Join the Academy String Quartet for an afternoon concert in the beautiful setting of Zion’s Lutheran Church. The cost is $20 per person. You can reserve online or pay at the door.

Musicians: Jorie Butler-Geyer and Leah Givelber, violins; Warren Davidson, viola and Cecilia Caughman, cello

Music has always played an important part in struggles for personal and political freedom and independence. This program contrasts the gentle Czech nationalism of Dvorak in his Op. 51 quartet, with the dramatic nationalism of his son-in-law, Josef Suk, in the Meditation On an Old Bohemian Hymn. It celebrates the cultural resilience of Bulgarians through 500 years of Turkish occupation, through the brand-new Bulgarian Suite of Pittsburgher Thomas Roncevic. We explore the anger and hopes of enslaved people in Adolphus Hailstork’s Variations on Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, and mourn the victims of the Russian invasion of Ukraine with the Elegy of Vasyl Barvinsky.