SOLI Chamber Ensemble rings in 2023 with Woven on January 16, featuring composers who weave the sounds and spirit of their cultural heritages into contemporary classical works. The concert begins at 5:30pm at the San Antonio Botanical Garden’s Betty Kelso Center and features works by Bohdana Frolyak, Shawn Okpebholo, and Gabriela Lena Frank, and the world premiere of CONFLUX by San Antonio-native Niccolo Athens.
SOLI continues its support of the people of Ukraine in 2022-2023 with three works by Ukrainian composers programmed throughout the season. Woven features Bohdana Frolyak’s Three Miniatures, an evocative work that showcases Frolyak’s skill as a composer and her ability to draw inspiration from Ukrainian folk music and traditions. African-American composer Shawn Okpebholo’s compositions have been described as “devastatingly beautiful” and “fresh and new and fearless,” and his ethnomusicological fieldwork in both East and West Africa often finds its way into his music. ‘Take It Easy, But Take It’ is inspired by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Studs Terkel, one of the longest radio show hosts (1952-1997) on WFMT in Chicago, and is indeed “fearless” in its dynamic and energetic structure.
- Monday, January 16 2023
- 5:30 pm
- San Antonio Botanical Garden
SOLI will give the world premiere of CONFLUX by San Antonio native Niccolo Athens, known for blending the Western tonalities and heritage of his youth with the Eastern modes and harmonic palate of his adopted home Tianjin, China. The work explores the confluence of two musical scales, the “whole tone” and “octatonic,” and creates a fresh, new possibilities through the interaction of these harmonic forces. The final work on the program, Latin Grammy-award-winning composer Gabriela Frank’s Hilos, “…alludes to the beauty of Peruvian textiles, both in their construction and in their pictorial content of everyday life” and creates sonorities evocative of indigenous music.