Skip to main content

2025-2026 Season

USA 250 West Side Story + Lincoln Portrait

May 16, 2026 • 7:30 PM

/

May 17, 2026 • 3:00 PM

Sunset Center, Carmel Map

View Map

Jayce Ogren, Music Director and Conductor

Jayce Ogren's insightful examination of American music continues in this wide-ranging program exploring the musical character of the nation on the approach of its 250th birthday. The concert opens with a profound arrangement of our National Anthem by Italian-American composer Luigi Zaninelli. Sarah Kirkland Snider, a composer with "an unerring knack for breathtaking beauty" (The New Yorker), presents an anticipated new work, Marmoris – an ancient Latin word that means "the shimmering surface of the sea." Next up is Leonard Bernstein's effervescent Symphonic Dances from West Side Story followed by icon Aaron Copland's Lincoln Portrait, narrated by actor Jonathan Bangs. The season concludes with William Dawson's Negro Folk Symphony, a 1934 work that reflects Black experience in America and has an enigmatic conclusion, representing an unresolved struggle.

- Christopher Anderson-Bazzoli

PROGRAM
108-minute program, includes a 20-minute intermission

SMITH/KEY, arr. Zaninelli
The Star-Spangled Banner

Sarah Kirkland SNIDER
Marmoris (University of Michigan co-commission)

BERNSTEIN
Symphonic Dances from West Side Story

-- intermission --

COPLAND
Lincoln Portrait
Jonathan Bangs, narrator

William DAWSON
Negro Folk Symphony

Concert Sponsor

Bill and Kathy Sharpe

Media Sponsors

Jonathan Bangs

Jonathan Bangs

Jonathan Bangs holds a BFA degree from California Institute of the Arts. Closing in on a decade of professional practice he has been apart of theatrical productions all across this country (Hippodrome Theatre, Baltimore Center Stage, Kennedy Center, Alliance Theatre, Philadelphia Theatre Company, Portland Center Stage, Eugene O'Neill Center, Boston Court, Boise Contemporary Theater, A.C.T, Milwaukee Repertory Theatre) award winning shorts, features films, immersive instillations and dozens of voice-over projects. Jonathan most famously starred alongside Oscar-winning Helen Hunt and Tony-winning Alan Cumming in "Solar," a sci-fi podcast that was #1 in the country and voted best of the year by Samsung as well as other publications. Locally, Jonathan most recently played the titular role of "Othello" in New Canon's production staged at the Forest Theatre. This is his first time in collaboration with the Monterey Symphony and he is immensely honored to be playing part in celebrating their illustrious eighty-year history.

Sarah Kirkland Snider

Sarah Kirkland Snider

Recently deemed "one of new music's leading names" (Gramophone), one of the "Top 35 Female Composers in Classical Music" (The Washington Post), and "a rising star on the American compositional scene" (The Wall Street Journal), composer Sarah Kirkland Snider writes music of direct expression and dramatic narrative that has been hailed as "rapturous" (The New York Times), "groundbreaking" (The Boston Globe), and "ravishingly beautiful" (NPR). Featuring an attention to detail that is "as intricate and exquisite as a spider's web" (BBC Music Magazine), Snider's music synthesizes diverse influences to render a nuanced command of immersive storytelling. In a 2022 profile of her music, Gramophone wrote: "Expressive, evocative, and personal, Sarah Kirkland Snider's music explores emotional landscapes through vivid, compelling narratives in a unique sound world that she has made identifiably her own – familiar, yet at the same time strange and unsettling." Gothamist NYC writes: "Sarah Kirkland Snider is among the most impressive younger composers in the New York new-music scene. Her music can sound ageless and contemporary at once, with an emotional impact that's direct and immediate."

Snider's works have been commissioned and/or performed by the New York Philharmonic; Boston Symphony Orchestra; Cleveland Orchestra; National Symphony Orchestra; San Francisco Symphony; Detroit Symphony Orchestra; St. Paul Chamber Orchestra; Philharmonia Orchestra; Britten Sinfonia; Melbourne Symphony Orchestra; Toronto Symphony Orchestra; Residentie Orkest; Birmingham Royal Ballet; Emerson String Quartet; eighth blackbird; A Far Cry; The Knights; and Roomful of Teeth, soprano Renée Fleming and baritone Will Liverman; tenor Nicholas Phan; vocalist Shara Nova; Deutsche Grammophon for mezzo Emily D'Angelo; and percussionist Colin Currie; among many others. Her music has been heard in concert halls around the world including Carnegie Hall, the Elbphilharmonie, the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, Sadler's Wells, the Sydney Opera House, and Wigmore Hall; and programmed at festivals including Aspen, BAM NextWave, Bang On a Can, Big Ears, Cabrillo, Colorado, Cross-linx, Ecstatic, Koorbiënnale, London Handel, Podium, Ravinia, Sundance, and Tanglewood.

Recent major works include Forward Into Light, an orchestral commission for the New York Philharmonic inspired by the American women's suffrage movement (with recent performances by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Aspen Music Festival Orchestra); Drink the Wild Ayre, the final commission by the legendary Emerson String Quartet for their farewell tour; Everything That Ever Was, commissioned by Renée Fleming and Will Liverman for Liverman's Grammy-nominated album, Show Me The Way; The Blue Hour, a collaborative song cycle for Shara Nova and A Far Cry string orchestra on poetry by Carolyn Forché; and new songs commissioned by Deutsche Grammophon for mezzo-soprano Emily D'Angelo's 2022 Juno Award-winning Classical Album of the Year, Enargeia. In 2018, Embrace, her 45' orchestral ballet with British choreographer George Williamson, commissioned by the Birmingham Royal Ballet, premiered at London's Sadler's Wells Theatre and was named Best Ballet Premiere of 2018 by Dance Europe. Mass for the Endangered, her 2018 Trinity Wall Street-commissioned 45' work for SATB choir and ensemble – a celebration of and elegy for the natural world – has since been programmed by dozens of choirs the world over, including Cappella Amsterdam, Cincinnati Vocal Arts Ensemble, Houston Chamber Choir, the Pacific Chorale, Phoenix Chorale, Resonance Ensemble, Schola Cantorum (Norway), the Three Choirs Festival, Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, Vancouver Bach Choir, Verdigris Ensemble, Vlaams Radiokoor, and Voces Solis, among others.

Upcoming

LOVE LETTER TO NEW YORK

LOVE LETTER TO NEW YORK

Sep 15 & 16, 2026

APPALACHIAN SPRING + ALEXI KENNEY

APPALACHIAN SPRING + ALEXI KENNEY

Oct 17 & 18, 2026

SLAVONIC DANCES + TWO PIANOS

SLAVONIC DANCES + TWO PIANOS

Nov 21 & 22, 2026

TCHAIKOVSKY 5

Feb 20 & 21, 2027

BRAHMS: THE SYMPHONIES

BRAHMS: THE SYMPHONIES

March 20 & 21, 2027

BISS PLAYS BEETHOVEN

BISS PLAYS BEETHOVEN

April 17 & 18, 2027

MAHLER'S RESURRECTION

MAHLER'S RESURRECTION

May 22 & 23, 2027

Previous Next