Southern Arizona Symphony Orchestra opens 2024 with a concert of works by often-overlooked Black composers in honor of Black History Month.
A highlight of this weekend’s concert is the SASO debut of Tucson violinist Carissa Powe, a University of Arizona music major who has won a number of local honors since she made her orchestra debut with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra at age 12.
Powe, who will graduate in December with a degree in music performance, will perform African-British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Violin Concerto in G minor.
“It’s absolutely beautiful and gorgeous,” she said of the work, which she will perform for the first time with SASO. “There’s a really beautiful second movement that’s so sweet and so enduring. It packs a lot of energy, especially in the first and third movement.”
In addition to the Coleridge-Taylor concerto, SASO Music Director Linus Lerner curated a program that draws from the masterpieces of Americans George Walker, the first African-American to win the Pulitzer Prize for music; and William Grant Still, the prolific 20th-century composer often referred to as the Dean of African-American Composers.
The program also includes an Afro-centric work by Brazilian composer Oscar Lorenzo Fernández, whose percussive-rich “Batuque” borrows from African idioms developed by women in Portuguese-colonized Cape Verde where the African slave trade originated.
The piece, which is the final movement of Fernandez’s “Reisado do Pastoreio” suite, uses forceful brass and wind motifs layered over pulsing crisscrossing Afro-Brazilian rhythms.
“Batuque,” which Fernandez composed in 1930, kicks off the concert, which the orchestra will perform Saturday, Feb. 10, in SaddleBrooke and Sunday, Feb. 11, at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church.
Although this is Powe’s first appearance with SASO, the 24-year-old who grew up in Tucson with her two musically-inclined siblings, won prizes in the orchestra’s Dorothy Vanek Youth Concerto Competition in 2013 and ‘14.
Powe, who was born in Montreal and grew up in Tucson, made her orchestral debut with the TSO days after she turned 12. A Star review from that performance said Powe was “alternately controlled and carefree” on the stage among the professional ensemble, “summoning a warm, rich tone from her violin” on Jean Batiste Accolay’s Concerto No. 1 in A minor.
She has since gone on to perform with the Civic Orchestra of Tucson and Arizona Symphonic Winds, and has won a number of awards, including string division winner of the UA School of Music’s Concerto Competition and first place in the school’s solo string competition that same year.
Powe was selected for the inaugural season of Carnegie Hall’s NYO2 and was a semifinalist in the 20th Annual Sphinx Competition. She also was featured in Arizona Arts Live’s pandemic-era at-home series in Centennial Hall in November 2020.
Powe and her siblings Levi (cello) and Aliyah (violin) started studying music when they were 4 or 5. The siblings, who were homeschooled, were active in the TSO’s Young Composers Project and concerto competitions for several local orchestras.
“When I was little, I drew a picture of myself playing in an orchestra,” Powe recalled, thinking at the time, “That will be me one day.”
As her December graduation date looms in the distance, Powe, who has been teaching violin for six years, said she is still considering a performance career. She and her siblings still perform as a trio.
