In keeping with Where Our Stories Meet, this program pairs two deeply personal responses to grief and remembrance on the eve of Palm Sunday: one drawn from Andean heritage, the other from the Protestant Reformation.

Gabriela Lena Frank’s Andean Elegy opens the program with music rooted in the cultural fusion of her Peruvian-Jewish-Chinese-Lithuanian ancestry. Scored for strings, this brief elegy blends Western classical form with Andean modality and rhythm, offering an intimate, outward-looking meditation on ancestry and loss.

Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem follows, performed with the Canton Symphony Chorus under the baton of Mélisse Brunet. Rather than setting the Latin Mass for the Dead, Brahms compiled his own libretto from the German Luther Bible, crafting a work not for the deceased but for those left behind. Brahms’s Requiem moves from grief to solace, ending in a quiet affirmation of comfort and renewal—one of the most deeply humanist works in the symphonic-choral repertoire.