March 16 "A Lowell Symphony" performance

The Lowell Philharmonic Orchestra, with Marshunda Smith, music director, will give my new symphony its premiere. The performance will be at 2:00 PM at Fusion Church, 125 Hope Street, Lowell.

When Ms Smith became music director, I had the idea to write a piece celebrating the city of Lowell, Massachusetts. I did some research into Lowell History and discovered that the 19th Century "mill girls" had published stories, poems, essays, and songs in a magazine which now exists in an online archive. I picked out three songs and derived almost all of the melodic material for the symphony from them.

The symphony begins with a kind of picture of the two rivers that converge in Lowell and provided water power. The middle of the piece sort of charts the growth of the mills (with evocations of machinery), and then their decline. At the lowest point of the decline, two sopranos impersonate the ghosts of the mill girls. From that point on, things begin to improve again, and I pay tribute to the prominent Cambodian community with some music influenced by Khmer traditional music. The piece ends with a burst of optimism, celebrating the city as a vibrant multicultural, educational, and tech hub.

See the website below for more information and tickets.
www.lowellphilharmonic.org