A Celebration of the Music of Joseph Landers

This program puts Alabama composer Joseph Landers center stage, celebrating his decades of shaping the state’s musical life as head of theory and composition at the University of Montevallo, where he held the Linda and Todd Strange Endowed Professorship. He is a graduate of the University of Alabama and has received fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation, the Tanglewood Music Center, and the Alabama State Council on the Arts. In 2019, his opera Let Us Now Praise Famous Men — an adaptation of James Agee’s account of Hale County sharecroppers — premiered during Alabama’s bicentennial celebration.

The concert opens with the world premiere of Landers’ November Rainbow, followed by the Birmingham premiere of his Concerto for Violin and Orchestra. The program closes with J.S. Bach’s Double Concerto for Violin and Oboe, pairing Landers’ contemporary voice with one of the Baroque era’s most enduring works for two soloists.

Thank you to the members of the Mr. and Mrs. William J. Rushton IV Sound Investment Series, whose generosity has underwritten the world premiere of Landers’ November Rainbow.