By Elise Brunelle
To celebrate the United States’ 250th birthday, the Vermont Symphony Orchestra hits the road with its Summer Festival Tour: America 250, bringing music to communities across the Green Mountain State. There’s nothing quite like a balmy July evening in the Vermont outdoors, especially when the state’s orchestra performs beloved favorites like Morton Gould’s American Salute (based on “When Johnny Comes Marching Home”), Aaron Copland’s Hoe-Down from Rodeo, and a lively selection of music by John Williams and John Philip Sousa.
Conducted by VSO Music Director Andrew Crust, the orchestra also brings the Duke Ellington Fantasy, Vermont composer Gwyneth Walker’s piece America 250!, and movements from Antonin Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 to the concert meadow, alongside guest speakers narrating powerful writings by Emma Lazarus, Calvin Coolidge, and Abraham Lincoln.
“What excites me most about this program is how much ground it covers,” said Crust. “Copland and Sousa, Ellington and Williams, Dvořák writing his New World Symphony as a newly arrived immigrant. Together these works tell a genuinely complex and thrilling story about what America is and has been. Add live narration and a Vermont summer evening, and I can’t imagine a more fitting way to mark this milestone.”
Two works on the program will be elevated by live narration, grounding the music in the literary and political heritage of the nation. John Williams’ Liberty Fanfare will be performed alongside a reading of Emma Lazarus’ The New Colossus, the poem whose words “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” came to define America’s promise to the world. Aaron Copland’s Lincoln Portrait, one of the most stirring works in the American orchestral canon, includes excerpts from Abraham Lincoln’s documents including text from his Gettysburg Address. This will be paired with a reading of Calvin Coolidge’s Vermont Is a State I Love, a meditation on the character of this “brave, little state” that resonates today.
VSO has engaged theater director and actor Jarvis Green to recite the Emma Lazarus and Abraham Lincoln writings, and yet-to-be-announced special guests will recite Coolidge’s piece at each location.
This year’s VSO Summer Festival Tour: America 250 takes place July 1–5, 2026, with stops in South Pomfret, East Burke, Grafton, Shelburne, and Stowe. Each location features the VSO’s Musical Petting Zoo before the performance, where audiences can explore a variety of orchestral instruments. The concerts in Shelburne and East Burke conclude with fireworks.
Tour Dates:
- Wednesday, July 1 — Saskadena Six, South Pomfret
- Thursday, July 2 — Burke Mountain, East Burke (with fireworks)
- Friday, July 3 — Grafton Trails & Outdoor Center, Grafton
- Saturday, July 4 — Shelburne Museum, Shelburne (with fireworks)
- Sunday, July 5 — von Trapp Family Lodge & Resort Concert Meadow, Stowe
Full Program:
- The Star-Spangled Banner
- Morton Gould — American Salute
- John Williams — Liberty Fanfare (with live reading of Emma Lazarus’ “The New Colossus”)
- Charles Ives — Variations on America
- Gwyneth Walker — America 250!
- Antonín Dvořák — Symphony No. 9, Movement I (New World Symphony)
- John Williams — Cowboys Overture
- Aaron Copland — Hoe-Down from Rodeo
- John Williams — Rey’s Theme from The Force Awakens (Star Wars Suite)
- Edward Elgar — Chanson de Matin
- Aaron Copland — Lincoln Portrait (with live reading of Calvin Coolidge’s “Vermont Is a State I Love”)
- Billy Strayhorn, arr. Hermann — Duke Ellington Fantasy
- John Philip Sousa — The Stars and Stripes Forever
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