The Ensemble
MUSIC FROM COPLAND HOUSE is the acclaimed resident ensemble at Aaron Copland’s landmark, longtime New York home, now restored as a unique creative center for American music. Since its triumphant New York debut as the Opening Night of Merkin Hall’s 1999-2000 season, Music from Copland House has come to occupy a special place on the U.S. musical scene as perhaps this country’s only American repertory ensemble, ranging widely through 150 years of our nation’s rich musical legacy.
MCH has been engaged by some of America’s foremost concert venues, including Carnegie Hall, the Library of Congress, Monday Evening Concerts in Los Angeles, Brandeis University, Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, Columbia University’s Miller Theatre, and the Caramoor International, Cape Cod, and Bard Music Festivals. It collaborates with National Public Radio this season on a concert in Copland’s studio, broadcast live to over 50 European countries. MCH is in residence at Sarah Lawrence College, where it undertakes concert, educational, and recording activities. It also has an ongoing alliance with Yaddo, showcasing resident composers from that fabled artists colony in several concerts annually. MCH’s widely-praised debut recording for Arabesque, the first complete cycle of Copland’s chamber music, appeared on “Best Recordings” lists in the U.S. and abroad, and is being followed by two new releases devoted respectively to works by Sebastian Currier and John Musto. The ensemble has also commissioned Currier, Chen Yi, Richard Danielpour, and Tamar Muskal. MCH programs take listeners on lively journeys across the musical landscape, imaginatively uniting past and present, American and non-American. Inspired by Copland’s peerless, lifelong advocacy of American composers, the ensemble also offers children’s programs, master classes, lectures, residencies, and workshops, and other educational and community outreach activities.
MCH’s exceptional Founding Artists are widely admired for their instrumental command and musical insights in works both old and new: clarinetist-composer Derek Bermel, pianist and Copland House Artistic and Executive Director Michael Boriskin, flutist and Westchester Philharmonic Music Director Paul Lustig Dunkel, violinist Nicholas Kitchen (of the celebrated Borromeo String Quartet), and cellist Wilhelmina Smith (of The Mannes Trio). They are often joined by award-winning guest artists, including violinists Timothy Fain, Curtis Macomber, Jesse Mills, and Jennifer Frautschi, violists Danielle Farina, Cynthia Phelps, and Hsin-Yun Huang; composer-pianist Lukas Foss; soprano Susan Narucki; baritone William Sharp; and many others.
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