American Composers

Classical music is often associated with European culture, but a number of American composers have contributed their voices to the canon of great concert music, helping define what American music is and how it engages with the country’s unique culture. This week on Arizona Encore, we dive into works by a range of American composers and discover both their differing approaches and their thematic commonalities.

The program begins with an icon of musical Americana, John Philip Sousa. Often known as “the March King,” Sousa’s rousing military band music has become a staple of marching band repertoire. Our next work, in contrast, embraces the global nature of American culture; Colin Jacobsen and Siamak Aghaei’s Ascending Bird is a blend of Persian and American styles in both music and programmatic content. In keeping with the folk-inspired aesthetic of much of American music, we explore choral arrangements of two traditional songs, “Lay Me Low” and “Great God Almighty,” before discovering how folk traditions can find their way into instrumental music with Jessie Montgomery’s Strum. After Philip Glass’s String Quartet No. 2–an exemplary sample of a distinctly American compositional style–we conclude with Joel Thompson’s My Dungeon Shook: Three American Preludes for solo piano, a wide-ranging musical and cultural pastiche that addresses powerful political and social issues. Through these diverse works, this week’s program highlights the energy, commitment, and recognizable voice that characterizes American music in all its forms.