UMD Symphony Orchestra: Appalachian Spring

UMD Symphony Orchestra

Appalachian Spring
Sunday, May 4, 2014 . 4PM
UMD Symphony Orchestra
UMD Symphony Orchestra photo by Nguyen Nguyen
Principal People: 

Music Director James Ross

Movement design Liz Lerman

Event Attributes

Presented By

Presented By: 
Estimated Length: 
1 hour and 40 minutes including intermission
Program Notes: 

Continuing their exploration of the relationship between movement and music, UMSO musicians will take a choreographic approach to Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring. UMD alumna and renowned choreographer Liz Lerman will develop the orchestra’s movements through improvisatory rehearsal technique.

The program also includes Dutilleux’s Métaboles and Gershwin/Bennett’s Porgy and Bess: A Symphonic Picture.

The Music in Mind series celebrates the role of music in our culture and our lives, explores sources of inspiration and points of intersection in musical traditions, and presents music in a context that encourages reflection and discovery. Proceeds from Music in Mind concerts benefit the UMD School of Music’s undergraduate scholarship fund.

Full performance of Appalachian Spring

Review by The Washington Post

From the very first notes, when the players offered quiet arpeggiated awakening phrases from one side of the stage, gently bathed in quiet blue light, the performance felt powerfully, viscerally emotional.

— ANN MIDGETTE, The Washington Post, May 5, 2014

Review by Greg Sandow

The lesson is that there’s far more potential in classical music performance than most of us may have realized, and that we should be looking for many different ways to make it come alive.

— GREG SANDOW, Sandow: Greg Sandow on the future of classical music, May 7, 2014

Review by DMV Classical

Still, the revelation for me came not in the dancing itself, but what it did to the music when the musicians formed and dissolved their various constellations on the Dekelboum Concert Hall’s stage. Instrumental combos that would never sit next to each other (trumpets and violins side-by-side? Sure!) made familiar sounds newly piquant.

— ANDREW MALONE, DMV Classical, May 4, 2014

Preview by NPR

Liz Lerman and Jim Ross appeared on Maryland Morning on the NPR station WYPR. Click here to listen to the interview.

Preview by The Baltimore Sun

'They are in motion all the time,' says James Ross, director of orchestral activities at Maryland. 'You will see people who are embodying the music and expressing what it means in a very natural way.'

— TIM SMITH, The Baltimore Sun, April 29, 2014

Preview by The Washington Post

Integrating movement into classical performance is at once an uphill battle and a step toward opening a dormant and powerful channel of communication.

— ANNE MIDGETTE, The Washington Post, May 2, 2014

Students share their experiences