American Voices

Music Director Ken-David Masur conducts a powerful program highlighting three generations of American composers. In Aaron Copland’s stirring musical portrait of Abraham Lincoln, the composer begins by suggesting “the mysterious sense of fatality that surrounds Lincoln’s personality” and ends by attempting “to draw a simple but impressive frame about the words of Lincoln himself.” MSO Principal Clarinet Todd Levy performs Richard Danielpour’s From the Mountaintop, dedicated to the legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The evening concludes with Charles Ives’s Second Symphony, which samples classic American folk tunes such as “America the Beautiful,” “Turkey in the Straw,” and “Camptown Races” — the last of which Lincoln himself used as a campaign song, bringing the concert full circle.