Oakland Symphony and
Bell Investment Advisors

present

SEASON FINALE BEETHOVEN’S EROICA

Paramount Theatre, Oakland 

Kedrick Armstrong, conductor
Shawnette Sulker, soprano
Krysty Swann, mezzo-soprano
Terrence Chin-Loy, tenor
Kenneth Kellogg, bass
Zach Salsburg-Frank, chorus conductor
Oakland Symphony Chorus

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 3, Eroica
    I.   Allegro con brio
   II. Marcia funebre: Adagio assai 
   III. Scherzo: Allegro vivace
   IV. Finale: Allegro molto

INTERMISSION

R. NATHANIEL DETT The Ordering of Moses
   1. Go Down, Moses
   2. Is it Not I, Jehovah!
   3. Orchestra Interlude
   4. And When Moses Smote the Water
   5. March of the Israelites Through the Red Sea
   6. The Egyptians Pursue
   7. Sing Ye to Jehovah

Concert Sponsor: Bell Investment Advisors
Season Presenting Sponsor: Bell Investment Advisors
Season Wine Sponsor: Retzlaff Vineyards
The 2025-2026 Season of Oakland Symphony is generously funded in part by the East Bay Music Fund at the East Bay Community Foundation; the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation; and supported by the Oakland City Council and funded by the City of Oakland’s Cultural Funding Program

​

​

​

Tonight, and together, we come to the end this season with a preview of our next.  

For the 2026-27, Music Director Kendrick Armstrong has programmed music of defiance.   From the subversive Eleventh Symphony of Shostakovich to the inspiring “Dreamers Oratorio” of Jimmy Lopez, which will be heard one year from tonight.    

The season theme, to Resist and Persist, begins tonight with Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony composed in the fire of revolution and dedicated to Napoleon.  Upon learning that Napoleon had declared himself Emperor, that dedication was scratched out by Beethoven so violently that he tore through the score’s title page. Ultimately, the symphony was dedicated to “celebrate the memory of a great man,” likely the Buonaparte who had once championed the rights of all.  

Tonight’s concert concludes with “The Ordering of Moses,” composed in 1932 by Nathaniel Dett.   The descendent of slaves who had escaped north, Dett was born in Ontario, Canada in 1882.  Music came to him early, and his studies took him to Oberlin, Columbia, and Harvard.  Absorbing the charge of Dvořák to find America’s musical soul in the spiritual, Dett incorporated them into this magnum opus.  “Go Down Moses” stirs beyond the biblical in the work’s final apotheosis.  The cry of “Let my people go” spoke for its time and for all time.  Not until 1937 would it finally be premiered at the Cincinnati May Festival in a national broadcast, the first time a composition by a composer of color would be heard coast to coast.  

So tonight, nearly 90 years since then, “The Ordering of Moses” will be heard in Oakland, shaking the walls of the Paramount with praise.  Such a once and only event can only happen here.   It’s why so many of you subscribe and why we thank you for your support of Oakland Symphony’s singular mission.      

If you are not yet a subscriber, we invite you to join this deeply committed subscriber family.   A season brochure will land in your mailbox shortly offering all six remarkable concerts in the coming season at a significant savings.  To subscribe is to embrace this music, some from the past and some composed especially for this defiant season.  To subscribe is to stand and raise voices with these composers, to Resist and Persist when we return to the Paramount this fall.

Sincerely, 
Dr. Mieko Hatano
Chief Executive Officer