Photo: © Sim Canetty-Clarke

Kensington Symphony Orchestra returns to Fairfield Halls with an all-American programme of music featuring John Adams’s Harmonium (1980-81).

The orchestra is joined by Epiphoni Consort for this three-movement work, regarded as one of the key compositions of Adams’s minimalist period. Based on poems by John Donne and Emily Dickinson, it is influenced by the music of Steve Reich and calls for a large orchestra and chorus, including an eclectic percussion section.

The concert opens with Copland’s Billy the Kid (Suite) (1938), taken from the one-act ballet commissioned by the impresario Lincoln Kirstein. One of the composer’s most popular and frequently performed pieces, it incorporates cowboy tunes and American folk songs in its depiction of the passions and dangers of the Wild West.

Music director Russell Keable also leads the orchestra in a performance of Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story (1960), an orchestral suite in nine movements adapted from the composer’s smash-hit musical, a version of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet set on New York City’s Upper West Side.