Kalamazoo Philharmonia - "Sea to Shining Sea"

We continue our anniversary season by taking a deep dive into music that is unknown: in this case, three works by far-flung American composers.  Lou Harrison was a one-of-a-kind presence: he was an openly gay hippie of the West Coast and an absolutely voracious absorber of styles (his influences are as disparate as Balinese music, microtonal tunings, serialism, and Charles Ives).  But his Third Symphony is simply hypnotically beautiful, sounding somehow like everything and nothing else at once.  Florence Price is a composer only belatedly getting some recognition, after a store of manuscripts was discovered in an attic about 10 years ago.  This relatively short work is perhaps her most direct confrontation with the black experience in America, specifically through the lens of her enslaved ancestors.  Finally, Roberto Sierra is a Puerto Rican-born composer with a style that deftly balances modernism with classicism, and Beethovenian motivic development with Latin rhythms.  His Fourth Symphony is a compact contemporary masterpiece.