● Concert Overview
What You’ll Hear
America has never had one sound.
It sings through anthem and blues, through jazz clubs and concert halls, through stride piano, spirituals, street songs, opera, celebration, and reinvention. LIFT opens Olympia Symphony’s 2026/27 season, Kaleidoscope, with a program where American sound rises from joy, memory, resilience, and hope.
Jessie Montgomery’s Banner asks what an anthem means in a country still becoming itself. Woven from The Star-Spangled Banner, Lift Every Voice and Sing, and other musical echoes, it turns a familiar symbol into something larger, more layered, and alive with many voices.
At the heart of the concert, guest artist Calder Failla joins the orchestra for Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, where smoky jazz, sweeping melody, and symphonic ambition meet in one of the most recognizable openings in American music. Gershwin returns in Porgy and Bess: Catfish Row, bringing the opera’s Charleston sound world into rich orchestral color. Gershwin’s insistence on an all-Black cast for Porgy and Bess helped create major operatic opportunities for Black singers at a time when blackface still appeared on American stages.
Wynton Marsalis’s Blues Symphony expands the blues into a vast orchestral journey, while James P. Johnson’s Victory Stride closes the circle with the pulse and brilliance of Harlem stride piano.
Inspired by artists who moved across genres to make room for their fullest voices, LIFT celebrates music that refuses to stay in one lane. This is not one version of America. It is a kaleidoscope of voices, each one lifting the next.
Program
Jessie MONTGOMERY: Banner
Wynton MARSALIS: Blues Symphony (Mvt. 3, 4 & 5)
George GERSHWIN: Rhapsody in Blue
George GERSHWIN: Catfish Row from Porgy and Bess
James P. JOHNSON: Victory Stride
Artists
Alexandra Arrieche, conductor
Calder Failla, piano
Ying Lam, guest conductor