“This is Us” Premieres with the Acadiana Symphony
During our past 3 collaborations with Maestro Mariusz Smolij and the Acadiana Symphony Orchestra, we’ve explored distant lands and broad subjects. To complement the ASO’s 3 season themes, Water, Fire and Earth, we’ve presented 6 selections from our repertoire: Czech Journeys and Pacifica, Reflections of the Spirit and Rodeo!, and Grand Canyon Country and Sagaland, respectively.
Between engagements in Louisiana, we also had the pleasure of working with Maestro Smolij on a monthlong, 4-orchestra concert tour across Poland. He is Polish-American and also Artistic Director of the Toruńska Orkiestra Symfoniczna in the beautiful medieval city of Toruń.
For our fourth collaboration in Lafayette, we’re staying local—celebrating the orchestra’s namesake, the distinctive Acadiana region—with a new community-sourced project. Home to 22 parishes and over 1.3 million residents, the Acadiana region is synonymous with Cajun culture. The region’s 18th Century–European roots date back to a period when French-speaking colonists (Acadians) were forced to abandon their settlements in Canada’s Maritime provinces and eventually sought exile in the French territory of Louisiana. Today the region is a jambalaya of people, traditions, music and food. Lafayette, home of the ASO, is the largest city in Acadiana and considered the capital of Cajun Country—more recently, it was also dubbed the “Happiest City in America.”
With such culture and history as a backdrop, the ASO wanted to capture the spirit of Acadiana for their 35th anniversary season, and so the project “This is Us: Sights & Sounds of Acadiana” was born. Early on, the ASO formed a partnership with Lafayette Travel, a local arts, culture and tourism organization, to help promote the project and collect image submissions from Acadiana residents. In the latter stages, the Center for Louisiana Studies at the University of Louisiana—Lafayette also stepped in to provide access to their rich historical image archive documenting many facets of Acadiana’s early days.
All sources combined, we received close to 3,500 image submissions for “This is Us,” and everything is being curated by Westwater Arts Creative Director Nicholas Bardonnay. He will then choreograph the final selections to excerpts from Virgil Thomson’s Acadian Songs and Dances, which Thomson originally composed for the 1948 film Louisiana Story.
The ASO’s March 7 concert at the Heymann Performing Arts Center will mark the premiere of this new, locally inspired multimedia work. The program will open with Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man and include the 2nd & 4th movements from Dvořák’s New World Symphony, and Liszt’s Les Préludes.
In honor of Beethoven’s 250th birthday in 2020, we’re also premiering the Beethoven arrangement of our popular National Park Suite visual piece. The imagery, paired with the lovely Adagio movement from the 9th Symphony, will provide a broad and beautiful context from which to appreciate the distinctiveness of Acadiana’s lands, people and culture.
(Dancers image submitted by Lafayette Travel. Lafayette sign and swamp cypress images submitted by Cheryl Dubois. Costumes image submitted by Sophe Probst. Cajun jam session image submitted by Acadiana Symphony Orchestra.)
