About the composer:

Aaron Copland

Aaron Copland is one of America's most beloved, profoundly influential and honored musical figures. He received three of America's highest civilian awards (the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Congressional Gold Medal and National Medal of Arts), a Pulitzer Prize, one of the first Kennedy Center Honors, an Academy Award for Best Original Musical Score (1950, for The Heiress) and numerous other awards, foreign decorations and honorary doctorates. In addition to such iconic works as Appalachian Spring, Rodeo, Billy the Kid, Fanfare for the Common Man and Lincoln Portrait, and such modern classics as the Short Symphony and Third Symphony, Piano Variations, Piano Fantasy, Dickinson Songs and Clarinet Concerto, his catalogue includes a wide range of chamber, piano, vocal, operatic, choral and film music. Copland was also an active and accomplished pianist and conductor, author, lecturer, mentor, peerless champion of American composers and their work and founder or pivotal early supporter of the Tanglewood's Berkshire Music Center, American Music Center, American Composers Alliance, Yaddo, MacDowell Colony and League of Composers.

Copland's parents, Sarah and Harris, were active members of the Kane Street Synagogue. Harris Copland championed the acquisition of the property on Harrison Street, renamed Kane Street in 1928, and served as President of the Synagogue from 1907 to 1910 shortly after the move. In 1936 the Synagogue honored Harris Copland and made him a life trustee.

Because of his father's role in the Synagogue's religious school, Aaron Copland began attending the Talmud Torah four afternoons per week at age four, two years younger than the youngest of the other students. The curriculum offered students instruction in Hebrew reading, writing and speaking, the Prayer Book, the Bible, Jewish music, Jewish history and religion. Students sat in rows on benches behind long tables. At the end of each year, in May or June, there were public examinations. Copland became a Bar Mitzvah in this very sanctuary in 1913.

Near the end of his senior year at Boys High, Copland met with the Synagogue's rabbi, Israel Goldfarb, to enlist the rabbi's help in getting Harris Copland's permission for young Aaron to study music. Harris wanted his son to pursue a career in the law. Rabbi Goldfarb brokered an arrangement that allowed Aaron to continue his musical studies, with the understanding that if it did not work out in two or three years he would turn to the legal profession. Happily, Aaron Copland quickly demonstrated that he could succeed in a career in music. In his memoirs written decades later he warmly remembered Rabbi Goldfarb as "the possessor of a fine baritone voice...a sensitive human being and an effective leader of his congregation."

About the performers:

Music from Copland House

Copland House is Aaron Copland's landmark, longtime home in Cortlandt Manor, restored as a unique creative center for American music and supported by the Friends of Copland House. An Official Project of the White House Save America's Treasures program and listed in the National Register of Historic Places, Copland House is the only composer's home in the United States devoted to nurturing American composers and their work through a broad range of musical, educational, scholarly, and public activities. Music from Copland House, its resident ensemble, made a triumphant New York debut on Opening Night of Merkin Hall's 1999-2000 season, and has since emerged as one of the most exhilarating and distinctive ensembles on the American music scene. Inspired by Copland's peerless example, the ensemble's concerts journey widely across the American musical landscape, and also include a vibrant array of works by non-U.S. composers. Music from Copland House has been engaged by some of America's leading concert venues, including Carnegie Hall, the Library of Congress, Monday Evening Concerts in Los Angeles, Brandeis University, Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, Caramoor International and Cape Cod Music Festivals, and Columbia University's Miller Theatre. The ensemble records for Arabesque, which has just released its debut CD, the first complete cycle of Copland's chamber music. Beginning in 2001, the ensemble's first commissions were offered to Chen Yi, Sebastian Currier, Tamar Muskal, and Richard Danielpour. Music from Copland House presents concerts and children's programs, master classes, lectures, residencies, workshops and other educational and community outreach activities.

Pianist and Copland House Artistic and Executive Director Michael Boriskin has performed in over 30 countries. He appears with leading international orchestras and at many of the world's foremost concert venues, including Lincoln Center (Great Performers Series), Carnegie Hall, the BBC, South West German Radio, and Vienna's Arnold Schoenberg Center. He played an important role at the New York Philharmonic's Completely Copland Festival in 1999, and his innovative broadcast series, CENTURYVIEW, was heard for three seasons on National Public Radio. His extensive discography ranges widely from Brahms and Tchaikovsky to the present on BMG/Conifer, Harmonia Mundi, New World, Albany, Koch, and many others.

Flutist-conductor Paul Lustig Dunkel has performed internationally and at such major festivals as Aspen, Stratford, Spoleto, Casals, and Marlboro. He was an original member of Speculum Musicae and a member of the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble. He is also Music Director of the Westchester Philharmonic and long-time Resident Conductor and co-founder of the American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. A Grammy nominee, he has recorded on New World, CRI, Summit, and other labels. He has expanded the flute repertory through numerous commissions and premieres; his latest commission, Melinda Wagner's Flute Concerto, won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize, and he recorded it for Bridge Records.

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, American Chamber Players, and Music from Marlboro, and at the Chamber Music Festival in the Palaces of St. Petersburg, 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.

Guest violinist Curtis Macomber was first violinist of the award-winning New World String Quartet from 1982 to 1993, during most of which time the quartet served as Artist-in-Residence at Harvard University. A member of Speculum Musicae and a founding member of the Apollo Trio, his most recent recordings include violin sonatas of Edvard Grieg on Arabesque, violin sonatas of Amy Beach and John Corigliano on Koch International, and Songs of Solitude on CRI. He is a member of the chamber music faculty of The Juilliard School and the violin faculty of the Manhattan School of Music.

As recitalist, concerto soloist, chamber musician and concertmaster, Deborah Buck has toured throughout the United States. Most recently, she has appeared with the Little Orchestra Society at Alice Tully Hall, West Virginia Symphony, Los Angeles Symphonic Camerata, and St. Matthew's Chamber Orchestra. She is a member of the internationally acclaimed Lark Quartet, which is now recording a Beethoven cycle for Arabesque. She is a winner of the 1996 Jascha Heifetz Violin Prize, Corpus Christi International Violin Competition, Sorantin Award, and a Leni Fe Bland Career Grant.

Guest violist Danielle Farina has toured extensively in North America, Europe, and Scandinavia and has performed at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, the Library of Congress, Smithsonian Institution, Germany's Schleswig-Holstein Festival, Budapest's Tibor Varga Festival, Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival in Detroit, and the International Istanbul Music Festival. Upon graduation from the Curtis Institute of Music she joined the renowned Lark Quartet, of which she was a member for three years. She is now violist of the Elements Quartet. She can be heard on the Agora and Arabesque labels.

The Florilegium Chamber Choir specializes in music of the Baroque era and the twentieth century. The Choir gives annual concerts in New York's major concert halls, presents a series of concerts in New York City churches, and performs special concerts as a guest ensemble of groups such as the American Composers Orchestra, New York Guild of Composers, and Continuum. Comprised of both professional and avocational singers, Florilegium has been in a position to devote itself to some of the most challenging music of the choral repertoire and to encourage the creation of new, demanding works. Recent seasons have included performances of major works by Bergsma, Chance, Druckman, Gideon, Hindemith, Musgrave, Perle, Sessions, Talma, and Zaimont. Florilegium's music director, JoAnn Rice, a native of Oklahoma, holds degrees in organ and sacred music from the University of Tulsa and Union Theological Seminary in New York City. She studied voice with Earl Berg and Emile Renan in New York and organ with David Craighead at the Eastman School of Music. Hazzan Rice is organist at St. Paul's German Lutheran Church in New York City and Temple Shaari Zedek of Brooklyn, New York. She founded the Florilegium Chamber Choir in 1976.

Mezzo-soprano Joan Fuerstman has performed extensively as a recitalist, opera singer and oratorio singer throughout the United States, Canada, South America and Europe. Among her solo credits are performances with the New York Philharmonic, 92nd St. Y Chamber Orchestra, New York Choral Symphony and Back Aria Group. Among the conductors she has performed with are Leonard Bernstein, Erich Leinsdorf, Zubin Mehta, George Solti, Pierre Boulez, Robert Shaw and Colin Davis. Opera appearances include roles with the New York City Opera, The National Opera Company and Turnau Opera. As a performer of chamber music, she was soloist for several seasons with the New York Pro Musica and later with the Da Capo Chamber Players. Joan has performed numerous recitals in the New York area, including a Merkin Hall recital. She has performed recitals at many colleges including Bard College, Harvard, Yale, Stanford and several branches of the SUNY campuses. She has performed at many summer festivals, including the Bard Festival, Pepsico Festival, Mostly Mozart Festival and Basically Bach Festival, and she was a founding member of the Summit Chamber Music Festival in upstate New York. She has made recordings with SONY, Columbia Records, Decca Gold Label and RCA. Joan holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of North Carolina in Greensboro, and a Masters degree from the Manhattan School of Music. Her teachers include Richard Cox, Rose Bampton, Anna Hamlin and Arthur Burrows. Since 1996 she has served as Visiting Assistant Professor of Music on the faculty of Bard College, teaching voice and coaching opera and teaching courses in vocal repertoire. She is a native of Charlotte, North Carolina, and resides in New York City.

The members of Florilegium Chamber Choir are:

Hazzan JoAnn Rice, Director
Peter Adrian
Hayes Biggs
Annette Burton
Roy J. Byrd
Daniel Dibbern
Mary Homan
Kathryn Hotarek
Audra Kirschbaum
Betty Kulleseid
Marcia Manfredi
Ruthie McGolagil
Alice Merker
Mark Mood
George Morrow
Kim Rich Norton
Ariela Noy
Peter Paden
Janet Pinkowitz
Matthew Robb
Carl Sievert
Sasha Stanton