Since the mid-1990s, thousands of Bosnian refugees have settled in South St. Louis. Today, “Little Bosnia” includes more than 60,000 people, making it the largest Bosnian community outside Bosnia itself.
At 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 3, the Community Partnership Program of the St. Louis Symphony and the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis will explore their stories with a free concert titled “Bosnian Journeys: Generations.”
Produced in collaboration with the Bosnia Memory Project, the concert will feature 12 symphony musicians, led by conductor Chris Woehr, as well as accordionist Amir Salesevic, who performs in the Bosnian folk tradition known as sevdah.
The evening will weave together music incorporating elements of sevdah, interspersed with audio recordings of immigrants drawn from the archives of the Bosnian Memory Project. Also on the program will be Albinoni’s “Adagio in G minor,” which was famously played by Vedran Smailović, aka “the Cellist of Sarajevo,” at sites of destruction throughout the Siege of Sarajevo.
“Bosnian Journeys: Generations” is free and open to the public. Doors open at 7 p.m. Edison Theatre is located in Mallinckrodt Center, 6445 Forsyth Blvd.
A reception featuring traditional Bosnian cuisine will precede the concert, at 6:30 p.m., in Mallinckrodt’s Schoenberg Gallery.
The performance is cosponsored by the St. Louis Symphony, the Department of Music in Arts & Sciencds and Edison Theatre, with additional support from the Washington University Libraries and the university’s Center for Diversity and Inclusion. The reception is sponsored by the Arts & Sciences Connections Series.
To register for the reception, click here. For more information, call 314-935-5566 or email daniels@wustl.edu.