Salem Symphonic Winds
Suzanne Nance, vocalist and narrator
A Richer Dust
November 4, 2018 3 pm
The Elsinore Theatre
The Salem Symphonic Winds welcome Suzanne Nance, president and CEO of the nation’s premier classical musical station All Classical Portland, as our featured vocalist and narrator for this opening concert of our 44th season. She will sing Five Folksongs for Soprano and Band by Bernard Gilmore and narrate the powerful new symphony by Nigel Clarke.
‘A Richer Dust’ intertwines text and music, weaving together voices ranging from those of historically significant figures through to voiceless, ordinary people living in extraordinary times. Nobility and virtue are found in the narration. The words used in A Richer Dust, Nigel Clarke’s First Symphony, are by a long roll-call of writers and assembled into a sequence by Danish author Marlene Sheppard Skærved. They focus on humanity’s addiction to the deathly consumption of lives through war, violence and extremism and their antitheses, creation, love and life. This is a heartfelt work, poignant in an age of populist politics, xenophobia and negative-nationalism: a call to conscience.
This project made possible, in part, by funding from the Marion County Cultural Corporation.
The Salem Concert Band receives support from the Oregon Arts Commission,
a state agency funded by the State of Oregon.