Program Biography
MUSIC FROM COPLAND HOUSE (MCH) is the award-winning resident ensemble at Aaron Copland’s National Historic Landmark home in New York’s lower Hudson Valley, 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. It is “our paramount keeper of Copland’s flame” (American Record Guide), andperhaps this country’s only wide-ranging American repertory ensemble, journeying across 150 years of our nation’s rich musical landscape
Hailed by The New York Times for performances that are “all exuberance and bright sunshine,” MCH has been engaged by Carnegie Hall, the Library of Congress, Monday Evening Concerts in Los Angeles, Columbia University’s Miller Theatre, the Caramoor, Cape Cod, Cooperstown, and Bard Music Festivals, and other leading concert presenters, and has collaborated with NPR and Euro-Radio on a special concert of American works broadcast in over 20 countries. The ensemble has commissioned Richard Danielpour, Chen Yi, Tamar Muskal, Pierre Jalbert, Derek Bermel, and Sebastian Currier (whose Copland House work, Static, won the prestigious 2007 Grawemeyer Award). It has also made a series of widely-praised recordings on the Arabesque and Koch International labels. Inspired by Copland’s peerless, lifelong advocacy of American composers, MCH also presents a wide variety of educational and community outreach activities. MCH concerts feature the ensemble’s much-admired Founding Artists –clarinetist-composer Derek Bermel, pianist Michael Boriskin, flutist-conductor Paul Lustig Dunkel, violinist Nicholas Kitchen, and cellist Wilhelmina Smith– and a stellar array of acclaimed guest performers.
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