Copland House Spring Season Includes Higdon, Glass, Visconti, Barber

Copland House's musical adventures will help welcome spring with another line-up of concerts at Westchester County's majestic Merestead estate in Mount Kisco, NY. The programs feature Pulitzer Prize winners, world and local premieres, an array of Chinese instruments, and an innovative multi-media production fusing music by Philip Glass, texts by Leonard Cohen, and film by Benjamin Millepied. All concerts are on Sunday afternoons, beginning at 3pm and are followed by elegant, meet-the-artist receptions.

The wide-ranging spring season begins on March 11, when  Joshua Roman joins pianist and Copland House Artistic and Executive Director Michael Boriskin on An American Journey. The program features the New York Premiere of Americana, a monumental new work by the richly-praised young composer and former Copland House resident Dan Visconti. Westchester master Samuel Barber's brooding classic, the Sonata for Cello and Piano, opens the program

On March 25, the award-winning Music from China and Music from Copland House ensembles bring Asian and Western instruments together for Sounds of the Dragon: A Chinese-American Musical Harvest. Inspired by such wildly diverse influences as 8th century Chinese poetry, American rap music, Asian calligraphy, Phillip Glass, Mongolian folk music, and the Kentucky and Indiana countryside, the concert explores the melding of Eastern and Western language, philosophy, attitudes, and mythology. The program features the World Premiere of the widely-acclaimed Derek Bermel's Dragon Blue (a Copland House commission), the New York Premiere of Wang Guowei's Teahouse II, and works by 2011 Pulitzer Prize winner Zhou Long, MacArthur Foundation Fellow Bright Sheng, and others. Ticket holders are also entitled to attend a special, curator-led tour of Dragon Rising,the Katonah Art Museum's exhibit of Chinese photography opening the same day. Commissioned by the New York State Council on the Arts and Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts.

On April 15, one of America's most popular and distinctive musical voices, 2010 Pulitzer Prize-winner Jennifer Higdon steps In the Composer's Studio. Higdon will be on-hand to explore her creative process and speak about her fascination with the connection between the visual arts and music. She will introduce two of her major works, Light Refracted and the Piano Trio, and lead what is certain to be a lively Q&A with the audience following the performances by Music from Copland House.

Hot on the heels of its acclaimed sold-out World Premieres at New York's Symphony Space, Santa Monica's Broad Stage, and Omaha's Kaneko Foundation, violinist Tim Fain's innovative Portals comes to Merestead, on May 20,. This multi-media production explores our longing for connection in the digital age, and features Phillip Glass's new Partita for Solo Violin, especially written for Fain, as well music by Pulitzer Prize winners Aaron Jay Kernis and William Bolcom, Nico Muhly, Lev Zhurbin, and Kevin Puts, texts by Leonard Cohen, and dance film directed and choreographed by BLACK SWAN's Benjamin Millipied (and filmed at Merestead!).

For the season finale on June 3, two of America's most "creative keyboard wizards", Caramoor's Michael Barrett and Copland House's Michael Boriskin, return to Merestead by popular demand for Strings, Mallets, Hammers, and Ivory, an explosive program featuring Bela Bartok's landmark Sonata for 2 Pianos and Percussion and former Copland House resident composer StewArt Wallace's Gorilla in a Cage.

Tickets to Copland House at Merestead performances are popularly-priced at $25 and $20 (for Friends of Copland House), and less in various subscription packages; student tickets are $10. For ticket and subscription information, contact Copland House at (914) 788-4659 or office@coplandhouse.org. 

For those who can't get to Copland House's main-stage concerts at Merestead (or can't get enough!), Music from Copland House appears twice this spring in Manhattan. On Monday, February 20 at 8pm, the ensemble appears on the new Soundscapes series at Christ & St. Stephens Church, 120 West 69th Street in a program called Dangerous Crossings and inspired by or based upon folk music. The concert features new works written especially for the ensemble by two former residents -the World Premiere of Rob Smith's Chaw, and the New York City Premiere of Pierre Jalbert's Crossings- and music by Copland, Paul Schoenfield, and Percy Grainger.

On Wednesday, March 28at 8pm, Music from Copland House again joins Music from China in a program for Merkin Hall's Ecstatic Music Festival highlighted by the World Premieres of new works written for this concert by Du Yun, Samson Young, and Derek Bermel. These idiosyncratic composers take radically different approaches to the challenge of blending Chinese and Western instruments, along with electronics and, in some cases, even their own voices, in works that live at the artistic crossroads of concert music, theater, pop, cabaret, storytelling, and technology. Merkin Hall is at 129 West 67th Street.

To post a comment, you must register and login.