RUSTLES OF SPRING to Celebrate Paul Lustig Dunkel

On Sunday afternoon, April 15, the Music from Copland House ensemble (MCH) salutes the life and career of its Founding Flutist, Paul Lustig Dunkel (1943-2018). The concert, Rustles of Spring, features music that the renowned flutist-conductor helped to commission or champion. The performance takes place on Copland House's mainstage series at Westchester County's historic Merestead estate in Mount Kisco, and begins at 3pm.

Highlighting the program is one of Copland House's most acclaimed commissions, Crossings by the celebrated composer Pierre Jalbert. Dunkel was an avid proponent of Jalbert's music, premiering the composition in 2011 with MCH, and continuing to perform perform it widely. This dynamic work traces the composer's French-Canadian ancestry and its migration across the Atlantic and through North America, and explores what it means to find oneself in new, unfamiliar, and changing surroundings.

In the late 1960s, Dunkel and a group of fellow young flutists banded together to commission a new composition from the "Dean of American Music," Aaron Copland, who had never written a major work featuring their instrument. Copland wrote his Duo for Flute and Piano at his longtime home in Westchester County; it turned out to be his last important composition, and quickly became one of the staples of the flute repertory. Copland's Duo was among the first of countless commissions Dunkel oversaw throughout his illustrious career; he played it dozens of times at Copland House concerts in New York and around the U.S., and recorded it in 2004 in MCH's debut recording, The Complete Chamber Music of Aaron Copland.

The afternoon also includes a rare performance of the mesmerizing Rustles of Spring by the wildly-imaginative William Albright. The work, a meditation both reflective and dazzling on life, love, loss, and renewal, was exactly the kind of brain-teasing, sly, and brilliant music that Dunkel loved to champion throughout his life.

Dunkel's passion for the music of our time and for what the founding of Copland House represented in showcasing American composers was clear to everyone. He helped launch the Music from Copland House ensemble in 1999, was indispensable in its early successes, and was prominently featured on its first recordings. Every performance he gave with MCH was brilliant and indelible. He was also co-founder and Music Director for 25 years of the Westchester Philharmonic, and co-founder and longtime Resident Conductor of the American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. His advocacy of living composers was unwavering and lifelong, both as flutist and conductor. One of the most notable of his many commissions with the Philharmonic - Melinda Wagner's Concerto for Flute, Strings, and Percussion - won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize. The April 15th concert salutes a much-missed friend and partner in musical adventures and one of America's most formidable, all-around musicians. His legacy at Copland House, the Westchester Philharmonic, and far beyond was both substantial and enduring.

Hailed by The New Yorker as "bold," "adventurous," and "superb," Music from Copland House occupies a special place as the only wide-ranging American repertory ensemble journeying widely across 150 years of the U.S. musical landscape. It has been engaged by Carnegie Hall, the Library of Congress, Smithsonian Institution's Freer Gallery of Art, Miller Theatre, Merkin Hall, Monday Evening Concerts in Los Angeles, National Public Radio, the European Broadcasting Union, Yale College (where it is in residence in 2017-18), and the Caramoor, Cape Cod, Bard, SONiC, and Ecstatic Music Festivals, and many other leading concert presenters. The ensemble is regularly featured at Copland House's Merestead concerts, and also records for the Arabesque, Koch International, and Copland House Blend labels.

A meet-the-artists reception immediately follows the concert. Advance ticket purchase is strongly advised. Remaining tickets are $25, $20 for the Friends of Copland House, and $10 for students (with ID), and are available at www.coplandhouse.org or at (914) 788-4659.

Photo: Music from Copland House Founding Artists following the World Premiere of Pierre Jalbert's Crossings in 2011: flutist Paul Lustig Dunkel, pianist Michael Boriskin, composer Pierre Jalbert, cellist Wilhelmina Smith, and clarinetist Derek Bermel.