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Aaron Copland & The Sound of America

Composer, lyricist, author, performer and teacher Louis Rosen leads special 2-hour lectures focused this season on the oeuvre of the “Dean of American composers,” Aaron Copland.

By the latter half of the 1930’s, Copland was concerned that “the conventional concert public was apathetic or indifferent to anything but the established classics.” Composers, he said, “were in danger of working in a vacuum.” He decides to reach that broader audience by exploring a new “imposed simplicity” in his music, and by collaborating with artists in dance, film and theater. Explore the groundbreaking, folk-based 1938 ballet Billy the Kid, and the stunningly beautiful urban nightscape Quiet City, drawn from the music composed for a play that was produced by the legendary Group Theater in 1940. These two works complete the template for the orchestral sound of America — on one hand mythic/rural, on the other poetic/urban — that will profoundly affect both audiences and succeeding generations of American composers.











When: Thu., Nov. 10, 2016 at 1:30 pm
Where: The 92nd Street Y, New York
1395 Lexington Ave.
212-415-5500
Price: $45
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Composer, lyricist, author, performer and teacher Louis Rosen leads special 2-hour lectures focused this season on the oeuvre of the “Dean of American composers,” Aaron Copland.

By the latter half of the 1930’s, Copland was concerned that “the conventional concert public was apathetic or indifferent to anything but the established classics.” Composers, he said, “were in danger of working in a vacuum.” He decides to reach that broader audience by exploring a new “imposed simplicity” in his music, and by collaborating with artists in dance, film and theater. Explore the groundbreaking, folk-based 1938 ballet Billy the Kid, and the stunningly beautiful urban nightscape Quiet City, drawn from the music composed for a play that was produced by the legendary Group Theater in 1940. These two works complete the template for the orchestral sound of America — on one hand mythic/rural, on the other poetic/urban — that will profoundly affect both audiences and succeeding generations of American composers.

Buy tickets/get more info now