Long-time NOI+F collaborator and Albany Symphony Music Director David Alan Miller leads the NOI Philharmonic in their first performance since 2019. The program brings together works that create a cycle of drama, separation, sorrow, healing and victory–perfectly encapsulating life during the twin pandemics facing our country.
Commissioned in 1981 by NOI+F partner American Composers Orchestra, Lumina, by St. Louis-born composer Olly Wilson, combines intricate rhythmic figures with lush harmonic textures to create a dramatic orchestral landscape. Grammy-nominated composer-performer Missy Mazzoli’s These Worlds In Us is a homage to her father, a soldier who served in the Vietnam War. Juxtaposing rushes of blissful sound against music that is sorrowful, the piece is an unforgettable meditation on the nature of grief and joy. Viet Cuong's percussion quartet concerto Re(new)al breathes (renewable) energy into this year’s festival through a series of movements based on hydro, wind and solar energies. Rounding out the performance is Robert Schumann’s splendid Symphony No. 3, “Rhenish”–a series of echoes from Germany’s gloriously scenic Rhine River. Epitomizing the beauty of life by the Rhine, the Rhenish Symphony traverses various leisurely scenes that conclude with a vigorous and sunny finale.