The Salina Symphony will bring in the new year with a concert full of classic and contemporary American songs celebrating 250 years of the American spirit.
Works by five acclaimed American composers – three contemporary, two legendary – will be performed by the Symphony during their January mainstage concert. All three living contemporary composers –Jeremy Crosmer, Michael Schachter and Alan Fletcher – will be in Salina for the concert.
There actually will be four composers present, if you count Salina Symphony music director and conductor Yaniv Segal, who wrote new arrangements of five songs written by composer Florence Price (1887-1953).
“There are a lot of songs in Price’s catalog,” Segal said. “I took her piano parts for five songs and orchestrated them. I didn’t want to reimagine it, so I stayed traditional to the piano pieces.”
The fifth composer is the legendary Leonard Bernstein, whose diverse works include the score for the classic musical “West Side Story.” During the second half of the concert, the Salina Symphony will perform “West Side Story Symphonic Dances” which include orchestrations of familiar tunes such as “Maria,” “Tonight,” “A Place for Us” and “Mambo.”
“We’re kicking off 2026 with American songs in all shapes and forms,” Segal said. “We’re
tracing the history of our country through song, through the power of American music.”
“American Songs” begins at 4 p.m. Jan. 25 at the Stiefel Theatre for the Performing Arts, 151 S. Santa Fe.
Samantha Rose Williams, an operatic mezzo-soprano and musical theatre performer and frequent guest artist with the Salina Symphony, will return to the Stiefel stage to sing the song cycle “Three American Songs” by Alan Fletcher and the five songs by Florence Price.
“This is the fourth time we’ve had (Williams) here,” Segal said. “Adding Samantha to any concert is a treat with her voice and stage charisma.”
Young modern masters
Jeremy Crosmer, born in 1987, is an award-winning cellist, composer, educator and arranger based in the Ann Arbor-Detroit area. He earned multiple degrees in cello, composition and theory pedagogy at the University of Michigan.
From 2012 to 2017, Crosmer was the principal cellist in the Grand Rapids Symphony. In 2017, he joined the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. He is a founding member of the modern music ensemble Latitude 49 and is one-half of the duo ESME that brings crossover music and mashups of pop and classical music to schools throughout Michigan.
“Solo,” written in 2023, was commissioned to honor the legacy and work of the late artist Philip C. Curtis and is inspired by Curtis’s surrealistic painting of a horn interlaced within a gnarly tree. An excerpt of the piece was performed by the Salina Symphony at the “Symphony at Sunset” concert at the Eisenhower Center in 2025, Segal said.
“(Crosmer) is a young, wonderfully bright and cheerful human being, and this is such a cinematic piece,” Segal said.
Michael Schachter, also born in 1987, is a composer, writer, and pianist based in Burlington, Vermont. His compositions have been performed at venues ranging from Lincoln Center in New York City to the Minnesota Centennial Showboat. His work has been commissioned by the Vermont Symphony, Burlington Choral Society, the Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra, and the Grammy-winning choir Conspirare.
“Four for Gideon” is based on four songs written by a Jewish-Czech pianist and composer named Gideon Klein, who tragically was murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust in 1945. In 1941, he was deported to Theresienstadt Ghetto concentration camp, which Segal said was a “showcase” camp and housed a number of composers who were allowed a measure of artistic activity as a way to deceive the broader public as to the real intentions of the Nazis.
“These are old Czech and Polish folk songs, and Michael reworked them into orchestra pieces,” Segal said. “I know it’s a stretch because they’re not American songs, but (Michael) is an American composer.”
Two song cycles
Alan Fletcher, born in 1956, is president and CEO of the Aspen Music Festival and School and a music administrator and composer. A graduate of the Juilliard School in New York City, Fletcher was provost and senior vice-president at the New England Conservatory and head of the School of Music and professor of music at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Penn.
Fletcher’s music includes more than 200 works in all traditional classical forms. “Three American Songs” is a song cycle that reimagines three older folk tunes and hymns from America’s song history: “Wondrous Love,” “Slumber, My Darling” and “The Cuckoo.”
“Alan modifies them slightly and reimagines what the accompaniment is,” Segal said. “They’re simple and easy to sing but transformed into something beautiful.”
The song cycle will be sung by Williams, as well as the five songs by Florence Price: “Out of the South Blew a Wind,” “To My Little Son,” “The Heart of a Woman,” “The Glory of the Day” and “Hold Fast to Dreams.”
“There were lots of songs in (Price’s) catalog, so Samantha and I put our heads together to choose what she would sing,” he said.
The eclectic selection of newer compositions and older tunes, along with the classic jazz-influenced “West Side Story” by Bernstein, tell the story of a diverse American landscape through the power of American music, Segal said.
Having the three participating composers in the audience is a bonus, he said.
“It’s a testament to Salina and a huge deal to have so many accomplished artists in one place presenting a concert of American music,” he said. “It’s a great start to 2026.”
Concert tickets
Tickets for “American Songs” are $42 and $45 for adults and $25 for students age 5 to college senior. Tickets may be purchased at the Stiefel Theatre box office, by calling (785) 827-1998 or online at www.salinasymphony.org.
The Stiefel Theatre box office is open from noon to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.
There also will be a pre-concert talk with Segal and visiting composers Crosmer, Schachter and Fletcher beginning at 3 p.m. in the Stiefel Theatre’s Watson Room. Please enter through the main theatre doors, which will open at 2:45 p.m.
For more information, contact Salina Symphony executive director Adrienne Allen at (785) 823-8309 or salinasymphony.org.
