Program Notes - Plucked: Mandolin Journeys from Bluegrass to Brahms
November 7, 2026
Written By Dan Powers
Delights and Dances for string quartet and string orchestra (2007)
Michael Abels (b. 1962)
Michael Abels is an American composer whose music moves freely among concert traditions and African American musical styles, including jazz, blues, gospel, and West African drumming. A graduate of the University of Southern California, he continued his studies at the California Institute of the Arts and explored his heritage by singing in a predominantly Black church choir. His career spans the concert hall, opera, and film and he is widely known for his scores to Jordan Peele’s Get Out, Us, and Nope. The hip-hop influenced score for Us, was short-listed for an Academy Award nomination, and the publication Wrap named it “score of the decade.” In the concert music realm, Abels has been widely praised for his opera Omar, co-written with Rhiannon Giddens, that received the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Music. Abels is also a co-founder of the Composers Diversity Collective, which advocates greater visibility for composers of color in film, gaming, and streaming media.
Commissioned by the Sphinx Organization in 2007 to celebrate its tenth year of supporting diversity in concert music, Delights and Dances places a string quartet in lively conversation with string orchestra. Abels describes the work as a two-part portrait of American musical genres that have often been labeled “Black” and “white”: blues and bluegrass. Rather than keeping those traditions apart, he lets them meet through shared rhythm, virtuosity, and the pleasure of musicians responding to one another.
The piece opens slowly and lyrically. A solo cello is joined by the viola, and the texture gradually expands until the full quartet gathers in a gentle crescendo. From this introduction emerges a blues section, supported by softly pulsing pizzicato in the orchestra. Each soloist steps forward in turn with brilliant, free-sounding passages; although they suggest improvisation, every note is written. The music then pivots into a rousing bluegrass hoedown. The quartet trades quick riffs back and forth—an exchange that may recall “Dueling Banjos”—as the energy rises toward a boisterous coda. Witty, soulful, and infectious, Delights and Dances is ultimately a celebration of ensemble playing: four solo voices showing their individuality while creating something joyful together.
A Bluegrass Set
arr. Dan Powers (b. 1960)
When You’re Smiling (Larry Shay, Mark Fischer, Joe Goodwin, 1928)
Turkey In The Straw (American traditional, early 19th century)
Foggy Mountain Breakdown (Earl Scruggs, 1949)
El Cumbanchero (Rafael Hernández Marín, 1947)
Bluegrass is a distinctly American chamber music: an acoustic string-band tradition with roots in Southern fiddle music, blues, sacred song, and English, Irish, and Scottish folk traditions. It took recognizable shape in the 1940s through Kentucky mandolinist Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys - whose name supplied the genre’s own - and especially the classic lineup that included guitarist Lester Flatt and banjoist Earl Scruggs. Their sound joined the five-string banjo, fiddle, mandolin, guitar, and upright bass in music of remarkable speed, precision, and rhythmic drive.
Like a small orchestra, a bluegrass group depends on close ensemble listening and sharply defined roles, but it also makes room for spontaneity. Players “pass the break,” taking turns carrying the melody in improvised or elaborate solos while the others supply a propulsive accompaniment.
Although rooted in songs of faith, family, love, labor, and home, bluegrass is not a museum piece: today’s musicians continually stretch its vocabulary through jazz, rock, Celtic music, and other influences. Recent leading performers include Billy Strings, Alison Krauss & Union Station, Sister Sadie, East Nash Grass, the Del McCoury Band, Sierra Hull, and Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway. This evening’s trio brings that living tradition into conversation with the orchestra: three players sharing melody, rhythm, and invention with the immediacy of musical conversation.
When You’re Smiling is best known as an early entry in the Great American Songbook and a Jazz standard. It has been recorded by Jazz luminaries such as Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, and Ella Fitzgerald. It was also recorded several times by Frank Sinatra, with whom the song is especially associated.
The origins of Turkey In The Straw are a bit murky. It was first published in 1834 with various people claiming authorship but is now believed to be a traditional folk song. It became popular originally as a frequently performed number in American minstrel shows and has been a staple in the Bluegrass repertoire from the beginning.
Foggy Mountain Breakdown was written in 1949 by banjo virtuoso Earl Scruggs. It became his signature tune and a staple of the Bluegrass repertoire. In 1967 Scruggs’ recording became a top 100 hit after being prominently featured in the film Bonnie and Clyde.
El Cumbanchero is the work of Rafael Hernández Marín (1892-1965), a Puerto Rican songwriter with hundreds of popular Latin songs to his credit. The title is often translated as The Party Guy; a more accurate translation would be The Cumbia Guy, “cumbia” being the name of a Latin dance genre which originated in western Colombia and spread to the Caribbean. The word “cumbanchero” is used in reference to a musician, usually a percussionist, who brings joy and vitality to a festive gathering.
Symphony No. 2 in D major, op. 73 (1877)
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Brahms’ gifts as a composer were recognized early by, among other people, Robert Schumann, who hailed him as a genius when Brahms was only twenty. Schumann immediately began pressuring Brahms to attempt a symphony, but the younger composer quickly realized that the task was, for the moment, beyond him. Obsessed with a desire to write a symphony worthy of the name, but plagued by self-doubt, Brahms did not complete his First Symphony until 1876, after 21 years of false starts.
In completing his First Symphony, Brahms seems to have breached a psychological barrier. Having at last proven himself equal to the task of writing a monumental symphony, Brahms no longer had anything to prove. His Second Symphony was premiered just over a year after the first, after a composition process lasting only four months.
The Second Symphony is in character almost the polar opposite of the first; calm, serene, and cheerful where the first is stormy and dramatic. It is tempting to attribute the symphony’s lyrical nature to the fact that much of it was written during a summer stay in Pörtschach, a small village in the Austrian countryside. Brahms found the area delightfully free from the distractions of his busy life in Vienna and found much inspiration simply in being able to work undisturbed. “So many melodies are flitting around here,” he wrote, “that one must be careful not to tread on them.” Treading carefully, he returned to Pörtschach the next three summers, where he picked up melodies for his Violin Concerto, First Violin Sonata, and Second Piano Concerto.
Before the premiere on December 30, Brahms amused himself by deliberately making misleading remarks about the new symphony. “It will be so tragic that you will not be able to bear it,” he wrote to one friend. To another he wrote that the members of the orchestra would wear black armbands, and that the score would be printed with a black border.
The symphony begins tentatively, with only a hint of melody. The first three notes, heard in the low strings, serve as a unifying motive; they are the source of much melodic material throughout the symphony. The flowing second theme, heard some fifty bars into the piece, is a lyrical extension of the opening motive. Many other transformations are heard during the course of the movement.
The second movement begins with an extended theme in the cellos, repeated and developed in the violins. Moments of drama intrude in the middle section, but they are disposed of quickly.
In place of a Scherzo, Brahms offered an easygoing Intermezzo, with a lilt reminiscent of an Austrian Ländler. The movement is twice interrupted by livelier passages, which turn out on inspection to be variations of the lilting theme.
The final movement overflows with melodic ideas, many of which are related to ideas from the first movement. Despite its power, dynamism, and high-spirited nature, it artfully preserves the lyrical character of the symphony.
2026 © Program Notes by Dan Powers