Talise Trevigne & the American Songbook

CRITIC’S PICK
Sun., Oct. 12

The Georgia Philharmonic gets its season underway this Sunday with Talise Trevigne and the American Songbook. The program features acclaimed operatic soprano and GSU voice professor Trevingue performing George Gershwin’s ‘An American in Paris’ and Samuel Barber’s ‘Knoxville Summer’ with the Georgia Philharmonic led by guest conductor Chaowen Ting.

The third piece on the program, Margaret Bonds’ ‘Montgomery Variations,’ is a landmark orchestral work composed in response to the firebombing by members of the Ku Klux Klan of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, which killed four girls and injured dozens of congregants. In her program notes for the piece, Bonds wrote: “’The Montgomery Variations’ is a group of freestyle variations based on the Negro Spiritual theme, ‘I want Jesus to Walk with Me.’ The treatment suggests the manner in which Bach constructed his partitas – a bold statement of the theme, followed by variations of the theme in the same key – major and minor. Because of the personal meanings of the Negro spiritual themes, Margaret Bonds always avoids over-development of the melodies.”

’The Montgomery Variations’ is a brilliantly structured, emotionally stirring composition, which was rescued from oblivion and first published as a complete score in 2020. — Doug DeLoach