N.C. to D.C. Your Symphony Brings North Carolina Pride to the Kennedy Center

Have you heard the buzz? Your North Carolina Symphony is one of just Mark DeChiazza, which includes footage from the Piedmont region. Af- four American selected to participate in the inaugural year ter giving the world premiere of Hiraeth last spring in North Carolina— of SHIFT: A Festival of American Orchestras, taking place in Washington, including a Salisbury performance—we look forward to sharing this D.C., this coming March. Together with the Atlanta Symphony , evocative music and imagery with audiences in D.C. Boulder Philharmonic, and the Brooklyn-based ensemble The Knights, NCS will open and close the Kennedy Center program with two works by NCS was chosen for this prestigious festival for our artistic excellence, the late composer Robert Ward (1917-2013). His Jubilation Overture, writ- creative programming, and dedication to serving and building relation- ten in the World War II era, is exuberant and tune-filled, and City of Oaks ships in communities across North Carolina. When we head to D.C. is a 2010 celebration of the city of Raleigh. Ward was a professor this spring, we’d love to have you join us! of music at Duke University and spent the last 35 years of his The North Carolina Symphony is deeply committed to life in the Triangle. presenting artists and works with ties to our state, and During the SHIFT festival, NCS will immerse our mu- our musical culture will be ever-present during our res- sic-making outside of the concert hall as well, reflect- idency in the nation’s capital. Our mainstage concert at ing the community-focused programs we offer here the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on at home. On March 30, we will perform another work March 29 features an Americana-style program deeply by Sarah Kirkland Snider, Unremembered, at the Kogod evocative of North Carolina. Championing the music of Courtyard at the National Portrait Gallery and Smithso- our time, the program consists entirely of works by ex- nian American Art Museum. Featuring Shara Nova (My traordinary composers who wrote, or are continuing to Brightest Diamond), the performance will echo the type of write, in the 21st century: Caroline Shaw, Mason Bates, Sarah concerts the Symphony holds at the Raleigh bar Kings, and Kirkland Snider, and Robert Ward. at restaurants such as Irregardless Café and Humble Pie through the Caroline Shaw—a New York-based composer, violinist, and vocalist— Soundbites at the Pub series. originally hails from Greenville, North Carolina, where some of her ear- Music education is at the core of NCS’s mission and identity—the Sym- liest musical experiences were NCS Education Concerts. In 2013, at age phony runs the most extensive program of any U.S. orchestra, traveling 30, she became the youngest-ever winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music statewide and engaging more than 50,000 students each year. Bringing for her enigmatic composition Partita for 8 Voices. NCS is proud to high- that commitment to D.C., we will give two education performances for light homegrown talent by performing Shaw’s Lo, with the composer public schoolchildren at a community center in the city. playing the partially improvised solo violin part. The Symphony co-com- missioned the piece and first performed it with Shaw last fall. Indy Week NCS’s participation in the SHIFT festival will not only draw national at- praised the “ever-shifting layers of sound” and shimmering melodies that tention to the Symphony, but also to our state’s culture and heritage— were “always just a short step away from song.” which has defined our work and musical offerings since our founding in 1932. Celebrate North Carolina and your state Symphony. Join us in Distinguished as the second-most performed living composer in the Washington, D.C. for the SHIFT festival! , Mason Bates brilliantly and beautifully expands the or- chestral sound by incorporating electronic effects. In , Destination D.C. a beat track under lush harmonies and bluesy tunes evokes katydids and cicadas on a summer night. Bates explains, “The work uses electronics to The North Carolina Symphony performs at the Kennedy Center as part bring the white noise of the Southern summer into the concert hall, pair- of the SHIFT festival on Wednesday, March 29. For tickets, visit kennedy- center.org. ing these sounds with fluorescent orchestra textures that float gently by.” Can’t make it to D.C.? Last season, NCS co-commissioned a new work by Sarah Kirkland Snider, NCS will hold two preview performances in Raleigh: Kennedy Cen- Hiraeth, inspired by childhood visits to her grandparents’ home in Salis- ter Bon Voyage! at Meymandi Concert Hall on Friday, March 24 and bury. The title is a Welsh word that loosely translates to “homesickness” Unremembered at CAM Raleigh on Saturday, March 25. For tickets and and the music is deeply emotional, affected by Snider’s loss of her father more information, visit ncsymphony.org. as she was composing. The piece is accompanied by an original film by

96 FALL 2016