A former Dudamel Fellow and associate conductor at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Mirga Gražiyntė-Tyla was appointed music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in 2016, following in the footsteps of Simon Rattle and Andris Nelsons. She brings the CBSO and Chorus to Ann Arbor as part of a US tour with cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason as soloist in Elgar’s Cello Concerto, composed in the aftermath of World War I. The orchestra has a close association with Elgar, who conducted the ensemble’s very first concert in 1920. The second half of the program features Sir Michael Tippett’s A Child of Our Time, a work written after the Kristallnacht attacks on Jews in 1938 and in response to the rise of Nazism. Composed for orchestra and chorus, the work integrates African American spirituals in an expression of helplessness in the face of oppression and carries a strongly pacifist message of understanding and reconciliation. Tippett’s work will be presented only in Ann Arbor and at Carnegie Hall.