St. Louis, MO USA – St. Louis Symphony Orchestra – Esmail, Childs, Prokofiev

PERFORMERS
Steven Banks, saxophone (SLSO debut)
St. Louis Symphony Orchestra
Xian Zhang, conductor

PROGRAMME
Reena Esmail: RE|Member (First SLSO performances)
Billy Childs: Diaspora (Concerto for Saxophone and Orchestra) (First SLSO performances)
Sergei Prokofiev: Symphony No. 5

VENUE NOTE:
Humanity is at the core of this transformative program. “I conceived of it as a symphony on the greatness of the human soul,” Prokofiev remarked about his wartime Fifth Symphony. In 2020, as Reena Esmail set out to compose RE|Member, she felt the deep healing of a collective return to music-making after a global pandemic. And Billy Childs expresses trauma, resilience, and empowerment within the Black American experience through his poignant symphonic poem, Diaspora, brought to life in these performances by saxophonist Steven Banks.