Long-time NOI+F collaborator and Albany Symphony Music Director David Alan Miller leads the NOI Philharmonic in their first performance since 2019. The program brings together works that create a cycle of drama, separation, sorrow, healing and victory–perfectly encapsulating life during the twin pandemics facing our country.

Commissioned in 1981 by NOI+F partner American Composers Orchestra, Lumina, by St. Louis-born composer Olly Wilson, combines intricate rhythmic figures with lush harmonic textures to create a dramatic orchestral landscape. Grammy-nominated composer-performer Missy Mazzoli’s These Worlds In Us is a homage to her father, a soldier who served in the Vietnam War. Juxtaposing rushes of blissful sound against music that is sorrowful, the piece is an unforgettable meditation on the nature of grief and joy. Viet Cuong's percussion quartet concerto Re(new)al breathes (renewable) energy into this year’s festival through a series of movements based on hydro, wind and solar energies. Rounding out the performance is Robert Schumann’s splendid Symphony No. 3, “Rhenish”–a series of echoes from Germany’s gloriously scenic Rhine River. Epitomizing the beauty of life by the Rhine, the Rhenish Symphony traverses various leisurely scenes that conclude with a vigorous and sunny finale.

The National Orchestral Institute + Festival, a program of the University of Maryland’s Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, trains aspiring orchestral musicians, composers, conductors and arts administrators from across the country in a month of dynamic music-making and professional exploration at The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center. Musicians are chosen through a rigorous, cross-country audition process. Every year, these young artists present passionate and awe-inspiring performances of adventuresome repertoire at The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center.

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Program:

Missy Mazzoli: These Worlds in Us 

Olly Wilson: Lumina 

Viet Cuong: Re(new)al

Robert Schumann: Symphony No. 3, in E-flat major, Op. 97, “Rhenish”