Echoes Of America

Dance, fall in love, hold your breath, and walk out into the light.

Austin Chanu conducts a night of American music, with mezzo-soprano Nikola Printz.

Some concerts give you one feeling. This one takes you through just about all of them, and sends you home lighter than you came.

It starts at a party. A woman crashes a fancy state dinner, hangs paper lanterns around the room, and starts dancing by herself. Then the man in the giant portrait on the wall steps down to join her, and the two of them foxtrot like they’re young again. It’s Chairman Mao and his wife, imagined by an American composer, and the music swoons like an old Hollywood movie.

Then it gets personal. Nikola Printz sings Good Morning, Beauty, four songs about long-term love: the wonder of waking up next to your person, the ruts every couple hits, and the humor that gets you through. Printz knows these songs well. They’ve sung the full cycle with orchestras on the West Coast.

After intermission, the room goes still. Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings is the music people turn to when they need to grieve or remember together. You’ve probably heard it in a film or at a memorial without knowing its name. Hearing it live, in a room full of people holding their breath at the same time, is something else.

Then Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring opens the windows. It’s bright, open music about a young couple starting a life together, and near the end you’ll hear an old tune called Simple Gifts. You’ll probably know it the second it starts.

Bring someone you love. Bring the friend who could use a good night out. Get dinner downtown, come early for the pre-concert talk if you want the backstory, and give yourself two hours that cover the whole range of what a person can feel.

The PEC Inc. Masterworks Series has four more nights this season: Heroic Aspirations in January, Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony in March, Brahms Requiem in April, and Shostakovich Symphony 5 in May. Build a FlexPack with the concerts you want, up to 10, and pay subscriber pricing for all of them.

Good to know

• Length: About two hours, including a 20-minute intermission.
• Dress: There’s no dress code. Dress up if you feel like it, or come as you are.
• Doors open at 6:00 PM. The pre-concert talk starts at 6:30, and the concert starts at 7:30. There’s a full bar and a snack bar in the lobby.
• Some pieces have short pauses between sections. Most people hold applause until the whole piece is finished. When Austin turns around to face the audience, that’s your cue.
• Parking: The Oncenter garage on E. Adams Street and the Oncenter lot on Harrison Street are right next to the theater.
• Running late? No problem. You’ll be seated at the next break in the music.

Program

• The Chairman Dances: Foxtrot for Orchestra (Adams): John Adams wrote this while working on his opera Nixon in China. Madame Mao crashes a presidential banquet, Mao steps down from his portrait, and the two of them dance back in time to when they were young.
• Good Morning, Beauty (Heggie), with Nikola Printz, mezzo-soprano: Four songs by Jake Heggie, with words by Taylor Mac. Romantic and funny, about what love looks like after the honeymoon. About 20 minutes.
• Adagio for Strings (Barber): Slow, written for the strings alone, and built on long lines that keep rising. One of the most recognized pieces of American music ever written.
• Appalachian Spring: Suite (Copland): Written for dancer and choreographer Martha Graham. Open, bright, and hopeful, with variations on the Shaker tune Simple Gifts near the end.