Hill Auditorium
Chineke! Orchestra
$12-20 student tickets available
Founded in 2015 to provide career opportunities to young Black and ethnically diverse classical musicians in the UK and Europe, the Chineke! Orchestra comprises exceptional musicians from across the continent.
The brainchild of Chi-chi Nwanoku OBE, an ex-sprinter and double bass player who was a founding member of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and typically found herself the only Black musician on stage in any concert, Chineke! makes its UMS debut three years after it was originally scheduled.
Florence Price’s first symphony was, in 1933, the first symphonic work by a Black woman to be played by a major American orchestra. Steeped in American folk music, spirituals, and church hymns, her work reflects her experience as a Black woman raised in the post-Civil War South. Sphinx laureate Elena Urioste joins the orchestra for Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Violin Concerto. The program opens with a short work by Carlos Simon, a U-M alumnus whose works are now gaining national attention.
Program
Carlos Simon Fate Now Conquers
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Violin Concerto in g minor, Op. 20
Florence Price Symphony No. 1 in e minor
Join host Doyle Armbrust for “The Society for Disobedient Listeners” — a special pre-performance talk, 7 pm in the lower lobby of Hill Auditorium.
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Chineke! Orchestra
Hill Auditorium
Starting at $14 (+ fees)
$12-20 student tickets available
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With a unique combination of intensity, enthusiasm and technical clarity, American conductor Andrew Grams has steadily built a reputation for his dynamic concerts, ability to connect with audiences, and long-term orchestra building.
The youngest of a large mixed-race family from Severn, Maryland, Andrew began studying the violin when he was eight years old in the public school system. In 1999 he received a Bachelor of Music in Violin Performance from The Juilliard School, and in 2003 he received a conducting degree from the Curtis Institute of Music where he studied with Otto-Werner Mueller. He was selected to spend the summer of 2003 studying with David Zinman, Murry Sidlin and Michael Stern at the American Academy of Conducting at Aspen and returned to that program again in 2004. Mr. Grams served as Assistant Conductor of The Cleveland Orchestra from 2004-2007 where he worked under the guidance of Franz Welser-Möst, and has since returned for several engagements.
Elena Urioste is a musician, yogi, writer, and entrepreneur, as well as a lover of nature, food, animals, and connecting with other human beings.
As a violinist, Elena has given acclaimed performances as soloist with major orchestras throughout the United States, including the Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Minnesota Orchestras; the New York, Los Angeles, and Buffalo Philharmonics; the Boston Pops; and the Chicago, Boston, Dallas, San Francisco, San Diego, National, Atlanta, Baltimore, and Detroit Symphony Orchestras, among many others. Abroad, Elena has appeared with the London Philharmonic, Hallé, Philharmonia, and Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestras; the BBC Symphony, Philharmonic, Scottish Symphony Orchestra, and National Orchestra of Wales; the Orchestra of Opera North; as well as the Chineke! Orchestra, Malaysian Philharmonic, Orchestre National de Lille, Edmonton Symphony, Würzburg Philharmonic, and Hungary’s Orchestra Dohnányi Budafok and MAV Orchestras. She has collaborated with celebrated conductors Sir Mark Elder, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Vasily Petrenko, Christoph Eschenbach, Robert Spano, Karina Canellakis, and Gábor Takács-Nagy. She has regularly performed as a featured soloist in Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium and has given recitals at the Wigmore Hall, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, Kennedy Center, Konzerthaus Berlin, Sage Gateshead, Bayerischer Rudfunk Munich, and Mondavi Center. Elena is a former BBC New Generation Artist (2012-14) and has been featured on the covers of Strings, Symphony, and BBC Music magazines.
Doyle Armbrust is a Chicago-based violist and co-founder of the three-times Grammy-nominated Spektral Quartet. His writing has infiltrated program books at the Chicago, St. Louis, and Cincinnati Symphony Orchestras as well as publications including Crain’s Chicago Business, Chicago Magazine, Time Out Chicago, and The Chicago Tribune.
In UMS’s 2022/23 season, Doyle hosts “The Society of Disobedient Listeners” — an interactive pre-concert experience reconnecting listeners to the subversive, visceral, and even revolutionary elements of the evening’s program. Conceived as an anti-lecture, “Disobedient Listeners” draws the great music of the past into proximity with the felicities and calamities of modern life.
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