Kensington Symphony Orchestra returns to Fairfield Halls on Saturday 20 June, when music director Russell Keable leads us in a performance of John Adams’s Harmonium (1980-81).

We are joined by Epiphoni Consort for this three-movement work for chorus and orchestra, regarded as one of the key compositions of the composer’s minimalist period. Based on poems by John Donne – Adams describes the opening movement, his setting of ‘Negative Love’, as “one of the most satisfying architectural experiments in all my work” – and Emily Dickinson, it is influenced by the music of Steve Reich and calls for a large orchestra and chorus, including an eclectic percussion section.

The concert opens with Copland’s Billy the Kid (Suite) (1938), taken from the one-act ballet commissioned by the impresario Lincoln Kirstein, who saw Copland as the Igor Stravinsky to his Sergei Diaghilev. One of the composer’s most popular and frequently performed pieces, it is based on the story of the infamous outlaw Billy the Kid, and incorporates cowboy tunes and American folk songs in its depiction of the passions and dangers of the Wild West.

We also perform Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story (1960), an orchestral suite in nine movements adapted from the composer’s smash-hit musical, a version of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet set on New York City’s Upper West Side. Telling the story of Maria and Tony’s star-crossed love, the movements include the famous romantic melody of ‘Somewhere’
and the lively ‘Mambo’, in which members of the orchestra are instructed to yell: “Mambo!”