The Greensboro Symphony Orchestra presents American Rhapsody

By Keyshia H. Gray
Mar 14, 2022

GREENSBORO, NC (03/08/2022) – Exploring music inspired by a land of vast geographic and cultural diversity, with a history equally as immense and complicated, the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra (GSO) is excited to announce American Rhapsody at the Steven Tanger Center for the Performing Arts at 8:00 pm on April 02, 2022, made possible by The Tannenbaum Sternberger Foundation! Featuring Duke Ellington’s The River Suite, and The American Rhapsody with music by Samuel Coleridge Taylor and narration by Aaron Dworkin, the program will also include the timeless Symphony No. 9 “From the New World” by Antonin Dvorak.

Named a 2005 MacArthur Fellow, President Obama’s first appointment to the National Council on the Arts, and Governor Snyder’s appointment to the Michigan Council for Arts & Cultural Affairs, Aaron P. Dworkin served as Dean of the University of Michigan’s School of Music, Theatre & Dance (ranked among the top-performing arts schools in the nation). Dworkin is a spoken-word performing artist with a current national tour of his American Rhapsody with a national orchestral consortium.

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Beginning the program is work by great American composer Duke Ellington, best known for his jazz career and as one of the foremost big band musicians of all time. Ellington’s "The River Suite," a poetic celebration of the Mississippi River, was premiered in 1970 to accompany a ballet by Alvin Ailey. The American Rhapsody is a work set to Samuel Coleridge Taylor’s Symphonic Variations on an African Air.