Roderick Cox and the Scottish Symphony: With the NAC Orchestra

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Nature, poetry, and history come alive in this program of music spanning three centuries. Be whisked away to Scotland with Mendelssohn’s “Scottish” Symphony—a musical postcard that evokes the country’s misty moors and storm-swept coastline. Jazz, spirituals, and the poetry of Toni Morrison converge in André Previn’s Honey and Rue, featuring soprano soloist Vuvu Mpofu.

When a 20-year-old Felix Mendelssohn arrived in Scotland for a summer holiday, he was enchanted by the country’s mysterious landscape, which he described as “half wrapped in haze or smoke or fog.” Those impressions of awe and wonder come to life in the composer’s “Scottish” Symphony—a musical postcard depicting the misty moors, wild storms, and joyful bagpipe tunes he encountered during his travels.

André Previn fuses elements of classical music, jazz, and African American spirituals in Honey and Rue—six settings of poems by the late Nobel laureate Toni Morrison that explore the experience of Black women in modern-day America. Soprano Vuvu Mpofu illuminates Morrison’s poetry as she moves from wistful reflections on loneliness to a meditation on love and self-sacrifice.

But first, NAC Orchestra Concertmaster Yosuke Kawasaki and Associate Concertmaster Jessica Linnebach step into the spotlight for Jocelyn Morlock’s Cobalt, a hypnotic work inspired by the deep-blue hue that saturates the sky just before dark.