WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT!
Sponsoring a concert, supporting a performer’s appearance, and assisting at our entry tables are
just a few ways you can help bring Copland House’s American musical adventures to this majestic
estate. As the only ongoing U.S. series to exclusively showcase our nation’s rich musical heritage,
we are re-imagining the concert experience, bringing America’s leading composers to Westchester,
and previewing tomorrow’s classics in dynamic, up-close performances – all for only a modest price.
Help us continue to make these world-class activities as accessible as possible with a tax-deductible
gift to Copland House, POB 2177, Peekskill, NY 10566.
NEXT EVENTS:
Sunday, June 9 at 3 PM
CULTIVATE 2013
Copland House at Merestead, 455 Byram Lake Road, Mt. Kisco
Hear tomorrow’s masters today! Featuring the World Premieres of six brand new works by CULTIVATE 2013
Fellows Tyler Capp, Louis Chiap­petta, Takuma Itoh, William Dougherty, Loren Loiacono, and Nathan Shields (CH
Resident ’11).
Tickets: $15, FREE for Friends of Copland House and students with ID
Includes audience Q&A and meet-the artists reception.
Advance ticket purchase/reservations strongly encouraged.
For more info, contact 914.788.4659 or [email protected]
Sunday, July 14 at 3 PM
A Bastille Day Celebration
Sunday, June 2, 2013 at 3 PM
“I Hear America Singing”:
The Musical World Of Walt Whitman
MIRROR VISIONS ENSEMBLE
(soprano Vira Slywotzky, tenor Scott Murphree, baritone Jesse Blumberg)
and pianist Alan Darling
I Hear America Singing (2008)TOM CIPULLO
A Clear Midnight (2009)(b. 1956)
The Wave, from Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking (2009)
To You (1957)NED ROREM
O You Whom I Often and Silently Come (1957)
(b. 1923)
Youth, Day, Old Age, and Night (1969)
Lyndhurst, 635 South Broadway, Tarrytown
To What You Said (1977)LEONARD BERNSTEIN
(1918-1990)
Tickets: Available online after 6/10/13; www.lyndhurst.org/music or 914-631-4481
Includes meet-the artists reception.
Advance ticket purchase strongly encouraged.
From Noon to Starry Night: A Walt Whitman Cantata (2006) RUSSELL PLATT
(b. 1965)
Toast France’s answer to the Fourth of July, with a musical visit to a 1920s Parisian salon! Features music by
Debussy, Poulenc, Milhaud, Stravinsky, and Copland.
Sunday, July 28 from 2pm to 5pm
An Open House at Copland House
Visit Aaron Copland’s National Historic Landmark home in Cortlandt Manor, enjoy a mini-concert in his own
studio, and sample hors d‘oeuvres and light refreshments.
Tickets by invitation only for Friends of Copland House.
For more information or to become a member, contact 914.788.4659 or [email protected]
Sunday, September 22 at 5:30 PM
A Cut Above: A Culinary & Musical Gala
Celebrating Copland House’s 15th Anniversary
Porter House restaurant, with renowned Chef Michael Lomonaco
Time Warner Center, Columbus Circle, New York City
Gala Tickets: $500 and up; sponsorships from $625 and up.
For more info, contact 914-788-4659 or [email protected]
Sunday, September 28 at 8 PM
Opening Night Celebration: Copland House’s 15th Anniversary
Copland House at Merestead, 455 Byram Lake Road, Mt. Kisco
A cavalcade of Copland’s greatest hits, commissions, and revivals, with surprise guests.
Tickets: $50
Includes meet-the artists reception.
Advance ticket purchase/reservations strongly encouraged.
For more info, contact 914.788.4659 or [email protected]
SUBSCRIBE TO OUR 2013-14 SEASON !
For more info, contact 914.788.4659 or [email protected].
A Clear Midnight
Salut au Monde! (Part 1)
Paumanok
When I Heard at the Close of the Day
I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing
Twilight
The Dying Veteran
(A Long Island Incident – Early part of the Present Century)
The Dismantled Ship
Unseen Buds
A Sketch (1842)
Additional support for this program provided by
The Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University and The Peckham Family Foundation
Audience seating generously provided by O. Anthony Maddalena
Yamaha Piano generously provided by Faust Harrison Pianos, White Plains, NY
www.faustharrisonpianos.com, 914-288-4000
Recording Engineer: Joseph Patrych, Patrych Sound Studios
Merestead performances are broadcast by WWFM and webcast by wwfm.org
Special thanks to the dedicated Merestead team of the Westchester County
Department of Parks, Recreation, and Conservation: Tom Comito, Rick Woodward,
Edison Duma, and Conservation Director John Baker
ABOUT THE COMPOSERS:
Sohn, pianists Brian Zeger and Margo Garrett, and conductor Alexander Platt with the Wisconsin
Philharmonic. His work has also been performed at the Aspen, Ravinia, and Grand Teton Festivals,
and can be heard on the Albany and Innova labels. He has received commissions from Bargemusic,
St. Paul Chamber Orchestra Ensembles, American Composers Forum, Mirror Visions Ensemble,
and Chamber Music Society of Minnesota, and has been awarded six composing residencies at
Yaddo. An alumnus of Oberlin College, the Curtis Institute of Music, the University of Minnesota,
and St. Catharine’s College, Cambridge, he curated a “NYFOS Next” concert of contemporary
works by himself and others for the New York Festival of Song in April 2012. Recent commissions
include works for Switzerland’s Orchestre Symphonique Bienne (a piece which will be given its U.S.
premiere in April 2014 by JoAnn Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic), Mirror Visions Ensemble (to
be premiered at the American University in Paris in the same month), and Five Boroughs Songbook.
Although NED ROREM has composed three symphonies, four piano concertos, and an enormous
array of works for numerous combinations of orchestral and chamber forces, words and music have
long been inextricably linked for him. He is justly renowned for his art songs, and has composed
more than 500 of them; his evening-length song cycle for four singers and piano, Evidence of Things
Not Seen (1998), represents his magnum opus in the genre. He has also composed ten operas
(including his recent Our Town, on the Thornton Wilder classic), choral works of every description,
and ballets and other music for the theater, and literally hundreds of songs and cycles. His work has
been commissioned by virtually every major orchestral and chamber music organization in the U.S.
His 80th birthday in 2003 brought three new concertos -- for cello (commissioned by the Residentie
Orchestra in The Netherlands), cello (Philadelphia Orchestra), and percussion (Madison Symphony
and Eos Orchestra). In addition to the 1976 Pulitzer Prize, Fulbright and Guggenheim Fellowships,
three ASCAP-Deems Taylor Awards, Musical America’s 1998 Composer in the Year, and a Grammy,
and ASCAP’s Lifetime Achievement Award (2003), he was named Chevalier of the Order of Arts
and Letters by the French government in 2004. From 2000 to 2003 he served as President of the
American Academy of Arts and Letters. Born in Richmond, Indiana, he grew up in Chicago, studied
at the Music School of Northwestern University, and graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music in
Philadelphia and The Juilliard School; he is the author of sixteen books.
ABOUT THE PERFORMERS:
TOM CIPULLO’s works have been heard in concert halls on four continents, from San Francisco and
Tel Aviv to Stockholm and LaPaz. A 2012 Guggenheim Foundation Fellow and the newly-announced
recipient of Copland House’s Sylvia Goldstein Award, he has received commissions from the Mirror
Visions Ensemble, SongFest at Pepperdine University, Joy in Singing, Sequitur, Cantori New York,
tenor Paul Sperry, mezzo-soprano Mary Ann Hart, Five Boroughs Music Festival, pianist Jeanne
Golan, soprano Martha Guth, Walt Whitman Project, baritone Jesse Blumberg, New York Festival of
Song, and many others. He has received awards and fellowships from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony,
Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Copland House, Italy’s Liguria Study Center, Spain’s Fundacion
Valparaiso, Germany’s Oberpfaelzer Kuenstlerhaus, ASCAP, Meet the Composer, Minneapolis Pops,
National Association of Teachers of Singing, and San Francisco Song Festival.
LEONARD BERNSTEIN’s multi-faceted gifts appeared early, and almost immediately after completing
his studies at Harvard, Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music, and Tanglewood, he began his
meteoric rise to the pinnacle of the classical music world. Before he was 30, his first symphony was
performed by the Boston Symphony, his first musical (On the Town) was produced on Broadway,
he made his legendary, last-minute conducting debut with the New York Philharmonic, and he
had begun recording as pianist and conductor for America’s leading classical label (RCA Victor).
As Music Director of the New York Philharmonic from 1958 to 1969, he was the first American to
oversee a major U.S. orchestra. He was also the first major conductor to harness the power of the
still-new medium of television in the 1950s, and when his Omnibus telecasts and, especially, his
now-legendary Young People’s Concerts series with the New York Philharmonic were nationally
aired, he solidified his reputation as one of America’s most charismatic and influential musicians.
His international reputation spread when he began long-term associations with the Vienna
Philharmonic and London Symphony in the 1960s. While he is perhaps best known for his beloved
Broadway musicals, especially West Side Story, which fundamentally changed the medium when it
debuted in 1957, he created a range of audacious, affecting, and provocative compositions in every
medium, and is the author of several important books about music, including his The Unanswered
Question, which grew out of his Norton Lectures at Harvard in the 1970s.
RUSSELL PLATT is the winner of both the Charles Ives Scholarship and Fellowship from the American
Academy of Arts and Letters, and a 2006 Copland House Fellowship. As a writer, he was honored
with the 2010 ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for Music Criticism, in recognition of his work for
The New Yorker, where he is a music senior editor, and for Opera News, to which he is a regular
contributor. His music is consistently performed by exceptional musicians, including the New York
Festival of Song, Bargemusic, The Knights, St. Petersburg and Tessera String Quartets, Dale Warland
Singers, Metropolitan Opera tenor Paul Appleby, I Virtuosi Italiani Orchestra of Verona, Verdehr Trio,
Colin and Eric Jacobsen of Brooklyn Rider, bassoonist Peter Kolkay, violinists Frank Almond and Livia
Founded in 1992 by Tobé Malawista, Richard Lalli, and Scott Murphree, THE MIRROR VISIONS
ENSEMBLE celebrated its 20th anniversary last spring, and is now comprised of soprano Vira
Slywotzky, tenor Scott Murphree, and baritone Jesse Blumberg, with Ms. Malawista as Artistic
Director. In the past few years, the ensemble has had a significant presence in Paris, performing
in museums, churches, and universities. Last fall, the ensemble held a masterclass in conjunction
with a performance of Concert à la carte at New York University along with composer and pianist
Richard Pearson Thomas. In March, MVE visited Morse College of Yale University in a performance
featuring musical settings by Richard Lalli and Tom Cipullo of the poetry of Linda Pastan, and
included readings and a dialogue between Cipullo and Pastan. Its 2013-2014 season will include
more masterclasses in conjunction with a revival of the group’s musical portrait of Emmanuel
Chabrier, Impressionism in Painting, Music & Life, and the release of a double CD. Commissioning is
an integral part of MVE’s mission, as seen in Platt’s From Noon to Starry Night on today’s program.
Soprano VIRA SLYWOTZKY has sung with the Seattle, Sarasota, Chautauqua, and Cape Cod Operas,
Opera Company of the Highlands, Boston Midsummer Opera, Center for Contemporary Opera, and
Phoenicia Festival of the Voice. Favorite roles include Nedda (Pagliacci), Tatyana (Eugene Onegin),
Fiordiligi (Cosi fan Tutte), Komponist (Ariadne auf Naxos), Helena (A Midsummer Night’s Dream),
and the title role in Vanessa. Recipient of a 2007 Richard F. Gold Career Grant and twice a New
England Regional Finalist in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, she represented the
U.S. at the 2009 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition.
Tenor SCOTT MURPHREE is a distinguished singer on the concert, recital and opera stage. He
recently appeared at Nevada Opera as Anthony in Sweeney Todd. Other recent engagements
include those with the Utah Opera, Opera Delaware, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, New York
Festival of Song, and Five Boroughs Music Festival. Additionally, he has appeared in concerts at Weill
Recital Hall, Alice Tully Hall, 92nd Street Y, and Town Hall. He is currently an adjunct professor on the
voice faculty at New York University’s Steinhardt School.
Baritone JESSE BLUMBERG’s operatic credits include roles at Boston Lyric, Minnesota, Utah,
Pittsburgh, and Annapolis Operas, Opera Delaware, and the Boston Early Music Festival. In concert,
he has performed with the American Bach Soloists, Apollo’s Fire, and Los Angeles Master Chorale,
and at London’s Royal Festival Hall and the Vail Valley Music Festival. He has toured with the Mark
Morris Dance Group and the Waverly Consort, and has appeared in recital for the Marilyn Horne
Foundation and New York Festival of Song. He is also the founder and artistic director of New York
City’s Five Boroughs Music Festival.
Scottish pianist ALAN DARLING studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and the Royal
Academy of Music in London. Attending the Music Academy of the West, studying with the
renowned accompanists Martin Katz and Graham Johnson, his work continued with Mr. Katz at the
University of Michigan. He has performed throughout Europe, Canada, and the U.S., and annually
for a dozen years at the Ravinia Festival. He was on the faculty of Yale University, and now lives
in Chicago, where he is on the faculty of Northwestern University and the music staff of the Lyric
Opera of Chicago.