Canadian-American conductor Peter Oundjian explores  music of North America with the ISO, starting with William Grant Still’s Poem for Orchestra, which Still’s wife says was “inspired by the concept of a world being reborn spiritually after a period of darkness and desolation.” Florence Price— the first Black woman to have her music performed by a major U.S. orchestra—honors her African-American heritage with a movement of her String Quartet, arranged here for orchestra by Oundjian. Barber’s unbroken Symphony No. 1 releases its titanic strength and energy, and the ISO commissions a new work by young Atlanta-based African American composer Joel Thompson, recently celebrated in the New York Times for his moving work “Seven Last Words of the Unarmed.”