“Music for the New World” Closes Schwab Academy’s 6th Summer Season
The Miriam and Henry Schwab Academy of Music at Ventura College closes its 6th summer season with “Music for the New World,” a season finale concert. o This concert brings together three works — by Margaret Bonds, Daniel Slatkin, and Antonín Dvořák — into one sweeping portrait of the American experience, from the struggle for civil rights, to the vastness of outer space, to the soul of a nation heard through foreign ears.
The concert marks the culmination of three weeks of intensive training for this year’s Schwab Academy participants, who take the stage as a full orchestra alongside their professional mentors — a hallmark of the Academy’s mission to give young musicians real performance experience next to seasoned players. All performances are Pay-What-You-Can.
THE PROGRAM
Margaret Bonds — Selections from “The Montgomery Variations”
Daniel Slatkin — “Voyager 130”
Antonín Dvořák — Symphony No. 9, “From the New World”
The Czech master Antonín Dvořák composed his Symphony No. 9 (“From the New World”) during his years living in America, drawing deeply on the spirituals and folk music he encountered here — the same musical wellspring that fed Margaret Bonds a generation later. This “New World” Symphony has become one of the most beloved symphonies ever written, with audiences worldwide responding to both its American and universal elements.
Margaret Bonds (1913–1972) was a trailblazing Chicago-born composer and pianist — the first African American soloist to perform with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The Montgomery Variations, composed in 1963 and dedicated to Martin Luther King Jr., is rooted in the African American spiritual “I Want Jesus to Walk with Me” and reflects Bonds’ witness to the Civil Rights Movement and the American struggle for freedom and justice. Long neglected, her music is now being celebrated by major orchestras across the country.
Daniel Slatkin is a locally-based composer whose work spans film, television, and the concert hall. Voyager 130 — performed by the LA Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, the Detroit Symphony, and the St. Louis Symphony — is based on NASA’s Voyager spacecraft, launched in 1977 on a journey that continues today at the edge of our solar system. This story links our country’s sense of adventure and intrepid exploration with mankind’s restlessness and yearning for the unknown. Each Voyager carries a “Golden Record” — a phonograph record of sounds, music, and images drawn from mankind’s creative lineage, meant to represent humanity in case the spacecraft is ever found by other life. Among them is a recording of Beethoven’s String Quartet, Op. 130, which lends the piece its title. Voyager 130 links these centuries of human creativity to the frontier still ahead of us.
“Daniel Slatkin’s Voyager 130 is electrifying, vital music — and to pair it with Margaret Bonds’ Montgomery Variations and Dvořák’s New World Symphony feels exactly right for this program,” says Conductor and Music Director Ashley Walters. “We’re thrilled to have Daniel Slatkin in residence with us in preparation for this performance, and even more excited for our students to share the stage with their mentors for this finale. Watching them rise to music of this caliber, side by side with professionals, is exactly what this Academy is about — it’s where the next generation of musicians finds its footing.”
Together, these three works make up a portrait of American music that is soulful, vibrant, restless, and searching — performed by this year’s Schwab Academy participants and their mentors in what promises to be an inspiring send-off for the summer’s rising musicians.
The Schwab Academy of Music was made possible by Miriam Schwab’s vision and generosity, and continues each summer as a gift to the Ventura community.
TICKETS & INFORMATION Pay-What-You-Can Admission. Reserved Tickets: www.ventura.vbotickets.com General inquiries: vcschwab@vcccd.edu More information: www.venturacollege.edu/schwab
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