ROCK HILL, SOUTH CAROLINA – The Rock Hill Symphony begins its sixth season with a Sept. 9 concert featuring a composition by Winthrop University faculty member Mark Lewis.
The 7:30 p.m. performance at the Sullivan Middle School Auditorium, located on Eden Terrace, also is the inaugural performance for new conductor and music director Maestro Christopher James Lees. He joins the Rock Hill Symphony while continuing to serve the Charlotte Symphony as its resident conductor.
The concert will feature a fully orchestrated performance of Lewis’ piece, called “Weeping, an Angel. Immense.” The Charlotte Symphony and New York City’s North/South have both performed the piece, Lewis said, but this will be the first time that the brand new, fully orchestrated version has been performed.
Lewis said his composition itself is largely energetic and perpetual with bursts of lyricism. “There are slower, more doleful sections to the work as well,” he said. “I hope the work connects with the listener in its immediate energy and wistfulness.”
He hopes those attending the concert will be brought into the communicative nature of the lyricism and soaring melodic lines of the solo viola, which will be played by Charlotte Symphony principal viola Benjamin Geller.
Lewis said his work is a commentary on the various ways in which we deal with anguish or grief in the many forms it presents itself. “I originally thought of it as expressing a duality of grief, but ‘duality’ does not capture the correct sentiment,” he said.
Lewis was writing the composition about grief during the Covid lockdown when he found out that one of his former composition students had passed away in December 2020. He dedicated the piece to the memory of the student, Nick Firimonte, much to the appreciation of Firimonte’s family.
The title of Lewis’ piece is drawn from a Federico Garcia Lorca poem, translated:
I have shut my windows.
I do not want to hear the weeping.
But from behind the grey walls.
Nothing is heard but the weeping.
There are few angels that sing.
There are few dogs that bark.
A thousand violins fit in the palm of the hand.
But the weeping is an immense angel.
The weeping is an immense dog.
The weeping is an immense violin.
Tears strangle the wind.
Nothing is heard but the weeping.
Also on the Sept. 9 concert program are Coleridge-Taylor’s dramatic “Overture to Hiawatha” and Beethoven’s titanic and earth-shattering “Symphony No. 5.”
During the 6:30 p.m. pre-concert talk, Lees, Geller and Lewis will collectively share highlights for the evening.
Tickets for the concert are $25 and can be purchased online.
For more information on the Rock Hill Symphony, please visit the organization’s website. For information on Lewis’ composition, please contact him at lewism@winthrop.edu.
