“The piece has four main sections that are constantly being interrupted by new ideas, and these new ideas transform and also overlap with the four main sections of the piece. That’s something that I no longer feel, thankfully, but it felt very real at that time. I had just recently moved from Puerto Rico, which is where I was born and raised, to New York, and as a Latina composer, navigating new spaces that have historically mostly excluded people who look like me, I somehow felt the need to validate my presence in these new spaces. This piece is also about my journey of trying to find a balance in this internal struggle of following my intuition with this external pressure of feeling like I need to validate myself as a composer. This piece is an exploration of and a reflection on the creative process itself, what it feels like to be staring at a blank page, the vulnerability and the anxiety that surrounds the creative process. I wrote this piece in 2008, and at that time I was really struggling with trying to find my own voice as a composer, and also trying to figure out what it meant for someone like me to be writing for such a massive medium, like an orchestra. “ What Keeps Me Awake is a highly personal piece inspired by events that happened, keeping me from falling asleep at night. She holds a master’s degree in music composition from New York University, where she studied with Pedro da Silva, and she has completed coursework toward a doctorate in composition at The Graduate Center (City University of New York), under Tania León. Negrón received her early training in piano and violin at the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico, where she later studied composition with Alfonso Fuentes. In 2022 the Hermitage Artist Retreat awarded Negrón the Greenfield Prize, which includes a $30,000 commission and a six-week residency. As a founding member of the transnational electro-acoustic group Balún, she sings and plays accordion and violin. Her original compositions have been commissioned and performed by the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Kronos Quartet, loadbang, MATA Festival, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Sō Percussion and the American Composers Orchestra, among others. The multi-instrumentalist, composer, educator and music journalist has written numerous works for chamber ensembles and orchestras, as well as film scores and assorted pieces for accordions, toys and electronic and robotic instruments. “Her electricity at the keyboard is palpable, and though she generates from the music itself, as it flows through her fingers it takes on fresh voltage that is unmistakably hers.” The Washington Postīorn in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and now based in Brooklyn, New York, Angélica Negrón is the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s composer-in-residence. Join us for special pre- and post-concert talks with Composer-in-Residence Angélica Negrón & Principal Guest Conductor Gemma New! The talks will take place from the stage following Thursday’s performance and at 6:30 pm before the Friday & Saturday performances. This sweeping epic concludes quietly with Neptune as the women of the Dallas Symphony Chorus lend haunting off-stage vocals in an other-worldly ending certain to induce chills in the Meyerson. Holst’s interstellar blockbuster launches with Mars: The Bringer of War, but pulsing drums give way to Venus: The Bringer of Peace. From the mighty Mars to the cinematic Jupiter, Holst’s The Planets has inspired sci-fi movie music for generations - most famously, Oscar winner John Williams’s The Imperial March from Star Wars. The program concludes with another popular classic. Our soloist Olga Kern brings her virtuosic talent to this piece. 24 as the inspiration for an ingenious theme and variations for piano and orchestra, Rachmaninoff creates the 1934 equivalent of a pop-song sampling. What Keeps Me Awake is followed by Rachmaninoff’s piano concerto-esque work, Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. A perfect complement to Holst’s searching epic, this mesmerizing and effusive work brims with invigorating emotion. What Keeps Me Awake, a probing and wandering soundscape by Puerto Rican-born Angélica Negrón, DSO’s Composer-in-Residence, opens the program.
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