Steve

Steve appears as narrator with New Philharmonic in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, speaking the text in Copland's Lincoln Portrait as part of the orchestra's 50th anniversary celebration, on a program that also includes Beethoven's Symphony No. 9.

In these concerts, Steve takes the speaking role in Copland's Lincoln Portrait, a work written in 1942 that combines an orchestral score with a spoken text drawn from Abraham Lincoln's own writing and speeches, including lines from the Gettysburg Address. The narrator does not sing but speaks over and between orchestral passages, so listeners can expect a plain, unaccompanied delivery of Lincoln's words rising out of, and sinking back into, the orchestra's sound. The rest of the program is anchored by Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, a nearly hour-long work that ends with a full chorus and vocal soloists singing an ode to joy, so the evening moves from spoken word to sung word across two very different large-scale pieces.