Description:

Part of the Gateways Music Festival

Damien Sneed, conductor

In the opening performance of the Gateways Festival’s 2023-24 Chicago residency, the Gateways Chamber Players, featuring violinist Tai Murray and special guest narrator Phylicia Rashad, present Igor Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale Suite and Wynton Marsalis’s A Fiddler’s Tale. Stravinsky’s 1918 musical-theatrical work about a soldier who strikes a deal with the Devil is paired with Marsalis’s retelling of the tale, in which a talented fiddler named Beatrice trades her musical soul for the promise of superstardom. Violinist Tai Murray is the recipient of a 2012 Sphinx Medal of Excellence and a 2004 Avery Fisher Career Grant who has appeared with major ensembles around the world, including the Atlanta, Baltimore, and Chicago Symphony Orchestras; the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra; and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Tony Award-winning actress Phylicia Rashad has received acclaim for her stage performances in A Raisin in the Sun, August: Osage County, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Gem of the Ocean, and for her television roles in The Cosby Show, This Is Us, Empire, and David Makes Man. An inductee into the Theater Hall of Fame and a recipient of the BET Honors Theatrical Arts Award, she currently serves as dean of the Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts at Howard University.