From concert marches and ragtime to blues, Broadway, television, and the concert hall, America’s Soundtrack explores some of the music that has helped define the American sound. The program brings together the distinctly American voices of Charles Ives, W.C. Handy, Scott Joplin, Morton Gould, Richard Rodgers, Leonard Bernstein, and John Philip Sousa. For a lively inside look behind the curtain at America’s best-known composer of marches, join RIWE Artistic Director and Conductor Rob Franzblau at the library on Wednesday, September 30, from 7:00–8:00 pm for The Marches of John Philip Sousa, an exploration of what makes Sousa’s music so stirring, elegant, and enduring.

Admission is open – pay what you can

Sponsored by the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts

RIWE returns to Mount Pleasant High School for a side-by-side performance with students from the school’s Music Academy, this year joining Mount Pleasant’s annual Hispanic Heritage Celebration. The event brings together the school’s Music and World Languages programs with RIWE for an evening celebrating Hispanic and Latino music and culture. The program will include student performers, bilingual elements, music and dance, book and Kindle giveaways, and a community meal following the concert with live Latin music.

Celebrate! brings together music of markedly different backgrounds and traditions in a program filled with energy, color, and contrast. The program moves from John Philip Sousa and Aaron Copland to the music of Arturo Márquez and H. Owen Reed, alongside Omar Thomas’s A Mother of a Revolution! and the familiar melodies of Fiddler on the Roof.

Returning for its fifth year as part of Scituate’s “Christmas in the Village” celebration, RIWE’s Christmas Pops brings together traditional carols, familiar holiday favorites, and colorful arrangements for winds and brass. Vocalist Kelley Lennon returns to join the ensemble, while the instrumental program ranges from the quiet beauty of O Magnum Mysterium to Prokofiev’s lively Troika and Julie Giroux’s inventive The Little Drummer Boy’s Bolero. Scituate student musicians will also join RIWE for this annual holiday tradition.

Featuring Kelley Lennon, vocal soloist

Dance With Me explores the many ways music and movement have inspired one another across cultures and traditions. The program travels from the Argentine tango of La Cumparsita and the Latin rhythms of Arturo Márquez to Malcolm Arnold’s Four Scottish Dances, Leonard Bernstein’s music from West Side Story, and the colorful ballet music of Aram Khachaturian’s Gayaneh.

RIWE returns to the Armenian Evangelical Church for a program with a special focus on Armenian music. The program includes the brilliant dance music of Aram Khachaturian, the contemplative beauty of Alan Hovhaness’s Prayer of St. Gregory, and Rhythm and Compassion, an original work by a member of the church community.