This event was scheduled June 8, 2024.
Cal Poly PolyPhonics, University Singers, and Symphony combine to present a France Tour Preview Concert on Saturday, June 8, featuring celebrated works they will perform while on tour of France in late June.
Scott Glysson and David Arrivée respectively direct the choirs and symphony in a program from the French and American repertory, including a variety of shorter works by Gabriel Fauré and Camille Saint-Saëns.
As a part of the 80th anniversary of D-Day, the choirs present a haunting version of “In Flanders Fields” by Stephen Rew. The choirs and symphony combine to perform John Williams’ “Hymn to the Fallen” composed for the 1998 film “Saving Private Ryan.” The symphony also performs Aaron Copland’s “Variations on a Shaker Melody,” taken from one of the composer’s most iconic works, “Appalachian Spring.”
The choirs and symphony also combine for two larger pieces by American composers Dan Forrest and R. Nathaniel Dett. “I Thank You God for Most this Amazing Day” is a setting of the E.E. Cummings poem, and Dett’s “Chariot Jubilee,” based on the African American spiritual “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” is a cantata for tenor, choir and orchestra.
The concert in Harold Miossi Hall at the Performing Arts Center SLO is sponsored by Cal Poly’s Music Department, College of Liberal Arts and Instructionally Related Activities program.