Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts Price, Gershwin, Bonds, and Bernstein — With Hélène Grimaud

Yannick Nézet-Séguin leads the Orchestre Métropolitain in a profoundly moving program entitled "Songs of Hope," featuring the world-renowned French pianist Hélène Grimaud in Gershwin's exultant Piano Concerto in F! Famous for its use in the 1951 film An American in Paris, the concerto shows Gershwin at his rhythmic and melodic best, for which Grimaud's intelligence, wit, and virtuosity are a perfect fit. The program features two poignant works by Black American women: Florence Price's Song of Hope (1930), which opens the evening with a spirit-lifting cry — "I dare look up. The heavens' blue is mine!" — and the set of seven programmatic Montgomery Variations (1964) by Margaret Bonds, which deploy the stark power of the spiritual "I Want Jesus to Walk with Me" as a tribute to Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement. Leonard Bernstein's Chichester Psalms concludes the concert with a further incitation to peace, decrying the vanity of war and calling for unity among the peoples of the world.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Hélène Grimaud have been Rolex Testimonees since 2024 and 2009, respectively.