• CONDUCTOR
  

  Kristian Sallinen

• SOLOIST, MEZZO-SOPRANO
  

  Sive Misund

Program

• Zoltan Kodaly (1882–1967)
  Galántai táncok (Galanta’s Dancer) (1933)

• Jessie Montgomery
  (1981–)Five Freedom Songs (2021)
  1. My Lord, What a Morning
  2. I Want to Go Home
  3. Lay dis Body Down
  4. My Father, How Long?
  5. The Day of Judgment.BREAK
• Jessie MontgomeryRecords from a Vanishing City (2016)
• Jean Sibelius
  (1865–1957)Symphony No. 7, Op. 150 (1918–1924)

About the concert

Our Thursday concert has become a regular highlight during Kamfest and tonight festival composer Jesse Montgomery gets to frolic, not only with a full symphony orchestra, but also with Siv Misund’s beautiful and warm mezzo-soprano sound.

Five Freedom Songs is a song cycle that honors the African-American musical heritage, but in a more non-traditional setting. The songs are accompanied by strings and percussion in a composition that is described as sensitive and expressive.

Records from a Vanishing City is a tone poem that depicts the music she grew up with and had around her in Lower Manhattan – an energetic and colorful mix of Latin jazz, Western art music, alternative rock, avant-garde jazz, poetry, Caribbean electronica and Angolan lullabies.

Her compositions are balanced by two opposite poles; Kodaly’s rhythmic Hungarian folk dances and Sibelius’ cool Nordic light. Kodaly’s Dances of Galanta takes us on a journey through the Hungarian plains and into the teeming city streets, while Sibelius’ short Symphony No. 7 gives us some wonderful prisms of the orchestra’s timbres, where every single note is vividly alive.