Music from Copland House Takes Flight Next Month

Taking flight on Sunday afternoon, March 19 at 3pm is The Life of Birds, a musical aviary exploring the journeys, habits, and "personalities" of some astonishingly versatile flying, feathered singers. The concert takes its name from a work by Mason Bates, the Kennedy Center's first Composer-in-Residence; calling it "a web of short but dense moments from the aviary," the music visits parakeets, flycatchers, and other winged creatures at rest and play, in love, and in flight. Birds of Paradise by former Manhattan School of Music President Robert Sirota evokes the scintillating sounds of the stunningly multi-colored birds that live deep in the rain forests of Papua New Guinea. The program also features Lukas Foss's classic Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, based on the famous eponymous poem by Wallace Stevens, and a group of early 20th century songs by Amy Beach, Theodore Chanler, and Westchester's own Charles Tomlinson Griffes (one of the first faculty members at The Hackley School in Tarrytown, NY).

Sirota's Birds of Paradise, originally conceived in 2008 as a concert work for flute, clarinet, and piano, will be complemented by a stunning film produced by the renowned Cornell Lab of Ornithology, based at Cornell University in Ithaca. The film was shot by Ed Scholes during 8 years of expeditions with National Geographic photographer Tim Laman to the untouched rainforests of Papua New Guinea, documenting, for the first time, all 39 species of the birds-of-paradise family. Few have seen the displays of color, sound, and motion in the wild that have made these birds so remarkable.
The program features the renowned Music from Copland House ensemble encompassing founding, principal, and guest artists soprano Justine Aronson, flutist Linda Chesis, pianist Michael Boriskin, violinist Curt Macomber, cellist Alexis Gerlach, clarinetist Meighan Stoops, and percussionist Yousif Sheronick.

Tickets: Single tickets are $25, ($20 for Friends of Copland House, and $10 for students with ID). 3-concert subscriptions are $69 ($54 for Friends) For more info, contact Copland House at 914-788-4659 or office@coplandhouse.org.

MUSIC FROM COPLAND HOUSE (MCH) is the internationally-acclaimed touring ensemble-in residence at Aaron Copland's National Historic Landmark home near New York City, an award-winning creative center for American music. Hailed by The New York Times for "all the richness of its offerings" and "illuminating essential truths about the music," MCH occupies a special place as the only wide-ranging American repertory ensemble journeying across 150 years of the U.S. musical landscape. MCH has been engaged by Carnegie Hall, the Library of Congress, Miller Theatre, Merkin Hall, Monday Evening Concerts in Los Angeles, the Caramoor, Cape Cod, Bard, and Ecstatic Music Festivals, the Smithsonian Institution's Freer Gallery of Art, and many other leading North American concert presenters; it has also collaborated with the European Broadcasting Union and National Public Radio on a special concert aired in over 20 countries. The ensemble records for Arabesque, Koch International, and the COPLAND HOUSE BLEND labels, and is regularly featured on Copland House's popular main-stage concert series at the historic Merestead estate in Mount Kisco, NY. Inspired by Copland's peerless, lifelong advocacy of American composers, MCH also presents a wide variety of educational and community outreach activities across the U.S. MCH concerts feature the ensemble's much-admired Founding Artists - clarinetist-composer Derek Bermel, pianist Michael Boriskin, flutist Paul Lustig Dunkel, violinist Nicholas Kitchen, and cellist Wilhelmina Smith - along with an array of stellar Principal and Guest Artists.