Music from Copland House

The Ensemble

Mezzo-soprano Susan Graham performing with MCH at the University of Chicago

Excellent musicians in vital performances… Copland would have been proud of all of them.

The Chicago Tribune

A grand and stirring performance. The music came through with searing clarity.

American Record Guide

All exuberance and bright sunshine. What a well-prepared and confidently managed evening it was.

The New York Times

They played with exhilarating confidence and verve ... fluid, fluent, and lithely balletic.

The Strad (England)

Music From Copland House is the acclaimed resident ensemble at Aaron Copland’s National Historic Landmark home in New York, 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 (MCH) has come to occupy a special place on the U.S. musical scene as perhaps this country’s only wide-ranging American repertory ensemble. Provocatively uniting past and present, American and non-American, it journeys across 150 years of our nation’s rich musical legacy, reaching back deep into the 19th century and forward to just-completed compositions.

Music from Copland House is our paramount keeper of Copland’s flame. American Record Guide

The ensemble has been engaged by some of America’s foremost concert presenters, including Carnegie Hall, the Library of Congress, Monday Evening Concerts in Los Angeles, Columbia University’s Miller Theatre, and the Caramoor International, Cape Cod, Bard, and Ecstatic Music Festivals. MCH has collaborated with the European Broadcasting Union and National Public Radio on a special concert showcasing American works that has been extensively aired in over 20 European countries, and makes its Mexican debut in 2014-15. MCH is the featured ensemble on Copland House’s popular main-stage concert series at the historic Merestead estate in nearby Mount Kisco, only an hour north of New York City. The ensemble has com­mis­sioned Chen Yi, Richard Danielpour, Tamar Muskal, Pierre Jalbert, Derek Bermel, and Sebastian Currier, whose Copland House work, Static, won the highly-coveted Grawemeyer Award in 2007, and has also premiered many compositions written especially for it by Du Yun, Samson Young, Henry Mollicone, and Leung Kei Cheuk (Gaybird). The ensemble followed its much-praised debut recording on Arabesque, the first complete cycle of Copland’s chamber music, with two releases on Koch International, respective­ly devoted to chamber music by Currier and John Musto. Inspired by Copland’s peerless, lifelong advocacy of American composers, MCH also offers children’s programs, master classes, lectures, residencies, and workshops, and other educational and community outreach activities.

The caliber of musicianship here could be a model for chamber music camaraderie. Watching these players interact with each other was a pleasure all in itself. MusicWeb International (Britain)

MCH at Merkin

MCH with the Music from China ensemble at Merkin Hall, New York City

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-conductor Paul Lustig Dunkel, violinist Nicholas Kitchen (of the Borromeo String Quartet), and cellist Wilhelmina Smith (of The Mannes Trio and Variations String Trio). They are regularly joined by outstanding, award-winning Principal and Guest Artists, including violinists Curtis Macomber, Harumi Rhodes, and Jesse Mills; violists Danielle Farina and Kathryn Lockwood; cellists Alexis Pia Gerlach, Nicholas Canellakis, and James Wilson; flutist Linda Chesis; clarinetists Meighan Stoops, Carol McGonnell, and Alexander Fiterstein; pianists Michael Barrett, John Musto, and Blair McMillen; sopranos Amy Burton and Julia Bullock; baritones James Martin and Philip Cutlip; and many others.

Bookings & Media

For engagement inquiries and additional information, please contact:

Elizabeth Dworkin
Dworkin & Company
P.O. Box 248, Bedford Hills, NY 10507
Phone: (914) 244-3803

www.dworkincompany.com

Founding Artists

Derek Bermel

Derek Bermel

A truly exceptional talent.

The New York Times

Derek Bermel has premiered dozens of clarinet works, including his own concerto with the American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. A recipient of the Rome Prize, Grammy Award nomination, Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellowships, several ASCAP Awards, and many other honors, he has performed with the BBC Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, and Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, at the Aspen Music Festival, and in concert in New York, Paris, Amsterdam, the Hague, Jerusalem, Los Angeles, and other cities around the world.

Michael Boriskin

Michael Boriskin

One of the world’s most valuable piano virtuosos.

The New York Observer

Pianist and Copland House Artistic and Executive Director Michael Boriskin has performed in over 30 countries, appearing with leading international orchestras and at many of the world‘s foremost concert venues, including the Lincoln Center Great Performers Series, Carnegie Hall, the BBC, South West German Radio, and Vienna‘s Arnold Schoenberg Center, among many others. He is heard regularly on NPR and radio stations around the globe, and has recorded extensively for BMG/Conifer, Koch, New World, Harmonia Mundi, Albany, Bridge, and SONY Classical, which recently re-released his acclaimed recording of Gershwin’s complete works for piano and orchestra.

Paul Lustig Dunkel

Paul Lustig Dunkel

Playing of his deft and stylistically impeccable kind is rare.

The New York Times

Flutist Paul Lustig Dunkel has performed internationally and at such major festivals as Aspen, Stratford, Spoleto, Casals, and Marlboro. A Grammy nominee, he has recorded on New World, CRI, Summit, Bridge, and other labels. A member of Speculum Musicae and the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, he has expanded the flute repertory through numerous commissions, including Melinda Wagner’s Flute Concerto, which won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize. Flutist. He was co-founder and longtime Resident Conductor of the American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, and served for 25 years as Music Director and guiding force of the Westchester Philharmonic.

Nicholas Kitchen

Nicholas Kitchen

His performance swept all before it—strong and varied in gesture, direct in emotion, technically adroit.

The Boston Globe

First violinist of the celebrated Borromeo String Quartet, Nicholas Kitchen has appeared in two dozen countries in the world’s most illustrious concert halls, including the Berlin Philharmonie, Zurich Tonhalle, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Opera Bastille, and London’s Wigmore Hall. He began his performing career in his native North Carolina, where he is on the faculty of the Fletcher School of Performing Arts, and where he has hosted North Carolina Public TV’s Performance Showcase mentoring young violinists. He is based in Boston, where the Borromeo Quartet serves on the faculty of the New England Conservatory of Music as Quartet-in-Residence.

Wilhemina Smith

Wilhelmina Smith

Winningly individual.

The New York Times

Cellist Wilhelmina Smith made her debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra and was a prizewinner in the Leonard Rose International Cello Competition. She has appeared with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Moscow Chamber Orchestra, Boston Chamber Music Society, American Chamber Players, and Music from Marlboro, and at the Chamber Music Festival in the Palaces of St. Petersburg and the La Jolla and Marblehead Chamber Music Festivals, among many others. She is Artistic Director of the Salt Bay Chamberfest in Maine, which she founded, and Florida’s Pensacola Chamber Music Festival, and is a member of The Mannes Trio and Variations String Trio.

Programs

MCH 2014

MCH on its mainstage series at Merestead, Mount Kisco, NY
photo by Alejandro Salinas-Albrecht

A compelling and carefully crafted program, beautifully and seductively played.

The Los Angeles Times

Bracing and bracing, incisive and exciting. The program showed what audiences have been missing.

The New York Times

Chamber Music of Copland

One or (complete in) two concerts

Old Testament in the New World

Copland, Wyner, Bernstein, Clearfield, Copland, Ben-Amots, Muskal

Wayfaring Strangers

Aguila, Hagen, Copland, O'Connor, Musto, Schoenfield

An American Cabaret

Bolcom, Bernstein, Copland, Schoenfield, Musto, Bunch

Birds of Paradise

Sirota, Foss, Copland, & others

Latin American Sketches

Copland, Chavez, Ginastera, Golijov, Villa-Lobos, Frank, Zyman

Afternoons in Paris

Debussy, Stravinsky, Copland, Piston, Villa Lobos

Time Past ... Remembered

Bermel, Stucky, Harbison, Albright

"In the Quarter of the Negroes" - The Musical World of Langston Hughes

Works by Musto, Bolcom, Swanson, Still, Price, & others

Copland in Black and White

Piano works by Copland

Songs America Loves to Sing

Harbison, Musto, Jalbert, Rorem

Sounds of the Dragon

(with the Music from China ensemble)

Sheng, Bermel, Lu Pei, Young, Wang Guo-Wei, Zhou Long, Chen Yi

Silence ... Interrupted

Cage, Feldman, Currier, Lang, Glass

Late Night with Leonard Bernstein

A Multi-Media Cabaret

Bernstein, Copland, Confrey, Coward, Schubert, Grieg, & others

Wake Up Singin' - A Copland House Holiday Celebration

Vocal works by Burleigh, Joplin, Handy, Still, Swanson, Price, & others

Listen

Recording - Sebastian Currier

Sebastian Currier

Verge for Clarinet, Violin and Piano
I. almost too fast
Koch International Classics 77691

BUY

Recording - John Musto

John Musto

Divertimento for Flute, Clarinet, Viola, Cello, Piano, and Percussion
I. Allegro moderato
Koch International Classics 7690

BUY

Chamber Music of Aaron Copland

Aaron Copland

Sextet for String Quartet, Clarinet, and Piano
III. Finale: Precise and Rhythmic
Arabesque Z-6794

BUY

Donate to MCH

Performances are made possible by tax-deductible contributions from donors like you.

Give Generously

All Copland House programs depend on the annual tax-deductible contributions of individual, institutional, and corporate supporters around the country and the world. Become one of our Friends of Copland House. Donations at all levels are welcome, and we hope you will give as generously as you can.

Featured Event

NPR Tiny Desk (at Home) Concert

All-Copland instrumental program, direct from his beloved studio, with MCH artists performing selections from the Duo for Flute and Piano, Sonata for Violin and Piano, and Three Moods for Piano.

Online Video

Watch Now

Featured Shop Item

in BOOKS /

Copland: Through 1942

This American classic includes Copland's first-person recollections, Vivian Perlis' vivid commentary, and ...