April 26, 2026 An Evening of Masterpieces and a Piano Concerto
Knight Concert Hall
Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County presents
An Evening of Masterpieces and a Piano Concerto
Frost Symphony Orchestra
Gerard Schwarz, music director and conductor
Jorge Mejia, piano
Maurice Ravel
"Alborada del gracioso" from Miroirs
Jorge Mejia
If These Walls Could Talk*
I. First Floor
II. Second Floor
III. Rooftop
-Intermission-
Dmitri Shostakovich
Symphony No. 10 in E minor
I. Moderato
II. Allegro
III. Allegretto – Largo –Più mosso
IV. Andante – Allegro – L'istesso tempo
*US premiere
"Alborada del gracioso"
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
Here are three important moments in musician-music critic relations:
1. August 1979: R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe attends a party in New York where jelly beans and cheesecake are the only things available to eat. He shares a couch with famed rock critic Lester Bangs. He later dreams about a party where all the guests have "L.B." initials. The real party and the dream party inspire R.E.M.'s "It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)," from the band's 1987 album Document. In it, Stipe sings, "Leonid Brezhnev, Lenny Bruce, Lester Bangs / Birthday party, cheesecake, jelly bean, boom." By the time of the song's release, Bangs is five years' dead and therefore misses the opportunity to shout, "Leonard Bernstein!" along with the recording. To this day, Stipe is still correcting listeners—including one Homer Simpson—who misquote the song's lyrics.
2. October 25, 2010: Taylor Swift releases her third album, Speak Now, which includes a song titled "Mean." With lyrics such as "You with your words like knives and swords / And weapons that you use against me," the song is thought to be aimed at Bob Lefsetz, a then 57-year-old music industry analyst and critic who earlier that year had posted to his blog a review of Swift's performance at the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles. "In one fell swoop, Taylor Swift consigned herself to the dustbin of teen phenoms," Lefsetz wrote in response to the then 20-year-old's performance, during which she delivered a wobbly duet with Stevie Nicks on Fleetwood Mac's "Rhiannon." "Taylor's too young and dumb to understand the mistake she made," Lefsetz charged, adding, "Taylor Swift shortened her career last night." The following March, Swift releases "Mean" as Speak Now's third single. It reaches No. 2 on Billboard's country chart. In 2023, Swift re-records the song for the album Speak Now (Taylor's Version). She is, by any reasonable measurement, among the most successful artists on the planet. Bob Lefsetz still operates his blog.
3. January 6, 1906: Spanish pianist Ricardo Viñes premieres Maurice Ravel's "Alborada del gracioso" at the Société Nationale in Paris. The roughly eight-minute piece is the fourth part of Ravel's five-movement suite Miroirs, which the French composer dedicates to his friends in the Paris art collective known as Les Apaches. Essentially a group of Claude Debussy fanboys, Les Apaches take their name from the French slang term for street criminals and count among their ranks Viñes, Ravel, writer and musician Léon Leclère, poet Léon-Paul Fargue, painter Paul Sordes, composer Maurice Delage and music critic Michel-Dmitri Calvocoressi. Ravel specifically dedicates "Alborada del gracioso" to Calvocoressi, whose criticism appears in French- and English-language publications and who specializes in Russian music. The Spanish-tinged "Alborada del gracioso," or "The Jester's Morning Song," reflects the polyglot interests of the composer and his critic friend, who met at the Paris Conservatoire and later collaborated on a series of Greek folk songs. No musician and music critic ever became friends again.
— Jake Cline
If These Walls Could Talk
Jorge Mejia (b. 1972)
If These Walls Could Talk is a piano concerto and narrative project inspired by a historic Miami Beach building originally constructed in 1922—a place pianist and composer Jorge Mejia once called home. The work unfolds in Mejia’s distinctive artistic voice—bridging classical tradition, contemporary expression and storytelling, to create a gripping emotional experience to audiences and listeners alike.
Each of the concerto’s three movements is paired with a short narrative that frames the listening experience. Rather than explaining the music, the text opens a door into it, allowing words and sound to unfold together as a single expressive journey.
The First Floor (First Movement) introduces Irving Goldstein, who purchased the building sight unseen in 1926.
The Second Floor (Second Movement) tells the story of Sofia, a pianist turned nurse who lived in the building during the Second World War.
The Rooftop (Third Movement) brings to life Elena, a former actress confronting developers and land speculators in 1980’s Miami Beach, a time when the area was entering a new era of change.
At its heart, the work reflects on the quiet persistence of memory — the way places endure long after the people who shaped them have gone. The walls remain, holding the faint imprint of countless lives, reminding us that every building carries within it the echoes of human experience.
If These Walls Could Talk has been performed in Europe and across the Americas, and tonight’s performance conducted by Maestro Gerard Schwarz, marks the United States premiere of the concerto in its orchestral form.
— program note provided by the artist
Symphony No. 10 in E minor
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich (1906-1975)
In Julian Barnes' 2016 novel The Noise of Time, Dmitri Shostakovich recalls how there were only two kinds of composer in Stalin's Russia: "those who were alive and frightened; and those who were dead." In Barnes' telling, which concerns three pivotal periods in the life of the St. Petersburg-born composer, Shostakovich spent a considerable amount of his adulthood preparing to become that second type of composer for the crime of writing music that was not "instantly comprehensible and pleasing to the masses" and that "was straying from the main road of Soviet art." Following a 1936 performance in Moscow of Shostakovich's allegedly Western-sounding opera Lady Macbeth of Mtensk, from which Stalin reportedly stormed out, more than one Soviet newspaper declared him an "enemy of the people." Expecting to be arrested and disappeared by the state at any moment, Shostakovich kept a packed bag by the door and slept apart from his family—in a stairwell—should he be taken in the middle of the night.
In the novel as in life, Shostakovich reclaimed the favor, however tenuous, of Stalin in 1937 with the Leningrad premiere of his Fifth Symphony, a triumphant-sounding, government-decreed "optimistic tragedy" that one member of the press infamously called "a Soviet artist's creative reply to criticism." Beginning in 1941, Shostakovich won the Stalin Prize, then considered the highest civilian honor in the USSR, multiple times. Stalin, according to Barnes, warned his apparatchiks that the composer was "not to be touched."
But did Shostakovich really change his tune? In his 2023 book Time's Echo: The Second World War, The Holocaust, and the Music of Remembrance, critic and historian Jeremy Eichler writes that the events of 1937 "created a kind of interpretive schism after which Shostakovich's music was often received along two diametrically opposed lines." To the Stalinists, the Fifth Symphony "represented a return to a properly affirmative key." To those living under the regime, the work articulated "the heroic struggles of the spirit and the tragic realities of daily life arrayed against the inhuman forces of the state." Shostakovich's 15 symphonies, Eichler notes, "have been called 'the secret diary of a nation.' "
The four-movement Symphony No. 10 in E minor premiered December 17, 1953 in Leningrad. Stalin had been dead since March. Listeners who still hear notes of exultation, relief and loss (for the many millions who died during Stalin's reign) in Shostakovich's 10th are no doubt correct, though the composer was reluctant to provide a full exegesis of the work. Critical interpretations of the author and his music remain complicated, particularly in light of the fact that Shostakovich in 1960 applied to join the Communist Party—an act that many of his contemporaries viewed as a betrayal. "That such a man could be broken, that our system was capable of crushing such a genius, was something I could not get over," Eichler quotes composer Sofia Gubaidulina as having said. For his part, Shostakovich once described the years-long pressure campaign to get him to become a party member with "great, aching sobs." (Barnes, meanwhile, devotes the final section of The Noise of Time to this episode and its aftermath.)
What, then, are we to take from a Shostakovich symphony in 2026? Pianist and writer Jeremy Denk, in his New York Times review of Barnes' novel, offers one bracing idea: "Shostakovich's music reaches out to express a world, to give warning, to memorialize the pointlessly murdered. The gloom may be unremitting, but it is not selfish."
— Jake Cline
Jorge Mejia
Photo courtesy of the artist.
Jorge Mejia is a Latin Grammy–nominated composer and pianist whose work spans solo piano, chamber music and large-scale orchestral writing. His music blends neoclassical language with narrative storytelling, creating works that bridge classical tradition with contemporary expression.
Mejia began his piano studies at the New World School of the Arts with William Dawson, a pupil of Rudolf Serkin, and continued his training at the New England Conservatory with Jacob Maxin. He later earned his degree in Piano Performance from the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami, studying with Teresa Escandón, a pupil of Jorge Bolet.
Mejia's recording projects include 25 Preludes for Solo Piano (Sony Music, 2015) and An Open Book: A Memoir in Music (Sony Music, 2018), a cycle of preludes for piano and orchestra paired with spoken narratives. The latter work received a Latin Grammy nomination for Best Classical Contemporary Composition and has been performed throughout Latin America and the United States.
Mejia’s most recent project, If These Walls Could Talk, began as a solo piano piece and has since evolved into a concerto for piano and orchestra, recorded with The London Symphony Orchestra at Abbey Road Studios. The recording, released in April, is part of a new album featuring additional chamber works.
In parallel with his artistic career, Mejia serves as president and CEO of Sony Music Publishing Latin America and U.S. Latin, overseeing operations across the region. Under his leadership, Sony Music Publishing Latin has become the leading publisher in the Latin music industry, earning numerous honors including ASCAP, BMI, SESAC and Billboard Latin Publisher of the Year awards.
Mejia has appeared repeatedly on Billboard’s “Power Players,” “Global Power Players” and “Latin Power Players” lists. He serves on the Board of Trustees of the New World Symphony and on the Board of Advisors of the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami. He lives in Miami with his wife, daughter and two dogs.
Gerard Schwarz
Photo by Steve J. Sherman.
Gerard Schwarz is internationally acclaimed for his expressive performances, imaginative programming and enduring commitment to music education. He serves as music director of the All-Star Orchestra, Eastern Festival of Music, Palm Beach Symphony and Frost Symphony Orchestra. He is also conductor laureate of the Seattle Symphony and conductor emeritus of the Mostly Mozart Festival and serves on the faculty of the Frost School of Music.
In the 2025-26 season, his seventh with the Palm Beach Symphony, Schwarz leads a wide-ranging repertoire and presents the world premiere of a new work by Paul Moravec. Guest-conducting highlights include a performance at Lincoln Center of San Juan Hill: A New York Story by Etienne Charles; Vancouver USA Arts and Music Festival, featuring world-renowned soprano Renée Fleming and leading guitar virtuoso Sharon Isbin; and Syracuse Orchestra, performing Jennifer Higdon’s new cello concerto, performed by his son, Julian Schwarz.
With a discography of more than 350 recordings, Schwarz has collaborated with many of the world’s foremost orchestras. A dedicated advocate for new music, he has commissioned more than 300 works. His honors include multiple Emmy Awards, 15 Grammy Award nominations and the Ditson Conductor’s Award. Schwarz’s memoir, Behind the Baton, was published in 2017.
Frost Symphony Orchestra
As the premier classical ensemble of the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami, the Frost Symphony Orchestra continues to impress audiences and critics alike with its vibrant, world-class performances, under the direction of acclaimed conductor and distinguished professor of music Gerard Schwarz. The orchestra is composed of 80 to 100 gifted undergraduate and graduate student musicians who entertain audiences across the United States with a repertoire that ranges from the greatest works of the classical music canon to original pieces by acclaimed contemporary composers.
Recently, the ensemble performed for an Emmy-nominated live recording of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and a multimedia presentation of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, both of which were broadcast on more than 200 PBS stations. South Florida Classical Review has praised the Frost Symphony Orchestra’s “fully professional level” of performance, noting “not a single weakness in any section.” Reviewers have highlighted the ensemble’s “consistently excellent playing” and “rich string sonority [and] vibrant winds.”
Frost Symphony Orchestra
Frost School of Music Administration
Shelton G. Berg, Dean
Serona Elton, Interim Vice Dean
Frank Ragsdale, Associate Dean, Administration
Shannon de l’Etoile, Associate Dean, Graduate Studies
Corin Overland, Associate Dean, Undergraduate Studies
Reynaldo Sanchez, Associate Dean, Strategic Initiatives and Innovation
Carlos Abril, Associate Dean, Research
Conducting Faculty
Gerard Schwarz, Director of Orchestral Studies
Harris Han, Adjunct Professor of Orchestral Conducting
Michael Hancock, Director of Bands
Matthew Brady, Director of Choral Studies
Applied Instrumental Faculty
Jennifer Grim, flute
Robert Weiner, oboe
Gabriel Beavers, bassoon
Margaret Donaghue, clarinet
Mark Nuccio, clarinet
Richard Todd, horn
Craig Morris, trumpet
Timothy Conner, trombone
Aaron Tindall, tuba
Anna Kate Mackle, harp
Stev Stoyanov, percussion
Pablo Rieppi, percussion
Leonardo Soto, percussion
Charles Castleman, violin
Scott Flavin, violin
Karen Lord-Powell, violin
Bettina Mussumeli, violin
Jodi Levitz, viola
Ross Harbaugh, cello
Brian Powell, double bass
Orchestra Staff
Yun Cao, Manager, Frost Symphony Orchestra, TA and DMA Graduate Conductor
Alberto Bade, TA and AD Graduate Conductor
Linus Ip, TA and DMA Graduate Conductor
Megan Riccio, HMI Managing Director, Frost Gig Book Manger, Orchestral Librarian
Rachel Coleman, MIP Department Manager
Frost Orchestra Studies 2026-27 Season Preview
Saturday, September 19, 2026, at 7:30 p.m.
W. A. Mozart: Symphony No. 35 in D major. K. 385
W.A. Mozart: Flute Concerto in D major, K. 314/285d
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 74
Saturday, October 17, 2026, at 7:30 p.m.
Eugene Goossens: Jubilee Variations
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Variations on a Rococo Theme, Op. 33
Johannes Brahms: Symphony No. 3 in F major, Op. 90
Saturday, November 14, 2026, at 7:30 p.m.
Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 3 in D minor
Saturday, February 6, 2027, at 7:30 p.m.
Paul Creston: Symphony No. 3, Three Mysteries
Christopher Theofanidis: Gemini Sun, Concerto for Violin, Percussion, and Orchestra [co-commission]
Tessa Lark, violin
Svet Stoyanov, percussion
Saturday, March 27, 2027, at 7:30 p.m.
Samuel Barber: Knoxville: Summer of 1915
Brian Lynch: Trumpet Concerto [world premiere]
Igor Stravinsky: Petroushka (1911)
Saturday, April 24, 2027, at 7:30 p.m. | Leonard Slatkin, guest conductor
Daniel Slatkin: Voyager 130
Liszt: Piano Concerto TBA
Sergei Prokofiev: Symphony No. 5 in B-flat Major, Op. 100
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