People and Places

CityMusic’s 26-27 orchestra season and its America@250 celebration conclude with a May 2027 program featuring music of Rachmanino`, Milhaud and premieres of two CityMusic commissions. Jessie Montgomery’s LES Characters was a CityMusic co-commission from 2022 that receives its CityMusic premiere with viola soloist Masumi Rostad. Montgomery and Rostad are childhood friends and the piece describes personalities from their lower East side neighborhood in New York City. Cleveland composer Clint Needham’s ‘Cleveland Places’ describes the neighborhoods where CityMusic performs. Darius Milhaud’s La Creation du Monde was composed in Paris before his emigration to the US, but characterizes the birth of jazz as the beginning of creation. Works by fellow émigrés, Paul Hindemith and Sergei Rachmanino` fill out the program – including Rachmanino`’s 1929 orchestration of his Vocalise for the Philadelphia Orchestra.

This program is conducted by Mélisse Brunet, music director of the Lexington Philharmonic and the Northeastern Pennsylvania Symphony, who was featured in the 2023 documentary Maestra!