Béla Fleck and American Excellence – Rutland
September 28 @ 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm
VSO’s 90th anniversary at the Paramount kicks off with an all-American program and two living greats: virtuoso banjoist Béla Fleck and composer Adolphus Hailstork. Fleck makes his East Coast debut with his catchy arrangement of Rhapsody in Blue for banjo, and Hailstork joins the VSO in person at the Flynn. This concert marks the VSO’s premiere performance of William Grant Still’s Symphony No. 1, with narrated epigraphs written by Paul Laurence Dunbar and other prominent Black poets.
The concert begins at 7:30 p.m. and is preceded at 6:30 p.m. by Musically Speaking, a free pre-concert discussion that provides entertaining insight into the evening’s program with Vermont Public classical radio host Helen Lyons.
PROGRAM
Adolphus Hailstork – An American Port of Call
George Gershwin – An American in Paris
Intermission
George Gershwin – Rhapsody in Blue
William Grant Still – Symphony No. 1 (“Afro-American”)
