Concert update: this event is postponed to January. We apologize for any inconvenience, and tickets will be automatically refunded to buyers. We will share new date details as soon as possible and look forward to gathering together!

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Join us for a lively evening of Bach, Villa-Lobos, Vivaldi, and Adamo at the Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral! Our program includes the Philadelphia premiere of Mark Adamo's beautiful and haunting Last Year, a cello concerto referencing the music of Vivaldi through the lens of climate change, featuring soloist Richard Belcher.

Program:

Johann Sebastian Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No. 3

Heitor Villa-Lobos: Bachianas Brasileiras No. 9

Antonio Vivaldi: Concerto alla Rustica

Mark Adamo: Last Year

Tickets:

Tickets are $25 for general admission seating. They can be purchased in advance at the ticket link below or at the door.

About Richard Belcher:

New Zealand cellist Richard Belcher joined the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra (SPCO) in 2019. He was the founding cellist of the Grammy-nominated Enso String Quartet with whom he toured for two decades, performing frequently in many of the great concert halls throughout the world, as well as making several highly acclaimed recordings. From 2008 Richard has been Principal Cello of ROCO in Houston, TX. Recently he has performed concertos with both the SPCO and ROCO, the latter in a premiere performance of Mark Adamo’s cello concerto, “Last Year.” For the 2022-23 season he played as a member of the Minnesota Orchestra.

Since 2018 Richard has been the Artistic Director of Music on the Hill, a chamber music series in Mankato, MN, and he continues to be a frequent guest at festivals throughout the USA.  Richard moved to the United States in 1998 to study for his Masters degree with Aldo Parisot at Yale University, and it was there that he co-founded the Enso Quartet. Richard plays a cello made by N.F Vuillaume in 1856. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife Cecilia Belcher, the Assistant Principal Second Violin of the Minnesota Orchestra, and their two young children.

About Mark Adamo:

American composer-librettist Mark Adamo's work has returned to the stage in force. Opera Holland Park gave the U. K. premiere of his first opera, Little Women, in July of 2022;  Pittsburgh Festival Opera completed and introduced its filmed version his second opera, Lysistrata, that same month, which also saw the Tanglewood Institute’s premiere of the wind-orchestra version of the Overture to Lysistrata, arranged by Peter Martin.  Up next is the New York premiere of Last Year, his concerto for cello and string orchestra which refracts Vivaldi’s Four Seasons through the prism of a changing climate; Mei-Ann Chen leads soloist Jeffrey Zeigler and the American Composers’ Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in October. Teatro Colón, in Buenos Aires, gives the Argentine premiere in Buenos Aires of Little Women in November; that same month, Boston Modern Orchestra Project gives the East Coast premiere of The Lord of Cries, the opera he co-created with composer John Corigliano for Santa Fe Opera in 2021. These performances will be recorded for the work’s premiere release on CD. The autumn of 2021 saw the first performances of Last Year in San Francisco and in Houston, followed, in December, by Chicago Opera Theater’s new production of Becoming Santa Claus, Adamo’s fourth opera, which was conducted by Lidiya Yankovskaya and directed by Kyle Lang. This followed the warmly received Dutch premiere by the Dutch National Opera Academy of Little Women, given in Amsterdam in January of 2020.

Transportation and Accessibility:

There is metered street parking, an LAZ lot at 37th & Market, and public transit accessibility through SEPTA 21, 30, 40, 42. Additionally, there is a wheelchair-accessible entrance on 38th St.