United States ‘United in Sound: America at 250’ [5] – Various: Ensemble Connect. Weill Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall, New York, 13.4.2026. (RP)
Joan Tower – Petroushskates
Michael Tilson Thomas – Street Song
Leonard Bernstein – Dance Suite
Wynton Marsalis – A Fiddler’s Tale Suite
Ensemble Connect celebrated the upcoming 2026 US Semiquincentennial with an eclectic, exhilarating concert that featured works by true American masters. All four composers – Joan Tower, Michael Tilson Thomas, Leonard Bernstein and Wynton Marsalis – were born in the 20th century. Except for Bernstein, who died in 1990, the others are still making their musical mark.
Joan Tower shattered glass ceilings as a composer, conductor and concert pianist. Many of her works were inspired by nature, but in Petroushskates she took delight in figure skating. With the reference to Stravinsky’s ballet Petrushka in the title, Tower also paid homage to a composer who influenced her, though there was little of his trickster clown in her work.
Composed for violin, cello, flute, clarinet and piano, Petroushskates is as complex as the intricate moves pair skaters perform with precise timing and trust and in perfect unison. It opened with a splash of sparkle from flutist Cameron Cullen and clarinetist Anoush Pogossian above a rhythmically charged accompaniment from the other three instruments. Violinist Laurel Gagnon and cellist Elena Ariza competed with pianist Joseph Vaz in intensity and urgency as if performing side-by-side spins and jumps. With all the tricky musical landings done, there was a flourish from the strings and woodwinds and a wink of a chord on the piano to land the piece.
Michael Tilson Thomas stepped down from the conductor’s podium in early 2025 due to a recurrence of glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer that was first diagnosed in 2021. His Street Song, composed in 1988 for brass quintet, is an example of the transparency and structural clarity he sought to achieve to facilitate direct communication with an audience.
Street Song, which MTT wrote as a tribute to his father, is made up of three songs interwoven in an equal number of contingent parts. MTT described the work as having harmonies moving between the Middle Ages and the present and traversing East and West, but always from the perspective of late-twentieth-century America. Trumpeters Grace O’Connell and Brian Olsen, hornist Will Sands, trombonist David Seder and bass trombonist Daniel Schwalbach gave a warm-hearted, witty performance of the piece that reflected MTT’s intentions.
The ensemble work was excellent in the intricate first sections, but the solos made the performance. Sands was terrific, combining sincerity and tonal luster in the piece’s best melody. O’Connell was equally eloquent in the trumpet solo that followed. She and Olsen later etched dissonances of remarkable clarity which resolved into wide, all-American sounds that summoned Aaron Copland’s American soundscapes. In the final song, the dialogue faded into three soft chords that resonated with an uneasy optimism marking the break of a new day.
Dance Suite was the last work Bernstein composed before he died in 1990. He wrote it for the 50th Anniversary Gala of the American Ballet Theater but, at only six minutes in length, the brevity of the five movements proved unsuitable for choreography. It is a work that is as deeply personal as MTT’s Street Song, and each movement is dedicated with affection to one of his choreographer friends and colleagues.
The five players created vivid impressions in each brief dance. In the first, each player took a turn with a sprightly melody that ended with a riff. To the oom-pah-pah of the lower brasses, O’Connell played a disjunct waltz that suddenly turned bluesy. A tango with an eerie melody barely began before it lurched to a halt. Livelier was ‘MTV’, Bernstein’s commentary on the then-new phenomenon of television programs playing music videos, which was somewhat incongruously inspired by the popular crime drama Miami Vice.
The concert ended as it began with Stravinsky’s spirit hovering in Weill Hall. Trumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis has an impeccable pedigree as a jazz musician, but he is no stranger to the classical music realm. He composed A Fiddler’s Tale Suite in 1988 as a companion piece to Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Marsalis employed the same instruments – clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, trombone, percussion, violin and bass – that Stravinsky used in The Soldier’s Tale.
The story centers on violinist Beatrice Conners, who sells her soul to the devil, Bubba Z. Beals, for fame and creative success. Her rise to the top is followed by artistic stagnation and her ultimate struggle to break the Faustian bargain. Staying within a classical framework, Marsalis depicted the tale in a hybrid mix of jazz, blues, ragtime and Appalachian traditions. Poet Stanley Crouch wrote a spoken narration for the piece, but Ensemble Connect let the music speak for itself.
Bassoonist Marty Tung, bassist Marguerite Cox and percussionist Oliver Xu joined Gagnon, Pogossian, O’Connell and Seder in this colorful musical mashup. Gagnon turned up the heat, not only by wearing a scarlet dress but also with her red-hot fiddling. O’Connell blazed in bluesy solos above Cox’s walking bass. There were smooth, cool sounds from Pogossian, Tung and Seder, but Xu was an attention grabber on par with Gagnon, whether causally strumming a washboard or wreaking havoc on a drum set in the tale’s finale.
Rick Perdian