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Music from Copland House
Isabel Lepanto Gleicher, flute • Derek Bermel, clarinet • Siwoo Kim, violin; Alexis Pia Gerlach, cello • Michael Boriskin, piano
Presented as part of the Bowdoin International Music Festival since 1965, the Gamper Festival of Contemporary Music represents a sustained commitment to nurturing and promoting the music of our time.
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.
JOAN TOWER (b. 1938)
Petroushskates (1980)
ANNIKA SOCOLOFSKY (b. 1990)
to sing of sins (2021)
[Commissioned by Copland House]
PIERRE JALBERT (b. 1967)
Crossings (2011)
[Commissioned by Copland House]
— INTERMISSION —
SAAD HADDAD (b. 1992)
Thulathi (2016)
SHAWN OKPEBHOLO (b. 1981)
Fractured Water (2019)
MIGUEL DEL ÁGUILA (b. 1957)
Tango Trio (2002)
ABOUT THE COMPOSERS
Widely regarded as one of America’s most important musical figures, JOAN TOWER has made lasting contributions to cultural life in the U.S. as composer, performer, conductor, and educator. She was born near New York City and raised in Bolivia, where her father was a mining engineer. While playing with South American bands, she developed an interest in rhythm and percussion which has heavily influenced her works. After returning to the U.S. and completing her studies at Bennington College and Columbia University, she founded the Da Capo Chamber Players in 1969, as a vehicle for performing her own music and the works of her contemporaries; she remained its pianist until 1984. Her second orchestral work, Silver Ladders (1987) earned her place in history as the first woman to receive the prestigious Grawemeyer Award, and her much acclaimed Made in America (2005) won a Grammy Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition. Her catalog has grown to encompass a large number of symphonic, chamber, and instrumental compositions. She has taught at Bard College since 1972.
Composer and avant-folk vocalist ANNIKA SOCOLOFSKY explores corners and colors of the voice frequently deemed to be “untrained” and not “classical.” Her music erupts from the embodied power of the human voice, and is communicated through orchestral and operatic works, unaccompanied folk ballads, and unapologetically joyous Dolly Parton covers. She writes extensively for her own voice with chamber ensemble, including a growing repertoire of “feminist rager-lullabies” titled Don’t say a word. She has collaborated with the Rochester Philharmonic, Albany and Knoxville Symphonies, Eighth Blackbird, Asko I Schoenberg Ensemble, So Percussion, Bergamot Quartet, and sean-nós singer Iarla Ó Lionáird, and her music has been presented at Carnegie Hall, the Bang on a Can Marathon, PROTOTYPE, Cabrillo Festival, New Music Detroit’s Strange Beautiful Music, and many others. A Copland House CULTIVATE Emerging Composer Fellow, she has received the Gaudeamus Award, Cortona Prize, ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers Award, and BMI Student Composer Award; Barlow Endowment and Fromm Foundation grants; and fellowships from the Blackbird Creative Lab, Banff Centre for the Arts, Brevard Music Center, and European-American Musical Alliance. A graduate of Princeton, the University of Michigan, and Carnegie Mellon University, she is Assistant Professor of Composition and Director of Pendulum New Music at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Earning widespread notice for his richly colored and superbly-crafted scores, PIERRE JALBERT has received a Rome Prize, BBC Masterprize, Guggenheim Fellowship, Fromm Foundation commission, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Stoeger Award (given biennially “in recognition of significant contributions to the chamber music repertory”), and Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has drawn inspiration from diverse sources, including plainchant melodies and natural phenomena. His music has been heard worldwide at Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, London’s Barbican Center, and many other prominent venues. Among his orchestral performances are those by the Boston, Cincinnati, Houston, and Milwaukee Symphonies, Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, and Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. He has served as Composer-in-Residence for the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, California Symphony, and Chicago’s Music in the Loft. Among his chamber music commissions and performances are those by the Ying, Borromeo, Maia, Enso, Chiara, Escher, Del Sol, and Emerson String Quartets. A two-time Copland House Resident, he is Professor of Music at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music in Houston, and co-founder of Musiqa, a new music collective in Houston.
SAAD HADDAD explores the disparate qualities inherent in Western art music and Middle Eastern musical traditions, including transferring traditional Arabic instrumental techniques to Western instruments. His recent commissions include a piano concerto for IRCAM and the Orchestre national d’Île-de-France, a clarinet concerto for Kinan Azmeh and the Princeton Symphony, two string quartets for the Lydian and Callisto Quartets, and a mixed octet for the International Contemporary Ensemble. His works have been performed by the Los Angeles, Hangzhou, and Illinois Philharmonics, Minnesota Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, Chicago Composers Orchestra, Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra, UCLA Philharmonia, USC Thornton Symphony, and the Albany, Columbus, Milwaukee, New Jersey, and Sioux City Symphonies, as well as the JACK Quartet, Locrian Chamber Players, Society for New Music, and Utah Arts Festival. His works have also been heard in China, Europe, Asia, South America, and Canada. Among his many honors are a Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Barlow Endowment Commission, multiple awards from ASCAP, BMI, and the Vancouver Chamber Choir, and residencies at Copland House, Millay Colony for the Arts, Ucross Foundation, Bogliasco Foundation, and Luzerne Music Center. He was also Young Concert Artists’ 2019–2021 Composer-in-Residence.
SHAWN OKPEBHOLO’s work has been profiled on PBS-TV’s NewsHour, NPR’s All Things Considered and Morning Edition, and SiriusXM’s Living American, and featured on five continents and in over forty states. His music has been performed at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Ravinia and Ear Taxi Festivals, National Cathedral, and the Washington National Opera’s Inauguration Day Concert, and by the Cincinnati Symphony, Urban Arias, Inscape Chamber Orchestra, Ensemble Dal Niente, India’s Monte Music Festival, mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges, baritone Will Liverman, and many others. He has had commissions from the Cincinnati Opera, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, U.S. Air Force Strings, Astral Artists, Oakland Symphony, and Lincoln Trio, and his music can be heard on six CDs, including Steal Away, featuring his collection of re-imagined Negro spirituals. He has undertaken ethnomusicological fieldwork in Nigeria, Kenya, and northern Uganda, which resulted in several symphonic and chamber works. A graduate of the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, much of his early music education was supported by The Salvation Army Church, which inspired his passion for sharing his musical expertise with underserved communities. He is professor of Music Composition and Theory at Illinois’ Wheaton College-Conservatory of Music, and is Composer-in-Residence of the renowned Fifth House Ensemble, and of the Chicago Opera Theater, for which he is writing an opera with Pulitzer Prize-winning librettist Mark Campbell.
In over 130 works combining drama, driving rhythms, and nostalgic nods to his South American roots, Uruguayan-born, American-based MIGUEL DEL ÁGUILA is one of today’s most widely performed composers. His music has been featured by the Royal Liverpool, Buffalo, and Louisiana Philharmonics, Welsh BBC Symphony, Norwegian Radio Orchestra, Germany’s Brandenburg State Orchestra, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Sphinx Virtuosi, Imani Winds, Fifth House Ensemble, Pacifica and Verona Quartets, and orchestras in Kyiv, Odesa, Heidelberg, Reykjavík, Caracas, Puerto Rico, Sao Paulo, Toronto, Nashville, and Seattle. His works have also been performed at the Aspen, Breckenridge, Cabrillo, Ravinia, Oregon Bach, Bregenz, and Prague Spring Festivals, Minnesota Orchestra Sommerfest, and Vienna Festival Weeks. He has had recent commissions from the Cuarteto Latinoamericano and Eroica Trio, and is Composer-in-Residence with Danish Chamber Players/Ensemble Storstrøm. A three-time Grammy nominee, his music may be heard on over 50 CDs, on the Naxos, Albany, Bridge, Centaur, and other labels.
ABOUT THE PERFORMERS
MUSIC FROM COPLAND HOUSE is the internationally-acclaimed, touring resident ensemble based at Aaron Copland’s National Historic Landmark home near New York City, an award-winning creative center for American music (coplandhouse.org). Hailed for its “absorbing concert experiences” (Opera News), gathered from its journeys across 150 years of America’s vast musical landscape, Music from Copland House (MCH) champions classic and forgotten voices from the nation’s past, and celebrates today’s established and rising creators of all backgrounds and identities. This singular American repertory ensemble weaves riveting, richly diverse narratives in sound, connecting music to the wider world. It has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning, NPR, the European Broadcasting Union, and other major media, and engaged by North America’s foremost concert presenters, including Tanglewood, the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, Library of Congress, University of Chicago, Smithsonian Institution, and the Caramoor, Bard, Cape Cod, and Ecstatic Festivals. The group also presents two mainstage series in its home region of Westchester County, NY, and at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. MCH can be heard on the Arabesque, Koch International, and COPLAND HOUSE BLEND labels, and has commissioned nearly 100 works. Inspired by Copland’s peerless, lifelong advocacy of American composers, and deeply committed to multi-faceted civic engagement, the ensemble regularly undertakes a wide variety of educational and other community outreach activities. Founded in 1999, by flutist Paul Lustig Dunkel, clarinetist Derek Bermel, violinist Nicholas Kitchen, cellist Wilhelmina Smith, and pianist Michael Boriskin, the ensemble’s concerts feature its stellar roster of Founding, Principal, and Guest Artists, of whom The Chicago Tribune raved “Copland would have been proud of all of them.”
Flutist-composer ISABEL LEPANTO GLEICHER is a member of the International Contemporary Ensemble, Wild Up, and Ensemble Échappé, and a founder of Song Sessions Collective. She has premiered works by Steve Reich, Missy Mazzoli, Augusta Read Thomas, and John Zorn, among others; curated solo sets of original music for the Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival, Experimental Sound Studio, ChamberQUEERantine Virtual Festival, and George Mason University’s Mason Arts at Home; and contributed to Metropolis Ensemble’s Flame Keepers. She can also be heard on CDs of music by Julius Eastman, Ilari Kaila, and Anna Thorvaldsdottir. She has presented educational activities for the New York Philharmonic and American Composers Orchestra, and led master classes and workshops at colleges across America.
Two-time Grammy-nominated composer-clarinetist DEREK BERMEL has appeared with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Borromeo, JACK, and Pacifica String Quartets; at festivals across the U.S., Europe, and Asia; and in dozens of performances of his clarinet concerto, Voices, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, BBC and Beijing Music Festival Orchestras, and others. His many collaborators have included Paquito D’Rivera, Luciana Souza, Midori, Yasiin Bey (Mos Def), Wynton Marsalis, and Stephen Sondheim. His music has been performed by major orchestras and ensembles around the world, and he is Artistic Director of the American Composers Orchestra, curator of the Gamper Festival at the Bowdoin International Music Festival, and Director of Copland House’s CULTIVATE emerging composers’ institute. Recipient of the Alpert Award in the Arts, Rome Prize, Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellowships, Trailblazer Award from the American Music Center, and Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, he has recorded for Naxos, BMOP, Copland House Blend, and other labels.
SIWOO KIM has performed as soloist with the Houston Symphony, Johannesburg Philharmonic, and Juilliard Orchestra (with which he made his Carnegie Hall concerto debut), and appeared at the Bergen (Norway), Tivoli (Denmark), Stellenbosch (South Africa), Ensemble DITTO (South Korea), and Port de Soller (Spain) Festivals. The founding artistic director of the VIVO Music Festival in his hometown of Columbus, Ohio, he formed Quartet Senza Misura and spends summers at the Marlboro Music Festival. He has also given the World Premiere of Samuel Adler’s violin concerto, which he recorded for Linn Records, and recently completed a two-year fellowship with Carnegie Hall’s acclaimed Ensemble Connect.
Cellist ALEXIS PIA GERLACH has performed at the Aspen, Bridgehampton, La Musica di Asolo, and Caramoor Festivals, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and Musicians from Marlboro. A native New Yorker, she has toured widely around the world and recorded with Trio Solisti and the string sextet Concertante (both of which she co-founded). In a versatile career, she has commissioned and premiered countless works; partnered with the Paul Taylor Dance Company and former New York City Ballet principal dancer Damian Woetzel; and performed with conductors Mstislav Rostropovich, James DePreist, Peter Oundjian, and many others.
Pianist MICHAEL BORISKIN has been lauded in over 30 countries on five continents, while traveling adventurously through four centuries of music. He has performed as soloist with major international orchestras, guest artist with dozens of leading chamber ensembles, and recitalist at Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, BBC, Berlin Radio, Theatre des Champs-Elysees (Paris), Teatro Colon (Buenos Aires), Arnold Schoenberg Center (Vienna), and many other preeminent venues. He has recorded extensively on Naxos, SONY Classical, Harmonia Mundi, New World, Bridge, and other labels; been a frequent presence as performer or commentator on NPR and American Public Media; and served as program advisor for the New York Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall, U.S. State Department, Lincoln Center, and other major institutions.
COVID POLICY
Proof of vaccination and booster required upon entry at Studzinski Recital Hall.