Far Away Places: Scheherazade by Various, Dv. 21 Oct. 2022, De (2022/2022), Director musical Neal Gittleman, Schuster Center, Dayton, United States

In the One Thousand and One Nights, the Sultana Scheherazade nightly diverts her husband with cliff-hanger tales of the sea, shipwrecks, princes, and princesses to save her life—definitely pre-#MeToo! Rimsky-Korsakov’s alluring showpiece whisks you off to that exotic world with music that’s languid and sensuous, shimmering and romantic, stormy and terrifying! Debussy’s Nocturnes depicts clouds floating across the skies and boisterous village festivals punctuated by trumpets and drums. Reena Esmail’s musical roots let her look West and East as her composition about sisterhood soars to ecstatic heights, blending Hindustani and Western classical musical traditions.