Shira Samuels-Shragg

Shira Samuels-Shragg is a conductor appearing with the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra in April 2027. The program pairs Dvořák's Eighth Symphony with Caroline Shaw's The Observatory and a trombone concerto by Launy Grøndahl, offering listeners a mix of a beloved late-Romantic symphony, a contemporary orchestral work, and a showcase for solo trombone.

Listeners can expect a program built around contrast. Caroline Shaw's The Observatory opens with the kind of shimmering, texture-driven writing that has made her one of the most performed living American composers, using the orchestra more like a shifting field of color than a vehicle for melody. Grøndahl's Concerto for Trombone follows, a compact, lyrical showpiece from 1924 that gives the trombone, an instrument more often heard in supporting or bombastic roles, a chance to sing and to move quickly through light, dance-like passages. The evening closes with Dvořák's Symphony No. 8, a work full of birdsong-like flute solos, sudden shifts between minor and major key color, and a finale that begins with a trumpet fanfare before dissolving into folk-dance energy. What shape the conductor gives these pieces is not something documented here.