Wilkins Conducts “Rhapsody in Blue”

Conductor Thomas Wilkins celebrates the verve and vigor of mid-20th-century American music in a program featuring Rhapsody in Blue and music from Porgy and Bess, two works that have lured many an innocent ear into lifelong Gershwin fandom. Leonard Bernstein’s Candide is a valentine to European music, but the music is deeply American: inclusive, empathic, endlessly curious. William Grant Still’s orchestral suite Wood Notes is inspired by the landscapes of the American South and the poetry of Joseph Mitchell Pilcher.