Narragansett Bay Symphony Community Orchestra Concert

The Narragansett Bay Symphony Community Orchestra, Rhode Island’s premier community orchestra, presents its Season Opener Concert, on Saturday, October 28, 2023 at 7:30 pm in the auditorium of East Providence High School, 2000 Pawtucket Avenue, East Providence, RI.

The concert begins with a rousing rendition of Johann Sebastian Bach’s ‘Fantasia and Fugue’ reimagined by British composer, Edward Elgar. Both composers were musical innovators who dared to challenge traditional musical boundaries.

Since October is ‘Breast Cancer Awareness Month’, NaBSco, with music director Kristo Kondakçi and guest choral conductor Dr. Joseph Amante y Zapata, will bring the poignant piece ‘Sheltering Voices’ by Stephanie Ann Boyd, to life with the women’s voices of Coro Amante and soprano soloist, Krista Wilhelmsen. ’Sheltering Voices’ was commissioned in 2018 by the Boston based Eureka Ensemble for the Women’s Chorus which partnered with the ‘Women’s Lunch Place’. ‘Sheltering Voices’ is based on the poem by Jessica Lynn Suchon about the experience of homelessness for women.

The closing work is the revolutionary Symphony in E Minor, Op. 32, the ‘Gaelic Symphony’ by American composer Amy Cheney Beach. She was inspired by Antonin Dvořák’s unique blending of his homeland’s Bohemian folk songs with American themes. Amy Beach, in her ‘Gaelic Symphony’, has interlaced old English, Scottish, and Irish melodies with American musical genres. The Gaelic Symphony was the first symphony by an American composer to use folk songs as themes. This symphony, written in 1896, was also the first symphony composed and published by an American woman composer.

Admission is ‘Pay what you think is fair.’ Please help to support the RI food bank by bringing a non-perishable food item.

For more information or to purchase tickets, visit NaBSCO’s website, www.nabsco.org  or call 401-274-4578.