2024 - 2025 Season Recap
A new Era
SOLI's 31st Season
This season was a celebration of the connection these artists have had with each other, the city of San Antonio, and musicians all around the world. This season also marked the kick-off of our Showcase seasons, a culmination of the 30x30x30 initiative that gives voice to up-and-coming composers through workshops and concerts.
2024 - 2025 Concerts and Events
SOLI’s first concert of its 31st season was Elementos, featuring Grammy Award-nominated composer, pianist, vocalist, and educator Clarice Assad. Elementos, Assad’s song cycle inspired by the four elements earth, fire, water, and air, features her as the primary voice of the narrative and anchors the evening. The concert also presented Danza Nocturno by Puerto Rican composer Iván Enrique Rodríguez, described as a gifted colorist with an abundance of emotional energy and the means to communicate it.
At the center of the evening were the next three works from SOLI’s signature anniversary initiative, the 30x30x30 Project: Four Sketches by Eric Delgado, Phantasmagoria by Meg Okura, and Saghat by Adeliia Faizullina will receive their first project performances. Each of the thirty works selected as part of 30x30x30 will receive performances in San Antonio and around the country during 2024 and 2025 by SOLI and its cohort of performance partners.
Click to view the program here.
Program
Iván Enrique Rodríguez | Danza Nocturno (2023) | clarinet, violin, piano
Eric Delgado | Four Sketches (2017) | clarinet, violin, cello, piano
a 30x30x30 Project work
I. Mirages
II. Chant
III. Depths
IV. Festival
Meg Okura | Phantasmagoria (2020) | bass clarinet/clarinet, violin, cello
a 30x30x30 Project work
Adeliia Faizullina | Saghat (2023) | violin, cello, piano
a 30x30x30 Project work
Clarice Assad | Elementos (2016) | mezzo-soprano, clarinet, violin, cello, piano
I. Flor de Lã
II. Fogaréu
III. Maré de Água Viva
IV. Esconderijo
Open Mic Night VIII:
SOLI’s annual community event in partnership with Texas Public Radio highlights San Antonio’s closet crooners and avid weekend-warrior performers presenting their favorite classical works written after 1970.
Texas Public Radio recorded the event for broadcast on Performance Saturday! Click the link to hear the full event courtesy of TPR.I
Showcase I
A weekend of works from SOLI’s 30x30x30 Project performed by SOLI and fellow musicians from the greater San Antonio area
Program
February 15, 2025:
Meg Okura | Phantasmagoria (2020)
bass clarinet/clarinet, violin, cello
Alexandros Darna | In Memoriam (2023)
clarinet, cello, piano
Yeonsuk Jung | Water Skeeter Un_raveling (2022)
violin cello, piano
The Pearl Trio
Krishan Rai | Wingbeats (2023)
violin, cello, percussion, piano
The Pearl Trio & Peter Flamm
February 16, 2025:
Terrell Cordice | Guilty Pleasures (2023)
flute, clarinet, violin, cello
Eric Estrada Valadez | Spare Parts Spin (2022)
flute, clarinet, violin, cello
Sebastian Quesada | Postliminal Danza (2018/2024)
(from Mirrors: a Trio in Three Movements)
clarinet, violin, piano
EJ Donkin | The Lighthouse Keeper (2021)
flute, clarinet, violin, cello
Cancionero
SOLI’s final concert of its 31st season, Cancionero, presented the world premiere of Cancionero de luto (Mourning Songbook) by Puerto Rican-born Cuban composer Armando Bayolo. This heart-wrenching response to the shooting in 2022 at Robb Elementary School and others like it sets six texts in as many languages to fill the need for an ecumenical music of grief that also embraces freethinkers, atheists, and other non-spiritual traditions. Commissioned by SOLI Chamber Ensemble and Yale University for its Choral Arts Ensemble of the Yale Divinity School, this new work is scored for small ensemble and chorus, and marks SOLI’s second collaboration with the San Antonio Chamber Choir.
The evening also included Blaze by Dianna Link from SOLI’s signature anniversary initiative, the 30x30x30 Project, Shawn Okpebholo’s reimagining of Amazing Grace for solo piano, and entre azul y buenas noches by Marco-Adrián Ramos, winner of the 2023 Cross-Country Chamber Consortium.
Program
Dianna Link | Blaze (2021) | flute, clarinet, violin, cello, percussion, piano
a 30x30x30 Project work
Shawn Okpebholo | Amazing Grace (2006) | piano solo
Marco-Adrián Ramos | entre azul y buenas noches (2024) | flute, clarinet and bass clarinet, violin, cello, piano
2023 Cross-Country Chamber Consortium winner
Armando Bayolo | Cancionero de Luto (2024) | flute, clarinet and bass clarinet, violin, cello, percussion, piano, chorus
World Premiere
I. Introit
1. Prologue: Cortége de mirroir
2. Tama Matsuri
II. Prima Sequentia
3. Lamentatio (1): Mourning
4. Meditatio (1): Troade
Interludium
5. Exsequiis
III. Secunda Sequentia
6. Meditatio (2): Hermandad
7. Lamentatio (2): Anaku ana ibiri-Enkidu abakki
IV. Canclusio
8. La Mort des pauvres
9. Postludium: …for all us mourners, standing before eternal grief
Showcase II
The second of concerts and workshops featuring the selected works from SOLI’s 30x30x30 project.
Program
May 24, 2025
Alexa Canales | Through Your Eyes, Mvt 1 (2020-2021)
violin, cello, piano
Adeliia Faizullina | Saghat (2023)
violin, cello, piano
Elizabeth Gartman | Vox: Opening (2023)
violin, piano
Morgan Kelly Moss | Storks (2021)
violin, cello, piano
May 25, 2025
Leah Reid | Cloud Burst (2019)
violin, cello, electronics, piano
Niccolo Seligmann | Fallen Angel (2024)
voice, clarinet, violin, cello
with Lydia Beasley, soprano and Joe Kneer, violin
Lucy Shirley | Stretch Marks (2021)
voice, clarinet, piano
with Lydia Beasley, soprano