Authentic folk music reveals the joys and cares of real people. These three composers explore that authentic music through the lens of their own experience to reflect their own voice and choices in a program titled “HOMECOMINGS: The Musical Journeys of Uncommon Folk.”

Hungarian composer Béla Bartók had a life-long passion for the traditional music of his homeland. He wrote his Romanian Folk Dances as a suite of six short piano pieces in 1915, during World War I,  and in 1917, he orchestrated it for a small ensemble. Taking real folk melodies that he collected in the villages of Transylvania, Bartók shared the rich harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic elements of the original music.

American composer Gabriela Lena Frank (b. 1972) is fascinated with the music of her mother’s homeland and has been inspired by Peruvian writer José Maria Arguedas whose philosophies propose a world without dominance and subjugation. Taking the forms, instruments, and folk personalities of Peru, the young American imagines and recreates these elements in her own music.

Our guest artist, Sarah Jarosz (b. 1991) was born in Wimberley Texas and was nominated for a Grammy Award for her debut 2009 Country Instrumental album Song Up in Her Head. She’s received various nominations for awards for her subsequent albums and won two Grammy Awards (Best Folk Album and Best American Roots Performance) for her album Undercurrent and the song “House of Mercy.” With a degree in Contemporary Improvisation from the New England Conservatory, Jarosz plays mandolin, banjo, guitar, and is a singer-songwriter.

Béla BARTÓK:  Romanian Folk Dances

Gabriela Lena FRANK:  Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout

Music of Sarah JAROSZ

TEDDY ABRAMS, conductor

SARAH JAROSZ, singer-songwriter

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