The fascinating and rarely performed Airborne Symphony is the perfect piece to pay homage to the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base—a world premiere of a new suite version focused on the exhilaration of flying and the miracle of flight itself.

Tucson is all about the skies. From the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base to the magnificent observatories of the acclaimed UA School of Astronomy; from the aeronautic businesses that support our city’s populace to the many astronomy societies that inspire it. And of course, one of the most popular attractions, the Pima Air & Space Museum!

Leonard Bernstein so loved this work that he not only premiered it—with Orson Welles narrating—but he also recorded it twice. The fascinating Airborne Symphony is a great way to celebrate Tucson’s birthday!

Fresh from flying across the continent, the fabled flyer Charles Lindbergh flew in on his Spirit of St. Louis to dedicate the new airport, now the Tucson International Airport, in 1927.

Beginning with the words “Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history…,” Copland’s Lincoln Portrait sets to music excerpts of Abraham Lincoln’s greatest documents. Too extensive to list, past luminary narrators range from Marian Anderson to Neil Armstrong, Barack Obama to Walter Cronkite, Danny Glover to Katherine Hepburn, and Coretta Scott King to Carl Sandburg.

Randall Thompson’s Testament of Freedom is a setting of texts by Thomas Jefferson in a work created for the bicentennial of Jefferson’s birth.

Works by Gershwin, Bernstein and Weill top off this All-American program.