one of five chamber symphonies by Darius Milhaud.

"Orlando Cela's creative ideas always inspire me, and this project was no exception," says composer Yoko Nakatani. "I was honored to be a part of it, and wish the Lowell Chamber Orchestra great success in the future with Orlando's excellent leadership. I would also like to thank the recording engineer Will Holland, who is a true professional and made a difficult process easy."

Producing this album kept a number of musicians active during the pandemic. The reduced instrumentation - no more than 10 and as little as seven players at a time - eased the finding of venues; the shortness of the works, none longer than 7 minutes, allowed more recording time to commission more composers.

"We started recording 10 feet apart from each other, and behind plexiglass shields" says LCO's Music Director Orlando Cela, "but we kept going when concert halls were closed. We were very fortunate to be able to access the beautiful spaces at Middlesex Community College Lowell campus. Such great acoustics!"

The four commissioned works sometime compliment, sometimes opposed the nature of the matching work. Las Vegas composer Brittney Benton's "The Sentinel" was written with the same instrumentation as Milhaud's first chamber symphony: while Milhaud's work (subtitled "Spring") has a bright and pastoral quality to it, Benton's work offers a dramatic story filled with foreboding. On the other hand, Dallas-based composer Quinn Mason wrote a work orchestrated for the exact instrumentation, and is heavily inspired by the style of Milhaud's fourth chamber symphony, as the title suggests - Petite Symphonie de Chambre Contemporaine (après Milhaud).

Composer Brittney Benton says, "'The Sentinel' was a joy to write, and I'm excited to bring the story I've crafted through my music to CD and to the world."

"I thoroughly enjoyed writing for the Lowell Chamber Orchestra and to have a work recorded by them is an honor. The entire process had me involved in some way so it truly felt like a fruitful collaboration," says composer Quinn Mason.

The Lowell Chamber Orchestra is Lowell's first and only professional orchestra. We provide the area with an ensemble that presents music at a very high level, of all styles and time periods, entirely free to the general population. The performances take place at Middlesex Community College, the University of Massachusetts Lowell, and at other venues around the area, to provide students easy access to concerts without leaving their respective campuses, and allow the public in general to attend a concert at a proper performance space. The LCO is a member of Lowell City of Learning, working to make Lowell an UNESCO learning city.

The album will be released this Friday, August 26th, in the most popular digital platforms. For more information about the album, visit: https://www.navonarecords.com/catalog/nv6447/

Listen to the first track of the CD here: https://tinyurl.com/LCOMason

The Lowell Chamber Orchestra survives solely by donations, you can make a huge difference by donating here: https://tinyurl.com/LCOdonate

Related link: https://lowellchamberorchestra.org/

This news story was published by the Neotrope® News Network - all rights reserved. ID:NEO2022

Aug, 12
2022
Business, Entertainment, Free News Articles

The Lowell Chamber Orchestra announces its fourth season

LOWELL, Mass. -- The Lowell Chamber Orchestra announces its fourth season, with five free concerts that look to entertain, educate, and enlighten Lowell audiences. "The season is designed to turn the western classical musical canon on its head," says Music Director Orlando Cela. "The programming elevates contemporary works above established masterpieces, demonstrating that music keeps evolving in the orchestral medium."

The season will feature works by very well-known composers such as Manuel de Falla, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Franz Joseph Haydn, but these will have very unusual features, such as flamenco style chanting, a vanishing orchestra, and unusual instruments. The newer works will have influences by grindcore punk, Latin-American rhythms, Cornish traditions, and more.

Most of the works have an important social message, such as Gabriele Vanoni's multimedia oratorio "Island of Peoples," about the immigrant experience, and Estefanía Pardo Perez's "Paikuna Saqinku," about displacement of ethnic communities due to environmental disasters - the latter piece being the winner of LCO's second call-for-scores.

"Even the last movement of Haydn's 45th symphony is a social commentary," continues Cela. "The ending is not so much about requesting to go back to Eisenstadt, as it is about demonstrating the importance of teamwork and working together (as told by Giaccomo Ferrari); and in a world where war and political tensions plague our everyday life, we program this piece as a call for global unity and peace."

The season features many guest artists: for the first time ever, the Lowell Chamber Orchestra will feature Canadian conductor Geneviève Leclair as the LCO's first ever guest conductor, and Roi Karni, the winner of LCO's first ever concerto competition. Vocalists Sophie Michaux and Rose Hegele, and cellist Leo Eguchi will also be featured, among others.

All of the concerts are completely free, consistent with the LCO's mission to provide extraordinarily high level classical music performances and take down socio-economic barriers to access these concerts. The LCO survives only through donations.

To see the entire upcoming season, click here: https://lowellchamberorchestra.org/events

To donate to the Lowell Chamber Orchestra, click here: https://tinyurl.com/LCOdonate

MULTIMEDIA:

VIDEO (YouTube): https://youtu.be/h_IHd23O9-s

Related link: https://lowellchamberorchestra.org/

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May, 23
2022
Entertainment, Free News Articles

The Lowell Chamber Orchestra is proud to present ‘LCO Pride: A Rainbow of Repertoire’

LOWELL, Mass. -- The Lowell Chamber Orchestra is proud to present "LCO Pride: A Rainbow of Repertoire" on Sunday, June 5, 2022 at Middlesex Community College in Lowell, Massachusetts. This chamber concert will celebrate Pride Month by showcasing LGBTQ+ composers from the Lowell area and around the world.

Creative director of LCO, Em Russell, states that putting on this concert has been a dream of the theirs since the orchestra's very first season! As well as works by Jean-Baptiste Lully, Benjamin Britten, this concert will showcase a World Premiere by composer Julia Moss, featuring soloist mezzo-soprano Julianna Smith, as well as exciting works by four other living composers.

Queer people have made many significant contributions to the classical music community, yet their identities are often concealed. This concert is meant to embrace and celebrate these identities, which we hope can one day become the norm in classical music culture.

Stylistically, this concert really has something for everyone, from poetry lovers to rock metal-heads. While Kevin Lubin's string quartet "The Flower Shop" includes a spoken narration with words by Virginia Woolf; Hannah Rice has written a Heavy Metal string quartet called "SQ666," which has been composed using techniques from heavy metal rock music.

This concert also features a variety of ensemble sizes, varying from string quartets all the way up to large ensemble works conducted by LCO's music director Orlando Cela. Steven Sérpa's "An Invocation," for solo oboe and strings, is a tone poem inspired by his long-time collaborator, queer poet Jeffery Beam, about the small beauties of nature. Sérpa has also written about more difficult topics, including an oratorio on HIV stigma with Inversion Ensemble and an opera responding to the Pulse nightclub shooting with companies in Chicago, Montréal, Hartford, and Austin.

Ethan Soledad's "Why Wait," for a 9-person ensemble, is about his own journey of self-discovery and defeating self-doubt. Ethan's music has been described as "bold, dramatic, and unapologetically expressive."

The largest work of the afternoon will be a World Premiere by composer Julia Moss: "The World is Too Much for Us". Written for mezzo-soprano soloist Julianna Smith and a 10-person chamber ensemble, the work is based on conversations between the composer-performer pair about the feeling of being overwhelmed by the ever-growing clutter of life. Inspired by these ideas, she chose to set the piece to a poem by William Wordsworth about how we have become so obsessed with possessing material items and controlling nature.

"By drowning out nature," Moss says, "we are really drowning out ourselves. The piece is meant to be an optimistic and empowering reminder of what we should really be paying attention to." In the fall of 2022, Moss will enroll at the University of Southern California's (USC) Thornton School of Music to earn a Masters in Music Composition.

"We also wanted to show through our programming that queer composers have stood the test of time. There are so many composers whose music we play all the time and whose names most anyone would recognize, but nobody knows they were queer. Tchaikovsky, for instance. He was queer. Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Samuel Barber, Benjamin Britten, just to name a few more of the "classics." And of course this doesn't even start to scratch the surface of the loads of queer composers living today, nor accurately represent the diversity that exists among them. But this is why we wanted to program someone as old as Baroque composer Jean-Baptiste Lully, who was born in 1632, to show that we really have been here all along, only now can we start to proudly assert our identities."

TICKETING / DONATION INFO:

The Lowell Chamber Orchestra is Lowell's first and only professional orchestra, demolishing the socio-economic barriers to classical music by always providing the area with music at a very high level, of all styles and eras. Consequently, this event is free of charge, but donations are kindly requested.

If you believe this concert to be a worthy cause and are able to contribute to the event funds, please donate at the link below. Thank you! https://glcf.fcsuite.com/erp/donate/create?funit_id=2326

"LCO: Pride: A Rainbow of Repertoire"

Sunday, June 5, 3 p.m.

Richard and Nancy Donahue Academic Arts Center

Recital Hall

240 Central Street, Lowell, MA

Free to attend, no tickets, just show up - Mask required

For more information, visit: https://lowellchamberorchestra.org/events

VIDEO (YouTube): https://youtu.be/Mua2UoBBld0

Related link: https://lowellchamberorchestra.org/

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Mar, 02
2022
Alliances and Partnerships, Business, Entertainment, Free News Articles

Lowell Chamber Orchestra makes landmark agreement with Universal Edition

LOWELL, Mass. -- The Lowell Chamber Orchestra and Universal Edition have partnered to give composers an unusual opportunity to promote their works in print. The orchestra recently announced its second call-for-scores in order to stimulate the creation of new works for chamber orchestra. Just like in the first, very successful call-for-scores, the Lowell Chamber Orchestra will select a work to be performed during its fourth season.

However, this time, in conjunction with Universal Edition, the winning composer will also win a way to publish their work with Universal Edition through their web tool scodo for one year - a value of about €600. Six finalists will win a voucher with which to publish a limited amount of works through Universal. Scores submitted through scodo can be obtained immediately via the Universal Edition website. Composers retain the large majority of rental fees.

"We are very happy with this new cooperation between the LCO and Universal Edition," says LCO's music director, Orlando Cela. "The orchestra provides a performance and professional grade audio and video for the composer to promote their work, so it's a perfect companion to have Universal Edition also promote the score in print."

The Lowell Chamber Orchestra is Lowell's first and only professional orchestra. LCO provides the Merrimack valley area with an ensemble that presents music at a very high level, of all styles and time periods, entirely free to the general population.

Now in its third season, the LCO has presented concerts that encompass established orchestral repertoire as well as multimedia works, stage works, lecture-presentations, and chamber music. As part of its mission of promoting, preserving and educating, the repertoire include works from the Baroque, to current commissions. The LCO has presented over a dozen local and world premieres by Anna Clyne, Dana Kaufman, Brian Raphael Nabors, José Luis Elizondo, Anthony R. Green, Bongani Ndodana-Breen, Jeremy Gill, and many others.

The deadline for submission to the call-for-scores is Sunday, May 1, 2022, at 11:59 p.m. EST.

Learn more at: https://lowellchamberorchestra.org/

https://lowellchamberorchestra.org/2022-call-for-scores

MULTIMEDIA:

VIDEO (YouTube): https://youtu.be/QXzrMgRyUng

Related link: https://lowellchamberorchestra.org/

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Feb, 11
2022
Entertainment, Free News Articles, Regional Events

The Lowell Chamber Orchestra combines innovation, tradition, in latest offering

LOWELL, Mass. -- On Saturday, February 19, the Lowell Chamber Orchestra will become a vessel through which works explore the concept of new and old. "Antique Modernity" is a concert that revolves around Dana Kaufman's brand new work, written specifically for the Lowell Chamber Orchestra, and works by Francis Poulenc, Georg Philip Telemann, and Jean Philip Rameau, that challenge our concepts of contemporary and traditional.

Dana Kaufman's "Greyed Rainbow" was commissioned by the Lowell Chamber Orchestra and written in 2021. When asked about her inspiration for the work, Kaufman says "I considered the concept of 'Antique Modernity' in the context of the past two years of the COVID pandemic: what do we now consider 'antique,' and what do we now consider 'modern?' What is old, and what is new? I thought of a communal melancholy, a sense of optimism, and a continued surrealness in our daily lives."

An art connoisseur, Kaufman continues: "On a visit in 2021 to the Art Institute of Chicago (in my hometown), I saw what I thought to be a fitting exploration of this 'old and new' reflected in Jackson Pollock's Greyed Rainbow. Jackson Pollock's Abstract Expressionist work, which bridges traditional and contemporary 20th-century aesthetics in visual art, has always resonated with me. One of the painting's elements that I find particularly striking is its use of palettes that may initially appear to conflict with one another. Approximately two thirds of the painting is starkly monochromatic, while the bottom third of the painting incorporates hints of several colors. Pollock's work connects bleakness and solace."

The program starts with Francis Poulenc's "Suite Française d'après Claude Gervaise," a collection of Renaissance tunes. In 1935, Poulenc arranged (with his personal touch) a few dances in Claude Gervaise's "Livre de Danceries" for an unusual combination of winds, brass and percussion instruments - "unusual" for our times, but probably common during Gervaise's time.

The concert will continue with a concerto for two instruments seldom seen together: recorder, and transverse flute. Written by Georg Philip Telemann, this is the only concerto to make use of this combination, conceived at a time when the orchestras of the time were growing, and the sweet sound of the recorder was slowly being replaced by the traverso - the Baroque equivalent of the modern flute.

The end of the program is a suite from the opera "Castor et Pollux," by Jean-Philippe Rameau, which tells the fantastic origins of the constellation Gemini. The music, which at the time was designed to be arranged for whatever instruments were available at a given ensemble, finds a modern design in LCO's brand new orchestration. The suite will be accompanied with a slideshow that will tell the story of the opera.

The concert is free to attend, as always. Attendees will be able to meet composer Dana Kaufman. For more information, please visit https://lowellchamberorchestra.org/

WHEN:

Saturday, February 19, 2022, 7:30 p.m.

WHERE:

Richard and Nancy Donahue Academic Arts Center

240 Central Street, Lowell, MA

VIDEO (YouTube): https://youtu.be/0Rd37JM1DIE

Related link: https://lowellchamberorchestra.org/

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Nov, 16
2021
Entertainment, Free News Articles

Lowell Chamber Orchestra presents ‘As One,’ the most produced contemporary opera in North America, on the Transgender Day of Remembrance

LOWELL, Mass. -- Lowell Chamber Orchestra is proud to present "As One" on Saturday, November 20, 2021, 7:30 p.m., at Middlesex Community College. The critically acclaimed, 75-minute chamber opera created by composer Laura Kaminsky and librettists Kimberly Reed and Mark Campbell with film by Ms. Reed, has had nearly 50 productions around the world and, according to OPERA America, is the most produced contemporary opera in North America.

In "As One," two voices-Hannah after and Hannah before-share the part of a sole transgender protagonist. Fifteen songs comprise the three-part narrative; with empathy and humor, they trace Hannah's experiences from her youth in a small town to her college years-and finally traveling alone to a different country, where she realizes some truths about herself.

For the first time in the opera's history, "As One" will be performed by an entirely gender-expansive cast: mezzo-soprano Tona Brown and baritone Rahzé Cheatham will play "Hannah after" and "Hannah before," respectively. Further, the work will be performed on the Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day that commemorates violence against the transgender community.

Says Ms. Brown: "Hannah's story is a story of struggle, self discovery and triumph...and anyone can relate to that even if they don't know much about transgender people. For the first time in history transgender people can see themselves represented on the stage of an opera! This performance will go down in history!"

Orlando Cela, music director for Lowell Chamber Orchestra, will conduct with stage direction by Em Russell.

Like all Lowell Chamber Orchestra concerts, the concert is free of charge, but donations are kindly requested. Audiences must show proof of vaccination upon entry and remain masked during the entirety of the opera.

Learn more: https://lowellchamberorchestra.org/events/as-one

SUMMARY:

"As One"

Saturday, November 20, 7:30 p.m.

Richard and Nancy Donahue Family Academic Arts Center

Middlesex Community College

240 Central Street, Lowell, MA

Presented by Middlesex Community College "A World of Music" Concert Series

Sponsored by the Greater Lowell Community Foundation, and Parma Recordings

REVIEWS:

"As One forces you to think, simultaneously challenging preconceptions and inspiring empathy." - The New York Times

"Its universality is key to As One's becoming the hottest new American opera of recent years. It challenges us to ponder questions of authenticity, identity, compassion and self-love. And it does so without preachiness." - The Chicago Tribune

Related link: https://lowellchamberorchestra.org/

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