DuPage Symphony: Celebrations

Culminating our year-long musical odyssey to Reflect and Celebrate, the DSO joins forces with the ever-popular Naperville Chorus (Jeordano Martinez, director) for a grand finale to the 2021-22 season, showcasing Roy Harris’s remarkable Folk Song Symphony for Chorus and Orchestra. As the fourth of Harris’s thirteen numbered symphonies, this seven-movement work features an eclectic mix of cowboy songs, ballads, spirituals, and marching songs from frontier America, all set in the richly melodic and skillfully orchestrated musical language of a mature master. For the second half of this gala program, the Naperville Chorus presents a selection of American spirituals in lush settings by renowned African-American composer William Dawson. The DSO then performs an inspirational suite from Aaron Copland’s 1954 opera The Tender Land, which culminates in “The Promise of Living,” and two groups join together to present the uplifting choral conclusion to Leonard Bernstein’s Candide, “Make Our Garden Grow.”

Please note at this time, masks are required to attend all in-person events on campus, regardless of vaccination status.