FREE to Kalamazoo College Students

Heralded in his native land, but virtually unknown on these shores, is the music of Joly Braga Santos. His Fourth Symphony from 1950 is a significant and stirring work, the utterance of a composer enjoying true mastery of this most complicated of forms; based on his Portuguese publisher’s records, our performance of it will be the US premiere of this seminal piece. Combined with the Symphony are two shorter works written by composers from Brazil, a country profoundly affected by the legacy of Portuguese colonialism. The first is by Antônio Carlos Gomes, whose opera O Guarany – the overture to which we will perform – was called by his contemporary Giuseppe Verdi “pure musical genius.” The other is by living composer Clarice Assad, who sought, in her vivaciously rhythmic Bonecos de Olinda, to portray the particular traditions of parading puppet figures in the Carnaval celebrations of Northeastern Brazil.