PROGRAM

Ludwig van Beethoven: Overture to Fidelio
Margaret Bonds: The Montgomery Variations
Jessie Montgomery: Five Freedom Songs
Ludwig van Beethoven: Leonore Overture No. 3

DESCRIPTION

Music and the struggle for freedom go hand in hand. Here, Carlos Kalmar pairs overtures written for Beethoven’s French Revolution-era drama Fidelio with two works championing freedom and social justice in our own country: Jessie Montgomery’s Five Freedom Songs, based on the historical anthology Slave Songs of the United States, and Chicago-composer Margaret Bonds’s Montgomery Variations, dedicated to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.