Boston Landmarks Orchestra at Church of the Covenant, August 13, 2014
Boston Globe
August 16, 2014

Most orchestras don't need any particular excuse to drop a piece as popular as Dvorak's Symphony No. 9 ("From the New World") into a concert program. Still, it's eminently possible to present the piece in an original and edifying context – I saw the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra do it not quite a year ago, and wrote about it for The New York Times.

Just last week, I saw the Boston Landmarks Orchestra – a terrific seasonal ensemble led by music director Christopher Wilkins – build still another smart program around Dvorak's "New World," matching it up not just with traditional spirituals but also with a rarity, R. Nathaniel Dett's The Chariot Jubliee (impessively unpacked in this column by the continuously bogglifying Matthew Guerrieri) and a new commissioned piece, Trevor Weston's Griot Legacies, in one of its free weekly concerts.

To the details conveyed in this review, I'd add only a repeat of something I said initially via social media: that I wish I'd had more time and space to elaborate on Weston's impressive piece, which was intriguingly complex and instantly communicative at once – an impressive feat, that. Repeating my social self once again, I very much hope that this score finds its way into New Jersey Symphony Orchestra music director Jacques Lacombe's hands.