MCC & the Lowell Chamber Orchestra to Host Pride Month Concert

Middlesex Community College and the Lowell Chamber Orchestra (LCO) will celebrate Pride Month with a concert entitled “A Rainbow of Repertoire” at 3 p.m. on Sunday, June 5 at MCC’s Richard and Nancy Donahue Family Academic Arts Center in Lowell as part of the college’s “A World of Music” concert series. Holding a pride concert with the LCO is a dream come true for Em Russell, Executive Director of LCO and an MCC music alum.

“I’m so grateful to the rest of the amazing LCO team for helping make my dream come true,” Russell said. “While the LCO features many LGBTQ+ composers throughout our seasons already, it is so wonderful to have the opportunity to showcase even more, especially living composers. We are so honored to share this amazing program with the community!”

The concert will include music by Hannah Rice, Steven Sérpa, Ethan Soledad, Kevin Lubin, Jean-Baptiste Lully, Benjamin Britten, and a specially commissioned piece by Julia Moss.

“This concert will feature a variety of ensemble sizes, varying from string quartets all the way up to large ensemble works conducted by LCO’s music director and MCC faculty member Orlando Cela,” said Carmen Rodríguez-Peralta, MCC’s Chair of Music. “The event will showcase LGBTQ+ composers from the Lowell area and around the world.”

Rice has written a Heavy Metal string quartet called “SQ666,” which has been composed using techniques from heavy metal rock music Sérpa’s “An Invocation,” for solo oboe and strings, is a tone poem inspired by his long-time collaborator, queer poet Jeffery Beam, about the small beauties of nature. Soledad’s “Why Wait,” for a 9-person ensemble, is about his own journey of self-discovery and defeating self-doubt, while Lubin’s string quartet “The Flower Shop” includes a spoken narration with words by Virginia Woolf.

The largest work of the afternoon will be a World Premiere by Moss, “The World is Too Much for Us.” Written for mezzo-soprano soloist Julianna Smith and a 10-person chamber ensemble, the work is based on conversations between the composer-performer pair about the feeling of being overwhelmed by the ever-growing clutter of life. Inspired by these ideas, she chose to set the piece to a poem by William Wordsworth about how people have become so obsessed with possessing material items and controlling nature. There will also be short works by Baroque composer Lully and 20th century British composer Britten.

All “World of Music” concerts are free and open to the public.