LIFT
Sun, Oct 11
|Washington Center
Olympia Symphony’s Kaleidoscope Season premiere LIFT opens with American music in full color. Program Jessie MONTGOMERY: Banner Wynton MARSALIS: Blues Symphony George GERSHWIN: Rhapsody in Blue George GERSHWIN: Catfish Row from Porgy and Bess James P. JOHNSON: Victory Stride
Time & Location
Oct 11, 2026, 3:00 PM – 4:50 PM
Washington Center, 512 Washington St SE, Olympia, WA 98501, USA
About the event
America has never had one sound.
It sings through anthem and blues, through jazz clubs and concert halls, through stride piano, spirituals, street songs, opera, celebration, and reinvention. LIFT opens Olympia Symphony’s 2026/27 season, Kaleidoscope, with a program where American sound rises from joy, memory, resilience, and hope.
Jessie Montgomery’s Banner asks what an anthem means in a country still becoming itself. Woven from The Star-Spangled Banner, Lift Every Voice and Sing, and other musical echoes, it turns a familiar symbol into something larger, more layered, and alive with many voices.
At the heart of the concert, guest artist Calder Failla joins the orchestra for Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, where smoky jazz, sweeping melody, and symphonic ambition meet in one of the most recognizable openings in American music. Gershwin returns in Porgy and Bess: Catfish Row, bringing the opera’s Charleston sound world into rich orchestral color. Gershwin’s insistence on an all-Black cast for Porgy and Bess…