Tucson Symphony Orchestra hosts rising soprano for Desert Song Festival

The first time soprano Nicole Cabell heard Samuel Barber’s “Knoxville: Summer of 1915,” “I just absolutely fell in love with it.”

“It’s a very American piece,” she said of the work, which she will perform with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra this weekend as part of the 2022 Tucson Desert Song Festival.

“I’m very interested in Americana and history, and the detail and the personal experience from which this piece is written … is very fascinating to me,” she said.

TSO Music Director José Luis Gomez paired the Barber with Mahler’s Symphony No. 4, which has a vocal solo for soprano in the final movement. The orchestra will perform the concert — “Mahler’s Vision of Paradise” — on Friday, Jan. 21, and Sunday, Jan. 23, at Tucson Music Hall.

Gomez called the Barber work, a tone poem of sorts based on James Agee’s 1938 poem, a soprano showcase written very much in the style of Mahler. Mahler turned to the folk poetry collection “Des Knaben Wunderhorn” (The Boy’s Magic Horn) for his Fourth Symphony — the final installment of his so-called Wunderhorn symphonies inspired by the collection.

“It’s a good pairing to see how Barber uses the texts of the fantastic literature and adapts it to music. And Mahler did the same thing with German writers including himself,” Gomez said.

Barber was a master of creating atmosphere, something that Mahler also accomplishes in Symphony No. 4. Mahler wrote the lyrics of the last movement with a high voice in mind that would conjure an image of a little boy imagining what heaven would look like.

“In a weird way (‘Knoxville’) is nostalgic … and it is so American,” Cabell said. “And I think as Americans, we can all sort of relate to this mood and this experience that is part of our blood memory or our roots going back.”

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This weekend’s concert marks Cabell’s TSO debut. The California native, who teaches voice at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, is an alumnus of Lyric Opera of Chicago’s Center for American Artists. In 2005, she won the prestigious BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition, which set her off on an opera career that has included performing on some of the biggest opera stages in the U.S. and Europe.

Gomez opens the concert with Florence Price’s “Dances in the Canebrakes,” orchestrated by William Grant Still.

Price is the first Black female composer to have her work performed by a major orchestra; Still, who composed nearly 200 works from symphonies to songs, is often referred to as the “Dean of Afro-American Composers.”

Gomez said Price fits in with the Song Festival’s theme of honoring women.

“It matches beautifully with the women in music and the arts. This is a great opportunity to listen to her music,” Gomez said.

Programming Price follows in the footsteps of the TSO playing works by other composers of color, including Still, whose “Festive” Overture was featured on the TSO’s season opening concert last September.

“I feel the responsibility of bringing this music, as well as other great composers, who are part of the history of this country,” Gomez said. “The events of 2020 were eye- and ear-openers to not only find opportunities to make a statement of empowering diversity but the diversity we have has been overlooked. ... We have to change that through empowering the great music written by people of different backgrounds.”