In Friday’s (11/21) Dallas Morning News, Scott Cantrell writes, “The Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s Thursday night concert made news. Assistant conductor Shira Samuels-Shragg made her unscheduled classical series debut, subbing for music director Fabio Luisi … It was impressive indeed. The concert, at the Meyerson Symphony Center, also included world premieres of … Jonathan Cziner’s Clarinet Concerto, composed for and performed by DSO principal clarinetist Gregory Raden, and the sound of where I came from by Moni Jasmine Guo.” Also on the program were works by Beethoven and Mozart. “[Cziner’s] three-movement clarinet concerto is influenced by both sacred and secular Jewish music, with what Cziner has called ‘my own kind of American orchestral sound. It’s basically about the state of the world for a Jewish American … and how there’s so much conflict and violence and sadness. But the end of the piece is more celebratory.’… the sound of where I came from was inspired by [Guo’s] childhood dialogues with her Chinese grandmother. Motifs echoing cadences of their conversations give listeners aural hooks within often complex washes, swells and swirls of sound, the eight-minute piece finally vanishing in sonic vapor.” the sound of where I came from was commissioned by the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation Orchestral Commissions Program, an initiative of the League of American Orchestras in partnership with the American Composers Orchestra.
