American Reveries

American Reveries brings together three very different ideas of America. Ellington premiered Black, Brown and Beige at Carnegie Hall in 1943, describing the work as a musical parallel to the history of Black Americans. Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915, written a few years later, sets James Agee’s recollection of an evening from his Tennessee childhood.

Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances approaches America from another direction. Written on Long Island in 1940, it was the Russian émigré composer’s final orchestral score and the only one he wrote entirely in the United States. Together, the three works look at American life through history, memory, migration, and the very different musical languages their composers brought to the orchestra.

Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington
Black, Brown, and Beige Suite

Samuel Barber
Knoxville: Summer of 1915

Sergei Rachmaninoff
Symphonic Dances