Originally broadcast at 5 p.m. EDT Thursday, August 27, 2020.

Join us for a special conversation with writer Sandra Cisneros and composer Derek Bermel as we show selected excerpts recorded during Chautauqua’s 2017 world premiere of Mango Suite, while discussing how this collaboration has continued to influence their work and grow into new projects. The collaborators will share thoughts on Bermel’s related opera project. This special event will be hosted by Vice President of Performing and Visual Arts Deborah Sunya Moore and Director of Literary Arts Sony Ton-Aime.

Commissioned in 2017, Mango Suite was composed by Derek Bermel and based on the novel by Sandra Cisneros which was also a Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle selection for 2017. The piece was commissioned by Chautauquans Francis and Cindy Letro, in honor of Tom and Jane Becker for their dedication to inter-arts programming, along with two other orchestras led by Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra Music Director Rossen Milanov — the Columbus Symphony Orchestra and the Princeton Symphony. The intent of this inter-arts collaboration was to produce a work of art that would live on outside the Institution gates and beyond the nine-week season. Mango Suite was premiered by Chautauqua Institution’s orchestra, voice, dance and theater programs on July 22, 2017.

About Chautauqua Institution: Chautauqua Institution is a community on the shores of Chautauqua Lake in southwestern New York state that comes alive each summer with a unique mix of fine and performing arts, lectures, interfaith worship and programs, and recreational activities. As a community, we celebrate, encourage and study the arts and treat them as integral to all of learning, and we convene the critical conversations of the day to advance understanding through civil dialogue. CHQ Assembly is the online expression of Chautauqua Institution's mission.