Two locals will bring music to D.C. concert
For two Orlando residents, this weekend’s national Labor Day Capitol Concert in Washington, D.C., illustrates the power of the “American dream.”
Stella Sung, a professor at the University of Central Florida, will hear her composition “The Peace Corps” played by the National Symphony Orchestra at the annual event on the U.S. Capitol’s west lawn. Singer Aoife O’Donovan will be onstage, performing patriotic and original songs.
Both women are first-generation Americans. Sung’s parents moved to Florida from China to escape communism. O’Donovan’s father emigrated from Ireland.
“My dad came through Ellis Island,” Sung said. “I do feel patriotic in that America afforded my parents the opportunity to work, live and raise a family here.”
O’Donovan said she’s grateful for the success she has found in this country.
“I grew up dreaming the American dream — and attaining it in a lot of ways,” she said.
Sunday evening’s concert is presented by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington. Participating in such a distinguished event offers rewards beyond patriotic pride.
“It’s always the dream, I think, of composers that a top-tier orchestra will play their work,” said Sung, director of UCF’s Center for Research and Education in Arts, Technology and Entertainment.
The National Symphony Orchestra, which was founded in 1931 and is affiliated with the Kennedy Center, headlines the concert.
“The Peace Corps” originated in Orlando in 2007. The work comes from Sung’s “Rockwell Reflections,” a selection of five orchestral compositions inspired by the Americana paintings of Norman Rockwell.
At the time, a national tour of the painter’s works stopped at the Orlando Museum of Art.
The day the exhibit opened, the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra presented Sung’s “Rockwell Reflections” in concert, juxtaposed against the images that inspired her.
Wrote a Sentinel critic: “The combined effect of his visuals with her music was at times truly stunning.”
The conductor of the Labor Day concert selected “The Peace Corps,” which was inspired by the iconic painting of President John F. Kennedy surrounded by a diverse group of Corps volunteers. Kennedy founded the Peace Corps through an executive order March 1, 1961.
“It has the grand, open sonorities reminiscent of [Aaron] Copland, an epic scope worthy of John Williams, capped by a beloved melody by Irving Berlin,” conductor John Morris Russell said of the piece. “It is as American as apple pie: inspirational and stirring.”
O’Donovan, a folk and bluegrass singer-songwriter, will perform traditional works such as “America the Beautiful” along with original songs from her latest album, “In the Magic Hour.”
Some numbers will be somber. She will sing Bob Dylan’s “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,” a look at 1960s racism. “Unfortunately, it’s a painfully appropriate song for our times,” O’Donovan said.
She expects the concert to be emotional.
“To make art, to make people happy and create some beauty on Labor Day … I think it’s going to be a powerful experience for me,” O’Donovan said.
Both Sung and O’Donovan will have family with them. The composer is bringing her parents and the singer will be joined by husband Eric Jacobsen, music director of the Orlando Philharmonic. The next generation of Americans will be represented, too: O’Donovan is expecting a baby in October. The Central Floridians plan to get together while in D.C.
Sung expects she will reflect on what America means to her.
“I’ve been fortunate to travel quite a bit,” she said. “And with all the places in the world I’ve been, I still love coming home.”