Harlem Quartet
Ilmar Gavilán and Melissa White, violins
Jaime Amador, viola
Felix Umansky, cello with Karen Slack, soprano
Aaron Wunsch, piano

The Harlem Quartet leads a special program for MLK Day, which brings together music by Beethoven, spirituals, and works by African American and contemporary composers, playing all with equal “panache” (New York Times). Joining them in a new collaboration is “feisty, rich-voiced” soprano Karen Slack (New York Times), featured at the Metropolitan Opera in Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, in a powerful new setting of Langston Hughes’s poem, Kids Who Die, for soprano, piano, and string quartet.

Program: Let Freedom Ring

Beethoven — String Quartet in A Major, op. 18, no. 5

African American spirituals

Caroline Shaw — Entr’acte

George Walker — Lyric for Strings

William Grant Still — Lyric String Quartette

Scott Gendel — Kids Who Die (Langston Hughes) New York Premiere