Places We Carry

Places We Carry brings together three works that explore the places we encounter and the ways they become part of who we are. George Karpasitis’s What These Ithakas Mean draws inspiration from C. P. Cavafy’s poem Ithaka, in which Odysseus’s journey home becomes a metaphor for the journey of life. Rather than rushing toward a destination, Cavafy reminds us to embrace the experiences, discoveries, and challenges we encounter along the way.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Idyll offers a dreamlike musical portrait of an idyllic landscape, inviting us into a moment of beauty, stillness, and reflection. We are delighted to welcome acclaimed violist, composer, and multifaceted artist Nokuthula Ngwenyama to the podium for this performance. Following two years of conducting studies with Lucas Richman, Ngwenyama will make her conducting debut with Orchestra Nova LA.

The featured work in our program will be the First Symphony by Gustav Mahler, which traces a journey of its own—from the awakening of nature and the innocence of youth through pastoral beauty, loss, struggle, and triumph. Drawing on folk melodies and musical traditions of the Alpine region, Mahler fills the symphony with the sounds of the landscapes and communities that shaped his world, from rustic dances and yodeling gestures to the distant calls of nature.

Across these three works, landscapes become more than places we pass through: they become memories, sources of wonder, and markers of transformation. Places We Carry invites us to consider not only where our journeys take us, but what we carry with us when we leave.

PROGRAM:

George Karpasitis // What These Ithakas Mean
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor // Idyll, Op.44
‍ ‍Nokuthula Ngwenyama, Guest Conductor
Gustav Mahler // Symphony No. 1 in D Major