Princeton Symphony Orchestra music director Rossen Milanov is set to lead PSO and Juilliard Jazz Orchestra during a family concert on Oct. 5, 2013. (Photo by Beth Van Hoeven).
Princeton Symphony Orchestra and Princeton University Art Museum is set to present a jazz and art event for families in October.
The third annual Festival of Music and Art: Freedom Expressed! is scheduled for Oct. 5. The event includes PSO’s Family Concert, museum staff-led crafts and a photography exhibition.
The festival showcases responses in art and music to The Great American Migration of the families of freed slaves to northern urban industrial centers during WWI and the Depression years. It’s a highlight of the PSO’s Migration Series Project, a series of community-sponsored fall events which pays tribute to the 150th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation through music, art and literature.
The festival centerpiece is PSO’s Family Concert called A Salute to African Americans’ Jazz Heritage; scheduled for 12:30 p.m. at Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium.
The concert features Derek Bermel’s jazz concerto Migration Series performed by the Juilliard Jazz Orchestra with accompaniment by PSO. Bermel’s Migration Series depicts African American painter Jacob Lawrence’s similarly titled series of 60 tempera panels illustrating The Great Migration experience.
Audience members are set to receive a take-home art companion featuring full-color plates of Jacob Lawrence’s panels with accompanying text to help young audience members visualize Bermel’s music masterpiece.
Tickets to the concert are $10.
A photography exhibition featuring photos of African American families in Princeton around the early to mid 1900s, courtesy of the Historical Society of Princeton, is set to decorate Richardson Auditorium’s lobby during the event. The images are large-scale reproductions of originals from the society’s archives documenting the development and occupation of the historically black Witherspoon Street neighborhood.
Before and after the concert, Princeton University Art Museum is set to offer family-friendly arts and crafts as part of the Art for Families: African American Art program. Children will have the opportunity to create Jacob Lawrence-inspired collages telling their own family histories.
Participants are invited to tour the museum’s American art collection including works by African American artists. The museum’s event it scheduled for 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The museum is set to offer refreshments, and families are invited to tour its
Additionally, artwork by students participating in PSO BRAVO!”s Watching the Migration is set to be on display at Princeton Public Library on Witherspoon Street, Labyrinth Books on Nassau Street and jaZam’s Toy Store in Palmer Square during the festival.
Schools participating in PSO BRAVO! receive donated copies of The Great Migration, an art book containing the complete set of images of Lawrence’s 60 panels with an abridged version of the artist’s original text from his Migration Series.
This is the third year of the PSO and Princeton University Art Museum’s collaboration to present a Festival of Music and Art. Previous festivals sported themes of American Adventures and Chinese Music and Art.
More information is online at princetonsymphony.org.
,
