BASTIANICH AND KERNIS BRING OPTIMISM TO THE TABLE
Copland House Celebrates The Italian Futurists

Cortland Manor, NY -- June 20, 2007. The tall doors swing open and you stand at the palatial entrance of Del Posto. Mount the few steps into the hushed dining room—soaring windows draped in gossamer and light, sweeps of luminous marble—and feel the elegance and splendor of space and form. Tonight, in this grand room, your senses come alive, as you see, hear, smell, taste, and touch the festive collaboration of the culinary superstar Lidia Bastianich and the brilliant musical master Aaron Jay Kernis on October 21 at 5pm.

Master chef Lidia Bastianich, the “first lady of Italian cuisine” and host of the popular PBS-TV series “Lidia’s Family Table,” and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Aaron Jay Kernis will preside over Optimism at the Table, an extraordinary gala to celebrate Copland House, the unique creative center for American music at legendary composer Aaron Copland’s longtime, landmark Hudson Valley home. For this one-night-only gathering, Bastianich has specially created a menu as imaginative and provocative as the famed Futurist banquets that inspired it, embracing sounds, smells, and touch, as well as sight and taste. The musical heart of the evening is “the darkest, funniest new piece of the 1990s” (San Francisco Chronicle), Kernis’ The Four Seasons of Futurist Cuisine for narrator, piano, violin, and cello. In this work of five movements Kernis brilliantly captures the seriousness, humor, eloquence, and earthiness of selected texts by Futurist founder Filippo Tomasso Marinetti from his landmark "Futurist Cookbook.” The music will be performed live by the internationally-acclaimed Music from Copland House ensemble.

Marinetti published his infamous Futurist Cookbook in 1932 as “an antidote” to the dark days of the Great Depression – to offer “optimism at the table.” Inspired by the French Symbolist poets and Cubist artists, and anticipating pop-art he sought to integrate art into everyday life, raise cultural consciousness, and create a cuisine in tune with the dawning of the modern age.

Optimism at the Table promises to be as magical as Copland House’s inaugural, sold-out gala last fall, Troubadours’ Feast at Restaurant Daniel. Featured in numerous broadcast, print, and web publications, “it was a most wonderful, unforgettable gala benefit,” raved Westchester magazine, “heavenly, heady … and divine.”

For tickets contact Copland House at 914-788-4659 or office@coplandhouse.org