Copland House Announces 2016-17 Season

An appearance by multi-Grammy Award winning clarinetist and composer Paquito d'Rivera; a world premiere by Rome Prize-winner Derek Bermel; a concert haunted by Bach, Schubert, and musical ghosts of past centuries; song settings of the mystical, powerful poetry of celebrated Austro-German author Rainer Maria Rilke; and music inspired by the American West highlight the 8th season of Copland House concerts at Westchester County's majestic Merestead estate in Mount Kisco, NY.

Venturing across nearly 125 years of American music - from early 20th century masters (Amy Beach and Charles Tomlinson Griffes) through mid-century icons (Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein, Lukas Foss, and David Amram) to some of today's most exciting and talked-about young composers (Nico Muhly, Mason Bates, and Timo Andres), the season includes seven concerts and runs from September 18, 2016 through June 12, 2017. All of the concerts feature the Founding, Principal, and Guest Artists of the internationally-acclaimed Music from Copland House ensemble, and include post-performance, meet-the-artists receptions.

Hailed by The New York Times for "all the richness of its offerings" and "illuminating essential truths about the music," Copland House's remarkable showcase of American musical creativity is among the only ongoing concert series in the nation that exclusively champions a century-and-a-half of U.S. composers. "We have been re-imagining the entire concert experience as an inclusive place for high-energy cultural adventures and thrilling musical discoveries," says Copland House's Artistic and Executive Director Michael Boriskin.

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Full Concert Listing Here

The Joy of Sextets

The season opens on Sunday afternoon, September 18 at 3pm with a concert called The Joy of Sextets, haunted by the musical ghosts of Bach, Schubert, and the great, late-English Renaissance composer Orlando Gibbons. The program features one of Aaron Copland's masterworks, the Sextet for Clarinet, String Quartet, and Piano, along with Tashi by Lukas Foss, Pulitzer Prize-winning Steven Stucky's Partita-Pastorale after J.S.B., and Motion by one of today's most-talked-about young composers, Nico Muhly.

Sounds of Havana

The renowned Paquito d'Rivera steps into the spotlight as both clarinetist and composer in a special concert on Saturday evening, October 29 at 8pm. Sounds of Havana traces the extraordinary odyssey of the 14-time Grammy winner from his roots in Havana - where his feet were planted in both the classical and Afro-Latin jazz worlds - to international celebrity, including multiple performances at the White House. The program features several of his own works, as well as a selection from a revered work that profoundly influenced him, the masterful Trio for Clarinet, Cello, and Piano by Johannes Brahms. The concert also includes the World Premiere of a new work for 2 clarinets especially written for this concert by Grammy-nominated composer and Music from Copland House's Founding Clarinetist Derek Bermel.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Fleeting Melodies, Invisible Poems

Sunday afternoon, December 4 is the 141st birthday of one of the most important poets of the early 20th century, Rainer Maria Rilke, whose focus on disbelief, solitude, and anxiety influenced generations of writers who followed. Inspiring hundreds of composers to create musical settings, Rilke's poetry, among all major writers, is one the most frequently-used. This concert - Fleeting Melodies, Invisible Poems - which takes place at 3pm, features the Mélodies passagères by Mount Kisco's own two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Samuel Barber, selections from Paul Hindemith's epic Das Marienleben, and Rilke settings by Leonard Bernstein and the beloved Peter Lieberson.
(Co-sponsored by the Westchester Community Foundation Rudyard and Emanuella Reimss Fund.

The Life of Birds

Taking flight on Sunday afternoon, March 19 at 3pm is The Life of Birds, a musical aviary exploring the journeys, habits, and "personalities" of some astonishingly versatile flying, feathered singers. The concert takes its name from a work by Mason Bates, the Kennedy Center's first Composer-in-Residence; calling it a "a web of short but dense moments from the aviary," the music visits parakeets, flycatchers, and other winged creatures at rest and play, in love, and in flight. Birds of Paradise by former Manhattan School of Music President Robert Sirota evokes the scintillating sounds of the stunningly multi-colored birds that live deep in the rain forests of Papua New Guinea, and is paired with a vivid film by the Cornell University Ornithological Lab of these birds in their native habitats. The program also features Lukas Foss's classic Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, based on the famous eponymous poem by Wallace Stevens, and a group of early 20th century songs by Amy Beach, Theodore Chanler, and Westchester's own Charles Tomlinson Griffes (one of the first faculty members at The Hackley School in Tarrytown, NY).

Along the Colorado River

Along a Desert Highway Along a Desert Highway on Sunday afternoon, April 23 at 3pm offers works inspired by the grandeur, drama, mystery, and danger of the American West. The program features Red River, which, according to its much-acclaimed young composer Mason Bates, "traces the journey of the great Colorado River to its various destinations in the Southwest, Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, the California desert," and includes recorded sounds from the region. Native American Portraits by the beloved, 85-year-young master David Amram is based on the music of the Cheyenne, Zuni, and Seneca-Cayuga nations. Copland House's 2014 CULTIVATE Fellow David Biedenbender's Red Vesper is an expansive meditation on Utah's majestic Capitol Reef National Park, and was written especially for the emerging composers institute.

Timo Andres

Take Five Take Five, on Sunday afternoon, May 21 at 3pm, includes major works for piano and string quartet by Timo Andres, a Finalist for this year's Pulitzer Prize in Music, and Lowell liebermann, one of the most frequently-performed American composers. Andres describes his Piano Quintet as a "sort of thought-experiment" inspired by one of his "long-time favorite pieces," the great Piano Quintet by Robert Schumann; based on a simple, four-note melodic motif "stolen" from Schumann, Andres built "a single, large-scale form constructed out of several simpler" components. Liebermann's epic Quintet for Piano and Strings revels in the gestures and rhetoric of a rich, flamboyant neo-Romanticism, creating a ferocious, swashbuckling work that is, in turn, eerie, serene, off-kilter, and blazingly virtuosic.

Cultivate fellows and performers CULTIVATE 2017

CULTIVATE 2017, the place to discover tomorrow's masters today, brings the season to an exciting, unpredictable close on Sunday afternoon, June 11 at 3pm, with the World Premieres of no-fewer-than six brand-new works created by the Fellows of Copland House's flagship, annual emerging composers institute. Launched in 2012, CULTIVATE quickly became a coveted destination for America's most gifted young composers. The season finale is the culmination of this weeklong, all-scholarship creative workshop and mentoring program for highly-gifted young composers at the start of their professional careers.

(Supported by the ASCAP Foundation Bart Howard Fund, BMI Foundation, NewMusicUSA, Jandon Foundation, and John G. Strugar)

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Tickets to the Paquito d'Rivera concert (October 29) are $50 ($40 for Friends of Copland House). Single tickets for all other concerts are $25, ($20 for Friends of Copland House, and $10 for students with ID). 3-concert subscriptions are $69 ($54 for Friends), and 6-concert subscriptions are $126 ($96 for Friends); with either subscription package, tickets to the Paquito d'Rivera are $40 ($30 for Friends). For more info, contact Copland House at 914-788-4659 or office@coplandhouse.org.

Inaugurated in 1998, Copland House is an award-winning creative center for American music based at Aaron Copland's National Historic Landmark home in Cortlandt Manor. It is the only composer's home in the U.S. devoted to nurturing and renewing America's rich musical heritage through a broad range of public, educational, and musical activities, and to fostering greater public awareness and appreciation of our nation's composers and their work. In 2009, it expanded its activities to the historic Merestead estate in Mount Kisco as it began to develop an innovative public-private partnership with the Westchester County government. Support for Copland House's 2016-17 Merestead concerts comes from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, Aaron Copland Fund for Music, ArtsWestchester, Ruth M. Knight Foundation, Westchester Community Foundation, and Friends of Copland House.

Music from Copland House (MCH) occupies a special place on the musical scene as perhaps this country's only wide-ranging American repertory ensemble, journeying across 150 years of the rich musical landscape of the U.S. Hailed by The New York Times for performances that are "all exuberance and bright sunshine," MCH has been engaged by Carnegie Hall, the Library of Congress, Merkin Hall, Miller Theatre, the Caramoor, Cape Cod, Bard, and Ecstatic Music Festivals, NPR, the Smithsonian Institution's Freer Gallery of Arts, and European Broadcasting Union, and other leading concert presenters. The ensemble records for the Arabesque, Koch International, and Copland House Blend labels, and is regularly featured on Copland House's popular main-stage concert series at Merestead. Inspired by Copland's peerless, lifelong advocacy of American composers, MCH also presents a wide variety of educational and community outreach activities. MCH concerts feature the ensemble's much-admired Founding Artists - clarinetist-composer Derek Bermel, pianist Michael Boriskin, flutist Paul Lustig Dunkel, violinist Nicholas Kitchen, and cellist Wilhelmina Smith - and an array of stellar Principal and Guest Artists. Visit www.coplandhouse.org for more.

Photo by Gabe Palacio

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