Christopher Norton, Music Director and Conductor | Vaughn Richardson, Conducting Fellow

Program:
John Adams – Short Ride in a Fast Machine
Christopher Theofanidis – Rainbow Body
Dmitri Shostakovich – Symphony No. 10

Concert will be presented without intermission.

The Nashville Philharmonic Orchestra (NPO) presents the final concert series of its 2025/26 season, featuring a powerful program of works by John Adams, Christopher Theofanidis, and Dmitri Shostakovich. Spanning high-energy minimalism and some of the most emotionally complex works of the last 80 years, the program offers audiences a striking conclusion to the season.

The concert opens with Adams’s Short Ride in a Fast Machine, a propulsive fanfare that captures both the exhilaration and tension of moving at breakneck speed through the modern world. Theofanidis’s Rainbow Body follows, a shimmering and expansive work inspired by a medieval chant as well as the Tibetan Buddhist concept that, at the moment of death, an enlightened being’s physical form dissolves back into the universe as pure energy and light. Anchoring the program is Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10, a monumental and deeply personal work composed in the aftermath of Stalin’s death.

To help ensure a welcoming environment for audiences of all ages, coloring sheets and silent sensory toys will be available at both performances.

Admission is FREE or Choose-What-You-Pay, but tickets must be reserved in advance.
Presented without the Nashville Symphony