THE GRADUATE CENTER, CUNY AND MUSIC FROM COPLAND HOUSE
LAUNCH NEW CONCERT SERIES
Programs Showcasing American Musical Creativity and Innovation and
Featuring World and New York Premieres
America’s musical past and future meet in a provocative new concert series The Graduate Center, CUNY and Copland House will launch this fall. These performances will champion a century of America’s vibrant musical legacy, within the context of broad cultural, historical, and societal currents. The six-concert series ranges widely, from performances of early 20th century masters and an evening of major chamber works by Aaron Copland to musical explorations inspired by identity and assimilation, spiritual journeys, and the intersection of visual art and music.
The series begins on November 4, 2019 and extends through June 15, 2020. All events will take place on Monday evenings at 7.30pm at The Graduate Center’s elegant, acoustically outstanding Baisley Powell Elebash Recital Hall, 365 Fifth Avenue (at 34th Street) in Manhattan. Each program will last an hour, without intermission, followed by a meet-the-artists reception. The concerts will all be filmed live by CUNY TV for subsequent telecast to its estimated viewership of over 7 million households in metro New York.
Highlighting the series are new compositions commissioned by Copland House from Sebastian Currier and Graduate Center Professor John Musto; the first New York performances of works by Kevin Puts, Pierre Jalbert, Flannery Cunningham, and Angel Lam; and the world premieres of six commissioned pieces by the 2020 Fellows of Copland House’s acclaimed CULTIVATE emerging composers institute, directed by Music from Copland House founding clarinetist.
“Music opens doors and is an essential instrument for education” said Brian A. Peterson, Interim Vice President of Administration and Finance and the Dean for Academic Initiatives and Strategic Innovation at The Graduate Center. “The arts provide an important catalyst for learning, creativity, and achievement in our communities. This new partnership with Copland House will engage our students and inspire audiences to discover surprising possibilities through these artists performing thrilling works from across America’s vast and vibrant musical spectrum.”
All of these concerts will feature the Music from Copland House ensemble, hailed as “bold,” “adventurous,” and “superb” (The New Yorker). The only American repertory ensemble that journeys widely across 150 years of the U.S. musical landscape, MCH performs at Tanglewood, the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, Library of Congress, and other major venues; appears on CBS Sunday Morning, NPR, the European Broadcasting Union, and Sirius; and records on the Koch, Arabesque, and Copland House Blend labels. The ensemble’s roster of Founding, Principal, and Guest Artists includes some of America’s most celebrated performers, of whom The Chicago Tribune has raved, “Copland would have been proud of all of them.” Music from Copland House will also offer several rising-star instrumentalists from The Graduate Center’s doctoral program the opportunity to perform side-by-side as Guest Artists with the ensemble at a number of these concerts – an important aspect of Copland House’s mission championing next-generation artists.
“I’ve played with and written for the excellent musicians of Music from Copland House, and we welcome them enthusiastically,” said composer-pianist John Musto, Coordinator of The Graduate Center’s D.M.A. Performance Program. “It is a privilege to host them here at The Graduate Center in the ensemble’s own series, and we are especially fortunate that they will periodically share the stage with some of the gifted young performers in our D.M.A. program.”
“Even in a city like New York,” said Copland House’s Artistic and Executive Director Michael Boriskin, “there is ample room for a dynamic new performance platform to explore and celebrate the vast breadth of a century-and-a-half of American musical invention and imagination. And these concerts will also offer the added excitement of discovering some of The Graduate Center’s richly-gifted instrumentalists.”
Individual tickets are $30; discounts for CUNY Faculty and Staff, Friends of Copland House, and seniors over 65 are $20. Subscriptions for any three concerts are $81, or $54 discount. Subscriptions for all six concerts are $153, or $102. Tickets may be purchased securely online at
Concert information is available online or at Copland House at (914) 788-4659, via email , or www.coplandhouse.org . Media inquiries should be directed to Dworkin & Company at (914) 244-3803 or elizabeth@dworkincompany.com.
ABOUT THE GRADUATE CENTER, CUNY
The Graduate Center, CUNY is a leader in public graduate education devoted to enhancing the public good through pioneering research, serious learning, and reasoned debate. The Graduate Center offers ambitious students more than 40 doctoral and master’s programs of the highest caliber, taught by top faculty from throughout CUNY – the nation’s largest public urban university. Through its nearly 40 centers, institutes, initiatives, and the Advanced Science Research Center, The Graduate Center influences public policy and discourse and shapes innovation. With its extensive public programs, The Graduate Center is one of New York City’s leading venues for culture and conversation.
ABOUT COPLAND HOUSE AND MUSIC FROM COPLAND HOUSE
Copland House is an award-winning creative center for American music based at Aaron Copland’s National Historic Landmark residence in Westchester County, NY. Inaugurated in 1998, Copland House 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 activities that embrace the entire creative process: multi-faceted composer support, live and recorded performances, and in-school and on-site educational activities. Music from Copland House (MCH) occupies a special place as this country’s only wide-ranging American repertory ensemble that explores a century-and-a-half of the nation’s rich musical heritage. Hailed by The New York Times for performances that are “bracing, “beguiling … and all exuberance and bright sunshine” and that “illuminate essential truths about the music,” MCH has been a regular presence on major stages across North America, including Carnegie Hall, the Smithsonian Institution, Library of Congress, Yale and Brandeis Universities, Merkin Hall, Miller Theatre, and the Caramoor, Cape Cod, Bard, SONiC, and Ecstatic Music Festivals, among many others, and has a growing discography on the Arabesque, Koch International, and Copland House Blend labels. Its popular mainstage concert series in Westchester County, NY is now 11th season. Inspired by Copland’s peerless, lifelong advocacy of American composers, MCH also presents a wide variety of educational and community outreach activities.
FUNDING CREDITS
Major support for Copland House’s 2019-2020 season comes from the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, and the Friends of Copland House. Additional support comes from ArtsWestchester, the Alice M. Ditson Fund, and the Amphion, ASCAP, BMI, Jandon, and Westchester Community Foundations. This series is supported by The Office for Academic Initiatives and Strategic Innovation at The Graduate Center, CUNY.
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2019-20 INAUGURAL SEASON AT-A-GLANCE
All concerts on Monday evening at 7.30pm, Elebash Recital Hall, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York City
November 4, 2019 – SONIC IMAGES: CHAMBER MUSIC OF AARON COPLAND
Inaugurating this new series with a pre-birthday salute to an artistic icon and Music from Copland House’s namesake – a commanding figure who helped to define the sound and spirit of what he called “a recognizably American musical idiom.”
Major chamber works, including the Violin Sonata, Piano Quartet, and Sextet
MCH ARTISTS: Derek Bermel, clarinet; Magdalena Filipczak^ and Pala Garcia^, violins; Danielle Farina, viola; Alexis Pia Gerlach, cello; Michael Boriskin, piano
December 2, 2019 – THE LISTENING EYE
Eye meets ear at the intersection of art and music, with compositions inspired by line drawings and paintings of Pablo Picasso, vibrant color abstracts of Robert Motherwell, stained glass of Frank Lloyd Wright, and ancient ceramics and statuary of the Incas.
New York Premieres by Viet Cuong (Fine Lines)* and Karim Al-Zand (Three Bagatelles), plus works by Andrew Norman (Light Screens), Gabriela Lena Frank (Quatro Bosquejos; Four Pre-Inca Sketches), and Robert Sirota (Seven Picassos)
MCH ARTISTS: Beomjae Kim, flute; Derek Bermel, clarinet; Curtis Macomber, violin; Danielle Farina, viola; Alexis Pia Gerlach, cello; Michael Boriskin, piano
February 3, 2020 – VOYAGE OUT
Magical, mystical journeys – real, imagined, and spiritual – coursing through sound and time, hereditary history and the Scottish highlands, and an ancient Egyptian guide to the after-life (as interpreted through the lens of a Bill Viola video installation).
New York Premieres of works by Flannery Cunningham (Boreal)*, Sebastian Currier (Voyage Out)*, and Kevin Puts (Living Frescoes)
MCH ARTISTS: Igor Begelman^, clarinet; Curtis Macomber and Suliman Tekalli, violins; Danielle Farina, viola; Alexis Pia Gerlach, cello; Michael Boriskin, piano
March 2, 2020 – MIGRATION TALES
Migration, identity, and assimilation across the generations, heard through a contemporary re-mix of sounds of ancestral homelands, family roots, and ethnic and cultural heritage.
New York Premieres by Angel Lam (Fragrance of the Sea)* and Pierre Jalbert (Crossings)*, plus works by Reena Esmail (Tasveer)*, Saad Haddad (Thulathi), and David Schiff (Divertimento from “Gimpel the Fool”)
MCH ARTISTS:
Beomjae Kim, flute; Derek Bermel, clarinet; Curtis Macomber, violin; Alexis Pia Gerlach, cello; Michael Boriskin, piano
April 27, 2020 – SPOTLIGHTS, NEW AND DISTANT
A century of instrumental virtuosity and “star-turns,” animated by gospel singing, Latin rhythms, Baroque chamber music, and French country idylls.
World Premiere by John Musto (Piano Trio No. 2*, plus works by Derek Bermel (Soul Garden), Aaron Jay Kernis (Air), Arthur Foote (Nocturne), and Ernest Bloch (Concertino for Flute, Viola, and Strings)
MCH ARTISTS: Marina Piccinini, flute; Magdalena Filipczak^ and Curtis Macomber, violins; Danielle Farina and Paul Neubauer, violas; Thomas Kraines and Clare Monfredo^, cellos; Michael Boriskin, piano
June 15, 2020 – CULTIVATE 2020
Tomorrow’s masters today! Journey to concert music’s cutting-edge, with the World Premieres of six brand new works written especially for Copland House’s acclaimed CULTIVATE emerging composers institute.
MCH ARTISTS: Derek Bermel and Moran Katz, clarinets; Pala Garcia^, violin; Alexis Pia Gerlach, cello; Michael Boriskin and Margaret Kampmeier, pianos
^ = CUNY Graduate Center Doctoral program * = Copland House commission