Aaron Copland News

After a 48 year absence, Roundabout Theatre Company (Todd Haimes, Artistic Director) will present the first new Broadway production of Bye Bye Birdie as the inaugural production of the new Henry Miller's Theatre (124 West 43rd Street) beginning Thursday, September 10th, 2009 with an official opening on Thursday, October 15th, 2009. This will be a limited engagement through January 10th, 2010.

Today, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts officially launches a yearlong celebration of its 50th Anniversary with a commemorative ceremony in the Starr Theater at Alice Tully Hall. Hosted by renowned journalist and author Tom Brokaw, the program pays tribute to the many achievements and contributions of Lincoln Center, from the milestones of its past half century to the transformation of its campus.

Reprise Theatre Company presents Brian Stokes Mitchell Sings Broadway, a program especially created for Reprise. It will have one performance only on Monday, May 11 at 8 pm, at UCLA's Freud Playhouse.

Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops open 124th season festivities with the consummate cabaret and concert star Barbara Cook and her trio

Rinde Eckert, a writer, composer, performer, director, and finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Drama, will be presented with the 2009 Alpert Award in the Arts in Theatre on Tuesday, May 5 at a private ceremony at Herb Alpert's Vibrato Jazz & Grill in Bel Air, California.

After a 48 year absence, Bye Bye Birdie will return to Broadway this fall presented by Roundabout Theatre Company (Todd Haimes, Artistic Director) in a production starring John Stamos (Albert Peterson), Gina Gershon (Rose Alvarez), Bill Irwin (Mr. Harry MacAfee) and Jayne Houdyshell (Mrs. Mae Peterson). Directed & choreographed by Robert Longbottom, Bye Bye Birdie has a book by Michael Stewart, lyrics by Lee Adams and music by Charles Strouse. Roundabout is proud to welcome back three artists who have previously worked at the theatrical institution: John Stamos, Gina Gershon and Bill Irwin.

Spend a day with Virgil Thomson-one of the most remarkable, influential and controversial artists in the history of contemporary American music. From his bed at the Chelsea Hotel in New York City, Thomson ran the world of music as chief music critic for the Herald Tribune. The 'Father of American Music,' Thomson paved the way for his contemporaries who included Aaron Copland, Paul Bowles, Igor Stravinsky, Mark Blitzstein, Ned Rorem and Leonard Bernstein, among many others. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his score of the film Louisiana Story.

For the fourth consecutive year, The Cleveland Play House presents FusionFest, the only multidisciplinary performing arts festival at a regional theatre in the country, from April 29-May 10, 2009. The festival will offer a sampling of international and 'other-worldly' works, including an ancient Japanese art form, Dogugaeshi, by master puppeteer Basil Twist, performances by Charles Ross of his One-Man Star Wars Trilogy, and a world-premiere adaptation of Thorton Wilder's comic novel Heaven's My Destination, by Tony-award nominee Lee Blessing and commissioned by The Play House expressly for FusionFest with support from The Roe Green Foundation.

New York Philharmonic Principal Clarinet Stanley Drucker, who will retire from the Orchestra at the end of the 2008?09 season concluding a 60-year tenure, will give his final concerto appearances in performances of Copland?s Clarinet Concerto, conducted by Lorin Maazel, Tuesday, June 4, at 7:30 p.m., Saturday, June 6, at 8:00 p.m., and Tuesday, June 9, 2009, at 7:30 p.m. Mr. Drucker, who joined the New York Philharmonic at age 19 in 1948, and whose tenure encompasses one-third of the history of the 167-year-old orchestra, will have performed as soloist with the Orchestra some 200 times (both at home and abroad), and will have played in more than 10,200 concerts under nine New York Philharmonic conductors at the conclusion of his tenure.

Spend a day with Virgil Thomson-one of the most remarkable, influential and controversial artists in the history of contemporary American music. From his bed at the Chelsea Hotel in New York City, Thomson ran the world of music as chief music critic for the Herald Tribune. The 'Father of American Music,' Thomson paved the way for his contemporaries who included Aaron Copland, Paul Bowles, Igor Stravinsky, Mark Blitzstein, Ned Rorem and Leonard Bernstein, among many others. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his score of the film Louisiana Story.

Comedy, tragedy, magic, madness, jealousy, deceit and fantasy all will take center stage at IU Bloomington's Musical Arts Center during Indiana University Opera and Ballet Theater's 2009-2010 season.

The Yale School of Music announces an especially exciting third season of Yale in New York, the acclaimed series in which distinguished faculty-many of them famous soloists-share the limelight with exceptional alumni and students on Carnegie's stages, capturing the intense collaboration found on every level at the Yale School of Music.

Indiana University Associate Professor Osamu James Nakagawa was confirmed as a Guggenheim Fellow last week. Fellows were announced Tuesday, April 7. This marks the 85th year for the annual competition, established to honor 'stellar achievement and exceptional promise for continued accomplishment' to add to the 'educational, literary, artistic and scientific power of this country, and also to provide for the cause of better international understanding,' according to the organization's mission statement.

The Orion String Quartet, the resident quartet at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, will premiere a new work by Jacobs Professor and Composition Department Chair David Dzubay in a free concert on Monday, April 13, at 8 p.m. in Auer Hall.

Rinde Eckert, a writer, composer, performer, director, and finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Drama, will be presented with the 2009 Alpert Award in the Arts in Theatre on Tuesday, May 5 at a private ceremony at Herb Alpert's Vibrato Jazz & Grill in Bel Air, California.

The Orion String Quartet, the resident quartet at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, will premiere a new work by Jacobs Professor and Composition Department Chair David Dzubay in a free concert on Monday, April 13, at 8 p.m. in Auer Hall.

After a 48 year absence, Bye Bye Birdie will return to Broadway this fall presented by Roundabout Theatre Company (Todd Haimes, Artistic Director) in a production starring John Stamos (Albert Peterson), Gina Gershon (Rose Alvarez), Bill Irwin (Mr. Harry MacAfee) and Jayne Houdyshell (Mrs. Mae Peterson). Directed & choreographed by Robert Longbottom, Bye Bye Birdie has a book by Michael Stewart, lyrics by Lee Adams and music by Charles Strouse. Roundabout is proud to welcome back three artists who have previously worked at the theatrical institution: John Stamos, Gina Gershon and Bill Irwin.

America's premier show choir, the Indiana University Singing Hoosiers, will perform its 59th annual spring concert, 'A Celebration of American Popular Music,' at IU Auditorium April 4 at 8 p.m. The vocal ensemble performs American popular music, jazz and Broadway favorites with dazzling choreography, energy and style.

Thomas W. Morris, artistic director of the Ojai Music Festival and Ojai's 2009 music director eighth blackbird have announced the final programming for the 2009 Ojai Music Festival, which takes place from Thursday, June 11 to Sunday, June 14, 2009. This season, the four-day Festival, which for six decades has become well known for its fearlessness in championing pioneering musical ideas and personalities, pushes the envelope again with programming that reflects the qualities that have made eighth blackbird a growing musical phenomenon-genre-defying variety in wildly collaborative and visually dramatic presentations.

For the fourth consecutive year, The Cleveland Play House presents FusionFest, the only multidisciplinary performing arts festival at a regional theatre in the country, from April 29-May 10, 2009. The festival will offer a sampling of international and 'other-worldly' works, including an ancient Japanese art form, Dogugaeshi, by master puppeteer Basil Twist, performances by Charles Ross of his One-Man Star Wars Trilogy, and a world-premiere adaptation of Thorton Wilder's comic novel Heaven's My Destination, by Tony-award nominee Lee Blessing and commissioned by The Play House expressly for FusionFest with support from The Roe Green Foundation.