Sacramento Philharmonic & Opera will perform its “Rhapsody in Blue” program this weekend, featuring the music of composer Loren Loiacono. The concert will be the second performance of Loiacono’s work “Sleep Furiously,” which was commissioned by the Albany Symphony in 2016. The piece’s title refers to an example from Noam Chomsky’s 1957 linguistics book Syntactic Structures -- “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously” -- to demonstrate that a sentence can be grammatically correct but nonsensical.

Loren Loiacono studied at Cornell University with Steven Stucky, Kevin Ernste, and Roberto Sierra. The young composer’s work has been praised as “plush [and] elusive” (New York Times), “vivid and colorful” (Albany Times Union), and “dreamy, lilting” (Pioneer Press).  Her work has also been commissioned and performed by the Detroit Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, and American Composers Orchestra. You can find an overview of her compositions on her website.

Composer Loren Loiacono and Sacramento Philharmonic & Opera Executive Director Alice Sauro join Insight to discuss the program.

You can see the Sacramento Philharmonic & Opera on Feb. 23, 2019 at 8:00 p.m. at the Sacramento Community Center Theater. The Sacramento Philharmonic & Orchestra will also play the music of George Gershwin and Stephen Stucky under the direction of conductor David Alan Miller with pianist Kevin Cole.