Sheboygan Symphony Orchestra Presents America @250

West Side Story is a singular, iconic musical theater work that combined the genius of Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, Jerome Robbins, and Arthur Laurents. Based on Shakespeare's play Romeo & Juliet, the musical stylizations draw heavily from Jazz, Afro-Caribbean, and Mexican sources.

Rhapsody in Blue is, originally, a work for solo piano and jazz band commissioned by bandleader Paul Whiteman. Ferde Grofé later orchestrated the versions we hear most often for full orchestra. The work combines elements of classical music with jazz influences and premiered in a concert titled "An Experiment in Modern Music." Rhapsody in Blue is one of Gershwin's most recognizable pieces, ushered in a new era in America's musical history, and established his reputation as an important composer. The famous opening clarinet glissando has become as instantly recognizable to audiences as the opening of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

"Afro-American Symphony" is a 1930 composition by William Grant Still, the first symphony written by an African American that was performed for a U.S. audience by a major orchestra. It combines a traditional symphonic form, but with blues progressions and rhythms that were characteristic of popular African American music at the time.

This combination of musical elements expressed Still's integration of Black culture into the classical music forms. Still, additionally, used quotations from four poems by the African American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar as epigraphs for each symphonic movement.