Copland House Brings FLEETING IMAGES, CAPTURED MOMENTS To Manhattan

Music, word, and sculpture come together when the internationally-acclaimed Music from Copland House ensemble returns to Elebash Hall at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York this spring.

The free hour-long program takes place this Tuesday, March 19 at 6:30pm, and features music created by four generations of remarkable American composers, inspired by poetry and Harlem Renaissance artwork.

The wide-ranging program explores the dreams, passions, and imagery of life -- enduring and everyday, memorable and routine, real and imagined. Reflecting on nature, seasons, relationships, loves, amusements, and much more, the concert's centerpiece is the World Premiere of Wait Till Tomorrow, a Copland House commission by Eve Beglarian -- called "a humane, idealistic rebel, and musical sensualist” (Los Angeles Times) -- setting poems by prize-winning author Bill Knott. The concert also offers songs by Aaron Copland, Reena Esmail, and Frederick Peters on poems by Emily Dickinson, Wendell Berry, and Elizabeth Bishop, respectively, along with a brilliant instrumental triptych from the 1940s by William Grant Still, inspired by Harlem Renaissance painters.

Music from Copland House is based at the award-winning creative center for American music at legendary composer Aaron Copland’s National Historic Landmark home in northern Westchester. The ensemble has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning, NPR, and Euro-Radio; engaged by the Kennedy Center, Tanglewood, Carnegie Hall, Library of Congress, Smithsonian Institution, and the Caramoor, Cape Cod, Bard, Bowdoin, and Ecstatic Festivals; and heard on the Arabesque, Koch International, and COPLAND HOUSE BLEND labels. It has commissioned nearly 100 works, and undertakes extensive educational and community outreach activities. Its stellar performers for this concert are soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon, violinist Siwoo Kim, cellist Alexis Pia Gerlach, and pianist Michael Boriskin.