AN INSPIRATONAL PROGRAM: Award-winning saxophonist Steven Banks is the soloist for the Princeton Symphony Orchestra’s 2023-24 season September 9 and 10. (Photo by Chris Lee)

The Princeton Symphony Orchestra’s (PSO’s) 2023-2024 Season opens September 9-10 with Princeton-based composer Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Forward Into Light, inspired by women suffragists, and Henri Tomasi’s Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Orchestra, performed by saxophonist Steven Banks. William Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony, one of the first full-length works by a Black composer to be performed by a major U.S. orchestra, completes the program.

Edward T. Cone Music Director Rossen Milanov conducts the performances which take place Saturday, September 9 at 8 p.m. and Sunday, September 10 at 4 p.m. at Richardson Auditorium. Sunday’s concert includes a pre-concert talk by Milanov at 3 p.m.

Banks was awarded the Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2022, and was a chosen artist for WQXR’s Artist Propulsion Lab. He was the first saxophonist to be awarded First Prize at the Young Concert Artists Susan Wadsworth International Auditions. Banks has appeared with the Cleveland Orchestra, Montreal Symphony, Utah Symphony, Colorado Symphony, Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, and Aspen Festival Orchestra, and has worked with conductors Franz Welser-Most, Xian Zhang, Nicholas McGegan, Rafael Payare, John Adams, Peter Oundjian, Jahja Ling, Matthias Pintscher, Alain Altinoglu, and Roderick Cox. In 2023 and 2024 Banks will premiere and tour with a commissioned concerto from Grammy-winning composer Billy Childs.

Snider’s Forward Into Light was inspired by the American women suffragists Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Frances E.W. Harper, Ida B. Wells, Zitkála-Šá, Mabel Ping-Hua Lee, and others who believed in equal rights for women. Tomasi’s two-movement saxophone concerto offers a dialogue between soloist and orchestra as well as a soundscape integrating diverse influences and musical styles. Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony recalls orally transmitted African American folk songs, and is an important work of African American classical music.

For tickets, visit princetonsymphony.org or call (609) 497-0020.