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.