Contemporary Youth Orchestra - Winter Concert

This is CYO’s debut live performance of 2021!   CYO musicians will perform Modest Mussorgsy’s Pictures at an Exhibition and Valerie Coleman’s Umoja.

Umoja, the Swahili word for Unity and the first principle of the African Diaspora holiday Kwanzaa, was composed as a simple song for women’s choir. It embodied a sense of unity through the feel of a drum circle, the sharing of history through traditional “call and response” form and the repetition of a memorable sing-song melody.  The orchestral version being performed by CYO brings an expansion and sophistication to the short and sweet melody, which is influenced by Appalachian style music.  Dissonance interrupts the melody, representing the clash of injustices, racism and hate.  The return to the melody is a reminder of kindness and humanity and the conclusion of the piece is a bold call of unity that reflects Coleman’s original anthem.

Modest Mussorgsky was deeply affected by the death of his great friend Victor Hartmann, a painter and architect, and it was an exhibition of Hartmann’s work that inspired Mussorgsky to write Pictures at an Exhibition.  Ten pictures, illustrated in separate movements, are connected by the Promenade, a theme which leads us through the gallery from one picture to the next. In his original piece, written for solo piano, Mussorgsky had produced a new style of piano writing which deeply influenced later composers.  CYO will perform Ravel’s orchestration of the piece, completed in 1922.  It is, by far, the best known orchestration of Pictures at an Exhibition, and is the piéce de resistance of a master orchestrator.