Giving Thanks: A celebration of fall, food, and gratitude

Giving Thanks offers a contemporary celebration of gratitude, with classical music and stories of Thanksgiving.

This year we celebrate Thanksgiving along side the 250 year anniversary of Beethoven's birth. A Fall inspired selection of works ,like the Pastoral Symphony, provides the perfect atmosphere for Thanksgiving.

Conductor Michael Tilson Thomas helps commemorate the life of Beethoven and the spirt of Thanksgiving. American poets Rita Dove and Ted Kooser help usher in the Giving Thanks by reading a selection of poems that help celebrate the season. Whether you are early in the kitchen, on the road to a family gathering, or relaxing after the feast, Giving Thanks provides the perfect atmosphere for Thanksgiving: the warmth of great music, and truly memorable words.

Hour 1

• Traditional: We Gather Together — Boston Pops/John Williams

• Grainger: Harvest Hymn — Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields/Neville Marriner

• Michael Tilson Thomas on Beethoven

• Beethoven: Symphony No. 6, "Pastoral"

• Song of Thanksgiving — Michael Tilson Thomas

• Beethoven: Violin Sonata No. 5, 3rd mvt. — Isaac Stern, violin

• Michael Tilson Thomas on childhood Thanksgiving, and the Whistle Song

• Gershwin: Promenade — Michael Tilson Thomas/LA Philharmonic

• Monteverdi: Mass of Thanksgiving: Gloria — Taverner Consort

• Ted Kooser reads from "Winter Morning Walks"

• Maria Schneider: Winter Morning Walks — Dawn Upshaw, soprano

• Richard Strauss: Sonatina No. 2, "The Happy Workshop": 2nd mvt — Netherlands Wind Ensemble

• Mozart: Laudate Dominum — Joshua Bell, violin

• Rita Dove reads "For Sophie"

• Bill Evans: Waltz for Debby — Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano

• Michael Tilson Thomas on turkeys

Hour 2

• Alberto Ginastera: Dance of the Wheat — New World Symphony/Michael Tilson Thomas

• Michael Tilson Thomas on Thanksgiving dinner and grace

• Copland: Appalachian Spring; Simple Gifts — San Francisco Symphony/Michael Tilson Thomas

• Brooklyn Rider on Beethoven's Hymn of Thanksgiving

• Beethoven: String Quartet No. 15, Op. 132: Heiliger Dankgesang — Brooklyn Rider

• From Jack Kerouac's "The Dharma Bums," Chartres Cathedral story; Psalm 104 — Read by Charles Laughton

• Traditional, arr. Stephen Paulus: We Gather Together — Dale Warland Singers

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