Lincoln Festival honors the 16th president through music

Spokane is hosting a Lincoln Festival over the next month and a half – and now we have more information on what, exactly, that means.

First of all, it means that an opening ceremony will be held Friday, 11:30 a.m., at the Lincoln statue at Main Avenue and Monroe Street, with festivities immediately moving over to the drier and warmer Spokane City Council Chambers.

There’ll be a mayoral proclamation, student musical performances and a rendition of the Gettysburg Address.

Then, the Spokane Symphony’s Family Concert on Saturday, 2 p.m., will have a Lincoln-related theme, “The World Comes West.”

It will explore the repercussions of Lincoln’s Homestead Act of 1865, which launched a wave of settlement in the West and directly shaped our region.

The symphony’s next Chamber Soiree, titled “Music Lincoln Should Have Heard,” will feature compositions from his era, including pieces by Strauss, Puccini and Schumann.

The performances will be Feb. 3 and 4 at the Davenport Hotel, and Feb. 5 at the Jacklin Arts and Cultural Center at the Old Church in Post Falls.

The centerpiece of the celebration, without a doubt, comes Feb. 28 and March 1, when the symphony performs the world premiere of Michael Daugherty’s composition “Letters From Lincoln,” sung by Spokane’s homegrown opera star, Thomas Hampson.

The symphony commissioned Daugherty, one of the nation’s top composers, to write a piece that could sit alongside Copland’s “A Lincoln Portrait” as a fitting musical tribute.

In the words of music director Eckart Preu, the symphony wanted a “companion piece – or a counter piece” to Copland’s work, something more “human,” something to “take Lincoln down from the pedestal and show us the man as he was.”

Tickets for all of these concerts can be purchased by calling the symphony ticket office at (509) 624-1200 or through TicketsWest outlets (509-325-SEAT, 800-325-SEAT, www.ticketswest.com).

The Spokane International Film Festival and the Chase Gallery also have Lincoln Festival tie-ins.

The festival has been sanctioned by the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission.