- Event dates: September 20 & 21, 2025
- Showtimes: Sat 4:00 PM, Sun 3:00 PM
- Featured Artists:
Sofia Hernández Williams, Cello
Location:
Barnstable Performing Arts Center
744 West Main Street, Hyannis, MA 02601 - Buy Tickets: /buy-tickets-a-new-era
Masterpiece 1
Join us for a historic opening to the season as we welcome our new Music Director with a program that blends American spirit, youthful brilliance, and timeless orchestral mastery. Be part of this momentous occasion as we usher in a new era of music-making at Cape Symphony!
We begin with John Williams’ stirring arrangement of the Star-Spangled Banner, followed by George Walker’s bold and dynamic Pageant and Proclamation, commissioned by the New Jersey Symphony in 1997. Rising star Sofia Hernández-Williams, just 11 years old, takes the stage for Saint-Saëns’ passionate and virtuosic Cello Concerto No. 1, a favorite of virtuoso cellists since its first performance in Paris in 1873. After an intermission, Brahms’s triumphant Symphony No. 1 brings the performance to a powerful close.
Program
The Star-Spangled Banner
ARR. JOHN WILLIAMS
Pageant and Proclamation
GEORGE WALKER
Cello Concerto No. 1 in A Minor
CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS
Symphony No. 1 in C Minor
JOHANNES BRAHMS
Sofia Hernández-Williams, Cello
Sofia Hernández-Williams studies at Worcester’s Joy of Music Program and Boston’s Project String Training Education Program and has attended chamber music programs at Rivers Conservatory and Groton Hill Music. In 2024, she studied with Dr. Anzel Gerber in Vienna, Austria.
Sofia is a member of the Repertory Orchestra at Boston Youth Symphonies and principal cellist of the Joy of Music Youth Orchestra. The list of her competition accolades is growing quickly. Sofia made her concert debut in 2024, performing Haydn’s C Major Cello Concerto with Worcester’s Seven Hills Symphony, and gave a second performance of the concerto with the Massachusetts Symphony Orchestra. In 2025, she performed the final movement of Haydn’s Cello Concerto in C as a soloist with the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra as part of their Musical Superheroes concert.
Beyond the cello, Sofia enjoys mathematics, gardening, writing, piano, voice, and tinkering with her father’s violin-making tools.
Ticketholders are invited to a preconcert talk about the program, led by Assistant Conductor Joe Marchio. The talk begins one hour before the concert.
