Eurythmy Spring Valley Ensemble Presents

A Shovel of Stars Overhead: Where To? What Next?

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2023
7:30 pm

“A Shovel of Stars Overhead: Where to? What next?” embodies the longing, questioning, and bewilderment that belong to this moment in America, while asking where, from whom, and how something greater can come to be. The program is inspired by the words and compositions of a diversity of artists who poignantly reflect the tensions of their own time. These include the beloved and influential Langston Hughes, statesman Archibald MacLeish, the modern lyric Denise Levertov, and great American bard, Walt Whitman. Levertov and other poets in the program orient us to the transcendent presence of the invisible in our midst. Evocative 20th-century American composer Henry Cowell sets the stage, while contemporary composer Grigory Smirnov threads through the tensions to a quieter, inner place. The rich harmonies of Sibelius and Chopin weave past into future, and east into west, leading us to the grandeur, purpose, and elemental urge in Antonin Dvorak's final movement of the “Dumky” piano trio. Written not long before Dvorak’s maiden voyage to America, the trio’s changing harmonies and rhythms seem to anticipate the dawning vistas of a new land, and reflect something of the elusive and vast, young and surging, fighting but maturing American spirit.

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Eurythmy:
Colleen Foglia, Virginia Hermann, Cameron MacArthur,
Wei Rung, Barbara Schneider-Serio, Sea-Anna Vasilas

Recitation: Jennifer Kleinbach
Piano: Grigory Smirnov
Violin: Elena Hirsu
Cello: Christoph Grieder

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Tickets at the Door: $18 (regular), $12 (students and seniors)

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