Imagine US

Student Guest Opinion

By Quinn De Vecchi | March 7, 2026

The Imagine US tour—a collaboration between Interlochen Arts Academy (IAA) and several orchestras, including the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and the Philadelphia Orchestra—honors America’s semi-quincentennial. But it also carries the hope and power of a political piece.

From March 7-15, touring Interlochen, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Boston, the show is a voice for the next generation of the United States. Ranging from slam poems to interpretive dances, monologues to beautiful songs, the tour is a melting pot of cultures and identities that make up the IAA student body. The tour also includes trumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis—who composed an entirely new piece for the tour—and famed cello player Yo-Yo Ma.

Since October, IAA students have been hard at work on this multidisciplinary reflection on the United States’ history. Only 25 students were chosen out of their specific majors to be “devisors” (someone who devises/creates new and original work for the tour), while 230 music students perform in the main orchestra and play alongside the city orchestras.

The tour was fueled by what students wished would change in the United States, what they cherished about the country, and what they hoped for the future. These journal entries slowly transformed into “A Promise,” the sixth interlude of the performance which includes all 25 devisors as they read snippets of entries.

The sixth interlude was pieced together and written by Addison Hill, a senior creative writer who was one of the three writers to be chosen for the tour.

“For the creation of the sixth interlude, I read 20 pages of freewrites from my fellow performers,” says Hill. “That piece shines with hope because it isn’t just the hope of one person. It’s the real dreams of the people I share meals with in the cafeteria, go to class with, and live next to.”

Hill also worked on a script for “Third Interlude: A Voice,” where four students perform monologues relating to different times in American history. Hill, who is disabled, wrote about the 1990 capitol crawl, where disabled activists crawled up the United States capitol steps to protest Congress for stalling the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

“Given that the speaker of my monologue is a participant in the capitol crawl, it’s also a reminder that protest is a viable tool for action against policies that don’t serve us. It’s proof that our struggles—in my speaker’s case, getting out of her wheelchair and climbing to the top of the capitol building—can create meaningful change,” Hill says.

The other third interlude monologues follow an American patriot from the Revolutionary War, a flapper from the Great Depression, and a Native American on the clash of cultures in the United States.

Annabella Thompson, an interdisciplinary arts junior at IAA and an Anishinaabek, wrote a monologue to share her culture and speak to the history of colonization. The piece references traditions that are personal to Thompson, such as powwows or a berry fast. At the same time, the monologue warns against cultural appropriation and the tragedy of Indigenous boarding schools.

“I created my work in hopes that people realize Indigenous American peoples’ cultures and traditions are alive, well, and something that can be shared or celebrated by all,” says Thompson. “Traditions don’t exist purely as something to be borrowed from or stolen.”

The Imagine US tour also performs work from the early 20th century composer Charles Ives. Ives was considered a “modernist” composer, and most of his work was largely ignored due to it not following orchestral standards at the time. Ives took inspiration from marching bands, unsynchronized music, and the Black American genre of ragtime. The tour plays Ives’ Symphony No. 4, his hardest piece ever composed.

“With the Charles Ives work—he was writing this particular piece in the 1910s and 1920s. That, to me, felt like, ‘Oh, this can speak to the past of the country.’ Especially since it’s a collage of marches and hymns and all of this existing material meeting his own creativity,” says Diana Wyenn, the creative director of the tour.

Wyenn was also interested in showing the unique cultures that make up the United States, while making it a celebration of the country.

“These artists, we’re in interdisciplinary collaboration with one another,” says Wyenn. “There are a lot of different communities, and we’re different as individuals, and we all have really unique intersectional identities. And I wanted to highlight that when we come together, a lot of times, beautiful things can come from those conversations and from those collaborations.”

Wyenn concludes, “I know what we’re pouring into this piece. I hope that the audience can feel the students’ passion, frustration, but also their hope for this country. At the end there’s this line: ‘The America we leave behind will be better than the America we were born into.’ This is us standing up and saying, ‘We could do better.’”

Quinn De Vecchi is a creative writing senior at Interlochen Arts Academy.