Schubert “Unfinished”

Founder and Artistic Director of the Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra Jeri Lynne Johnson makes her Omaha Symphony guest conducting debut with a program that juxtaposes the best of antiquity and modernity. Vivaldi’s Concerto for Strings in G Major squares with Bloch’s Concerto Grosso #1 for Strings and Piano Obbligato—two hundred years separate these works, but Bloch used the structure of the Concerto Grosso championed by Vivaldi for his own 20th century take. Assistant Principal Cello Samuel Pierce-Ruhland makes his Omaha Symphony solo debut with contemporary American composer Mark Adamo’s innovative concerto for cello, Last Year. The program ends with Schubert’s infamous and brilliantly beautiful Symphony No. 8, “Unfinished.”

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Join us at 1:30 p.m. for an art talk in which Karin Campbell, Phil Willson Curator of Contemporary Art, explores Kehinde Wiley’s (American, born 1977) Three Girls in a Wood, 2018.

Ernest Bloch brings the principles of one of Antonio Vivaldi’s most well-known compositions, Concerto for Strings in G Major, RV 151, into the twentieth century. Artist Kehinde Wiley applies the same principle in his painting practice. Offering a contemporary perspective on images from bygone eras, Wiley embraces the long tradition of Western portraiture, while reminding viewers that it is an incomplete and exclusive history. His 2018 painting Three Girls in a Wood quotes a similarly titled work from 1920 by the Die Brücke artist Otto Mueller from the collection of the Saint Louis Art Museum. Although Wiley’s approach may be grounded in canonical imagery, he upends expectations by elevating subjects that have historically either been diminished or cast aside entirely in art. Three Girls in a Wood belongs to a series Wiley created after spending time in the historically Black community of North St. Louis and in Ferguson, Missouri, where the 2014 killing of Michael Brown catalyzed the Movement for Black Lives. Together, this Symphony performance, featuring award-winning conductor Jeri Lynn Johnson, and art talk will celebrate the lives and contributions of Black women.

Image credit: Kehinde Wiley (American, born 1977), Three Girls in a Wood, 2018, oil on linen, 108 x 144 in., Museum purchase, gift of The Sherwood Foundation, 2018.11

The Strauss Performing Arts Center (building 24 on the map below) is located on University Drive North between the Criss Library and the Milo Bail Student Center, parallel to Dodge Street. Parking lots D, E, F, and M are the closest options and will NOT require parking permits on the day of the event. View full map below.

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Programs, artists, dates, and times subject to change.