VA: Cooke & Huang Nov. 4, 2025 Digital Program

Program

Sasha Cooke, mezzo-soprano
Myra Huang, piano

At The River - Aaron Copland
Sure on this Shining Night - Samuel Barber
Recuerdo - John Musto
Circus Band - Charles Ives
Prayer - Leslie Adams
American Lament - Jasmine Barns
1. Let America be America Again Part I
2. The River Remembers
3. Let America be America Again Part II
4. America
5. Let America be America Again Part III
INTERMISSION
Lilacs - Sergei Rachmaninoff
Laue Sommernacht - Alma Mahler
Was du mir bist - Erich Korngold
Youkali - Kurt Weill
Give Me Jesus - Moses Hogan, arr.
Simple Song - Leonard Bernstein
Grace - Michael Tilson Thomas
Children will Listen - Stephen Sondheim
Of Thee I Sing - George Gershwin

Patrons are requested to silence cell phones and other electronic devices during performances.

The taking of photographs and the use of recording equipment are not allowed in this venue.

All events and artists subject to change without prior notice.

This event is an external rental presented in coordination with the Trump Kennedy Center Campus Rentals Office and is not produced by the Trump Kennedy Center.

Program Notes

Langston Hughes once described America as “the mighty dream,” and that phrase is what drew me to the theme of today’s program. Have we come close to realizing that dream? Are we truly the “land of the free” we so proudly proclaim? What does it mean to be American today, on the eve of our nation’s 250th anniversary? These are questions I’ve been turning over in my head, and I can think of no better way to explore them than through song, where art provides a safe space and reminds us of our shared humanity.

America has long been both a beacon and a paradox: a symbol of hope for the estranged and persecuted, and yet a place still struggling with its own identity. Where else but in America could Kurt Weill find refuge after fleeing Nazi Germany, or Rachmaninoff after escaping the Bolshevik Revolution? By coming here, they helped shape what we call American music, and in turn, America reshaped them. The musical fabric of this country is vast, as much a melting pot of cultures as it is of people. My own family reflects that mixture. On one side, I trace ancestors back to the Mayflower, later missionaries who came to Honolulu in the 1830s to teach Hawaii’s royal family. On the other, my grandparents were wartime refugees from Dnipro, Ukraine. Taken during the German occupation as forced laborers (“Östarbeiter”), they became displaced persons in Yugoslavia before finally finding refuge in the United States in 1956. They were naturalized citizens by 1961. Growing up at the end of the Cold War, I identified as Russian-American, then after Ukraine declared independence in 1991, as Ukrainian-American.

Of course, there are no “purely American” composers, or people for that matter, except Native American composers. America has, for the most part, been a nation of arrivals. Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, and Leonard Bernstein were Jewish Americans with roots in Lithuania, Ukraine, and what was then Russian Poland, and yet their music is woven into the fabric of American sound. The ironies and surprises are many: Irving Berlin, a Jewish emigrant from czarist Russia, gave us White Christmas! More recently, Kennedy Center honorees Tania León and Lin-Manuel Miranda, Cuban-American and Puerto Rican-American respectively, have redefined what American composition can mean. Even Charles Ives and Samuel Barber, whose families had been in New England for centuries, were the descendants of immigrants.

I usually describe myself as a “music person.” I tend to gravitate more to melodies than words. But in this program, it was the texts that spoke most powerfully to me. Hughes’s poem Let America Be America Again, nearly a century old, opens Jasmine Barnes’ new song cycle American Lament. The fact that its words feel as urgent now as they did then, perhaps even more so, is sobering. When Jasmine and I spoke about the piece, she shared her hope that a hundred years from now the poem will read like a relic of the past. Her music weaves in fragments of well-known American patriotic songs, creating a kind of dialogue with our national identity. I can’t think of another work that invokes America in quite this way. It feels as though the music itself is holding up a mirror, asking us to take a hard look at who we are. And the tune that sets us off is the spiritual Deep River, another vital piece of our American musical history.

Other parts of this program resonate in unexpected ways as well. In Copland’s At the River, the line “Soon our pilgrimage will cease” drawn from a hymn nearly two hundred years old, offers a sense of comfort. Leslie Adams’ Prayer simply asks, “Which way to go?” In Michael Tilson Thomas’ Grace (written in the 1980s), he pleads, “So many people calling out to one another, Help us to hear them, Teach us that all men are brothers.” The spiritual Give Me Jesus, with its refrain “You may have all this world,” takes on new meaning when considered alongside Hughes’s vision of an America that has “never been yet—and yet must be.”

Hughes’s poem (and Jasmine’s cycle) does not end in despair but in hope: a call for “we, the people” to redeem the land and “make America again.” It is the people who have made America and who must continue to do so. That spirit of hope runs through all the music in this program. It seems to be woven into the American spirit itself. However complex our history, wherever we stand on the issues, hope has always been part of our imagination, and it is through hope that we continue moving together toward “the mighty dream.” I hope you enjoy our journey.

O, let America be America again—

The land that never has been yet—

And yet must be—the land where every man is free.

Staff

Artistic Director

Peter Russell
Director of Operations

Erin Feng
Communications Manager

Isabel Randall
Titles Supervisor & Coordinator

Diane D. Lin and Pei-Hsuan Lin

The Trump Kennedy Center Executive Leadership

Executive DirectorMatt Floca

Chief Financial OfficerDonna Arduin

Acting General CounselElliot Berke

Vice President of Human Resources LaTa’sha M. Bowens

Senior Vice President, MarketingRobin Osborne

Vice President, Public RelationsRoma Daravi

Vice President, EducationJordan LaSalle

Vice President, ProductionGlenn Turner

Interim Chief Information Officer Bob Sellappan

Staff for the Terrace Theater

Theater Manager Xiomara Mercado*

Head Usher Randy Howes

Production Manager Kate Roberts

Master Technicians Richard Haase and Susan Kelleher

Box Office Treasurer Ron Payne

*Represented by ATPAM, the Association of Theatrical Press Agents and Managers.

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The box office at the Kennedy Center is represented by I.A.T.S.E, Local #868.

Steinway Piano Gallery is the exclusive area representative of Steinway & Sons and Boston pianos, the official pianos of the Kennedy Center.

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The technicians at the Kennedy Center are represented by Local #22, Local #772, and Local #798 I.A.T.S.E., AFL-CIO-CLC, the professional union of theatrical technicians.

Thank You Supporters

Vocal Arts DC wishes to thank our donors for their generous support.

Vocal Arts DC is the grateful recipient of major grants from The D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and appreciates generous support from The Howard and Sarah D. Solomon Foundation, The Dallas Morse Coors Foundation, The Clark Winchcole Foundation, and The Nancy Peery Marriott Foundation.

A complement of free tickets has been made available to students through a generous contribution to Vocal Arts DC by Susan and Daniel Joseph.

Of Thee I Sing