Dedicated to performing the works of 20th century American composers.
Posts tagged Aaron Copland
What is American Music?
01 month ago
by Mr. Parkman
in News
Here is a fascinating interview/conversation between Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Lukas Foss, and Irving Fine from Tanglewood in 1950 about “What is American Music?”
Success!
02 years ago
by Mr. Parkman
in News
I’m extremely happy to report that ACM’s debut performance in Washington DC was a hit! It was so much of a hit that we have the distinction of having created a fire hazard in McEvoy Auditorium….
The auditorium was at over-capacity and during the first half of the concert about 40 people took in the program while standing in the aisles. This apparently did not go over well with museum security. By the time the second half got started everyone seems to have found somewhere to sit down (but most came back for more!).
It was a beautiful afternoon of music with Amy Beach’s seldom heard and luxurious Piano Trio in A Major receiving a sensitive reading by Christian Tremblay, Violin, Jessica Sammis, Cello, and Molly Morkoski, Piano. Molly returned after intermission to give a thrilling account of Ives’ Hawthorne movement from the Concord Sonata.
The audience gave us a warm and enthusiastic standing ovation after we concluded the program with Copland’s Appalachian Spring.
Kudos to everyone involved (audience too!). It was a concert that I’m very proud to have had as part of ACM’s beginning.
Washington DC: Here We Come
02 years ago
by Mr. Parkman
in News
November 9, 2010
American Century Music’s first concert in Washington DC is fast approaching! ACM’s concert is part of the musical offerings at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in tandem with their exhibition, Telling Stories: Norman Rockwell from the Collections of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.
I visited DC this past week and saw the exhibition, which is beautifully presented.
ACM’s concert was designed to make a musical connection between Rockwell’s populism (and popularity) with some of the traits that we associate with his work: humor, nostalgia, sentimentality, and wholesomeness.
Each of the pieces on the program captures some part of these characteristics, be it Piston’s jollity in the Divertimento or Amy Beach’s sincere sentimentality in her Piano Trio, op. 150. The concert culminates with Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring, the most well-known and symbolic piece of American art music representing the country’s ideals of optimism, hope, and honesty.
It will be a beautiful afternoon of American culture.
