The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra will offer two performances of “To Awaken the Sleeper” to conclude its 2022-2023 concert season on Saturday and Sunday.
The orchestra will revisit Adolphus Hailstork’s memorial to Martin Luther King Jr. and it touches on the hurt in Alvin Singleton’s 1994 reaction to police brutality. Joel Thompson, a young composer who is revolutionizing concert music with his deeply moving stands on race and justice, will add a gripping mediation to the words of James Baldwin, organizers say.
Artistic Adviser James Conlon concludes with a fresh look at the self-reflective symphony Shostakovich wrote in the aftermath of Stalin’s reign of terror. Symphony guests can celebrate Juneteenth with this performance and gather for pre-concert events including a James Baldwin listening room where patrons can listen to and reflect on his recorded works, support organizations like Urban Reads Store and Station North Tool Library, and partake of eateries such as Nihao and The Curly Crumb.
The Saturday performance will take place at The Music Center at Strathmore in North Bethesda, Maryland. The Sunday performance occurs at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore.
For more information, go to bsomusic.org/events.