Cultural Heritage, Personal Identity, Family History
February 28, 2025
Steve Reich's Different Trains & Natalie Joachim
Overview
Embark on an emotional odyssey with the Oregon Symphony, exploring the cultural heritage, personal identities, and family histories of three groundbreaking living American composers. Singer and composer Nathalie Joachim's Ki Moun Ou Ye (which means "Who Are You?" in Creole) celebrates her Haitian family with vibrant stories of community, survival, and freedom. Witness a new arrangement of Steve Reich's iconic Minimalist masterpiece Different Trains - a haunting exploration of Holocaust survivors' stories interwoven with his childhood memories. Plus, be captivated by Portland native Oswald Huynh's poignant composition inspired by Vietnamese lullabies. Join us for an evening of breathtaking music that uniquely captures the human experience.
About the Show
Info
This concert is part of the Open Music series.
Artists
New Arrangement
Steve Reich's iconic Minimalist masterpiece Different Trains
Steve Reich has been called “the most original musical thinker of our time” (The New Yorker) and “among the great composers of the century” (The New York Times). Starting in the 1960s, his pieces It’s Gonna Rain, Drumming, Music for 18 Musicians, Tehillim, Different Trains, and many others helped shift the aesthetic center of musical composition worldwide away from extreme complexity and towards rethinking pulsation and tonal attraction in new ways. He continues to influence younger generations of composers and mainstream musicians and artists all over the world.
Cultural Heritage
A poignant composition inspired by Vietnamese lullabies
Portland-native, Oswald Huỳnh is a Vietnamese American composer whose music navigates aesthetics and tradition, language and translation, and the relationship between heritage and identity. Members of the Oregon Symphony will perform Huỳnh's I Ask My Mother to Sing at the Reser Center in Beaverton.
Community, Survival, Freedom
Nathalie Joachim's Ki Moun Ou Ye
Singer and composer Nathalie Joachim's Ki Moun Ou Ye (which means "Who Are You?" in Creole) celebrates her Haitian family with vibrant stories of community, survival, and freedom. Members of the Oregon Symphony along with Nathalie Joachim will perform a Suite from "Ki moun ou ye," the title track to her 2024 album, out now on New Amsterdam / Nonesuch Records.
Watch
Take a sneak peek
Nathalie Joachim's Suite from Ki Moun Ou Ye