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The Livermore-Amador Symphony is performing its final concert of the 2023-24 season this weekend at the Bankhead Theater in downtown Livermore.
Dubbed “Delightful Dvorak” and conducted by LAS music director Lara Webber, the concert on Saturday night is set to feature Richard Strauss’ “Serenade in E-flat”, Antonin Dvorak’s “6th Symphony” and Lori Laitman’s “Becoming a Redwood” with lyrical accompaniment by singer Chad Somers.
With a closing piece that “radiates with sunshine and joyful optimism,” the Dvorak symphony “is full of memorable melodies, poignant tenderness, and boundless propulsive syncopated rhythms that carry us through to a glorious conclusion to our symphony’s 60th anniversary season,” Webber said in a statement.
“Becoming a Redwood” is a musical composition about “profound love and loss and finding wisdom and redemption in nature” by Laitman set to poems by former California poet laureate Dana Gioia, symphony officials said. Tenor soloist Somers, familiar to local audiences from his role as Curley in Livermore Valley Opera’s “Of Mice and Men” production last fall, will join the symphony to sing the lyrics.
“I just love singing these songs,” Somers said in the symphony’s press release. “Laitman’s music has such a searching and human quality to match all the joy and despondency of Gioia’s text which culminate to create a beautiful rumination on the human experience of love, loss and grief. A true joy to give it voice.”
The concert begins at 7:30 p.m. Saturday (June 1) in the Bankhead. Webber will discuss the pieces beforehand in her “Inside the Music” talk from 7-7:15 p.m., and a complimentary reception will follow the show.
For tickets and more information, go to livermoreamadorsymphony.com.
