Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloé

Love and Transformation

📍 This event takes place at Powell Hall

🕒 2 hours (including intermission)

Friday, May 8, 2026, 7:30pm Get Tickets Saturday, May 9, 2026, 7:30pm Get Tickets Sunday, May 10, 2026, 3:00pm Get Tickets

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Program

Stéphane Denève, conductor
Kevin McBeth, conductor
St. Louis Symphony IN UNISON Chorus | Kevin McBeth, director
St. Louis Symphony Chorus | Erin Freeman, director

Kevin Puts Virelai (after Guillaume de Machaut)
Nathalie Joachim Family (World Premiere/SLSO commission)
Maurice Ravel Daphnis and Chloé

About this Concert

“We want you to feel a part of that, because you are.” These words from Nathalie Joachim’s Family resonate with the spirit of the SLSO’s 25/26 season. Our extraordinary year culminates with the lush soundscapes of Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloé, collaborations with the IN UNISON and St. Louis Symphony Choruses, and music by two of the SLSO’s dearest friends. As nearly 300 musicians fill the stage and captivated audiences fill Powell Hall, we celebrate the transformative power of music and community.

- Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloé was originally commissioned as a ballet score for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. It premiered in 1912 and is considered one of Ravel’s most significant works.
- Nathalie Joachim planned to spend the year 2020 getting to know the members of the IN UNISON Chorus closely before composing Family for them and the SLSO. When the pandemic prohibited in-person interaction, Joachim persisted, recording video and audio interviews instead. She developed the text for Family using only words and phrases shared directly in the interviews. Hearing from the chorus members throughout 2020, Joachim says, saved her.
- “I want audiences to be held in the moment, and be taken to the next moment,” says composer Kevin Puts of Virelai, a work that the SLSO commissioned and premiered from Puts in 2019.

Artists

Meet the people that make the music.

Musicians of the SLSO

Special Thanks

The performance of Nathalie Joachim’s Family is supported by The Whitaker Foundation, The Steward Family Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.