An Evening with Three American Composers: Bernstein, Sedek, Baboukis
Date
15 May 2019
Venue
Ewart Memorial Hall, AUC Downtown (15 May); Malak Gabr Arts Theater, AUC New Cairo (16 May); Bibliotheca Alexandrina (17 May), Cairo and Alexandria
With
Nayer Nagui and John Baboukis (conductors); Dina Iskander, Julia Bentley, Gala El Hadidi, Joseph Kauzman, Brandan Sanchez; Hossam Shehata (violin); Cairo Choral Society; Cairo Festival Orchestra
In collaboration with
the US Embassy in Cairo; the American University in Cairo and the Cairo Choral Society
About this concert
An evening of music by three contemporary American composers, conceived by Dr John Baboukis, Professor of Music and Director of the Music Program at the American University in Cairo and Music Director of the Cairo Choral Society. With the support of the US Embassy in Cairo, the Cairo Choral Society and the Cairo Celebration Choir joined the Cairo Festival Orchestra and six American and Egyptian soloists. Nayer Nagui conducted Leonard Bernstein’s Serenade, with the violinist Hossam Shehata, and two movements of Martin Sedek’s cantata The Four Seasons, based on Vivaldi’s work of that name; Baboukis conducted his own Requiem Mass. Three evenings: Ewart Memorial Hall, AUC Downtown, on 15 May, the Malak Gabr Arts Theater, AUC New Cairo, on 16 May, and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina on 17 May, with free admission in Cairo.
Programme
Work
John Baboukis, Requiem Mass
Work
Bernstein, Serenade for violin and orchestra
Work
Martin Sedek, The Four Seasons (two movements of the cantata)
About the music
John Baboukis
Professor and director of the music program at the American University in Cairo, where course enrolment grew from about 120 to 500–600 students a semester.
A Greek-American Doctor of Music from Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, the first there to submit an original composition for a doctorate in choral conducting.
Conducts the Cairo Choral Society and the Cairo Festival Orchestra, founded the early-music group The Lions of Cairo, and wrote a symphony premiered by the Cairo Symphony Orchestra.
Leonard Bernstein, Serenade (after Plato’s Symposium)
Written in 1954 for solo violin, strings, harp and percussion, in five movements named after the speakers in Plato’s dialogue on love; first performed in Venice that year by Isaac Stern.
