Min Kwon: America/Beautiful 250

For her project America/Beautiful, Korean-American pianist Min Kwon commissioned almost eighty leading composers across the United States to each write a variation on America the Beautiful, producing a vast mosaic of voices, aesthetics, identities, and histories. No two variations are alike. Some are tender and lyrical, others bracing and dissonant; some meditate, others protest. Together they form a living portrait of a country in conversation with itself. Now, as the nation approaches its 250th anniversary, Kwon returns to the Catacombs with music from this monumental project – timed to the release of her complete recording of all 76 variations. What began as a question has become a document of its time: a sonic archive of how America’s leading creative voices, in all their diversity, heard this moment in history.