(PRINCETON, NJ) -- Centuries of souls and spirits hover this March, when audiences at the Institute for Advance Study (IAS) in Princeton on March 4 and 5 (8:00pm) where audiences will explore Times Past ... Spirits Summoned, a concert featuring William Albright's epic Clarinet Quintet, Derek Bermel's Death with Interruptions, and music by two Pulitzer Prize winners, Steven Stucky and John Harbison.
The program features Derek Bermel, who is not only founding clarinetist of the Music from Copland House ensemble and Director of its Cultivate emerging composer's institute, but served two terms as Composer-in-Residence at IAS, showing off his composition as well as clarinet skills. Bermel's new "fascinating and involving" (St. Louis Post Dispatch) piano trio, Death with Interruptions, is a deep and stirring musical investigation inspired by Portuguese novelist Jose Saramago's portrayal of Death as a multi-faceted character, an investigation sustained in its progress following Bermel's father's death. A rare performance of William Albright's epic Clarinet Quintet, a fanciful saga that time-travels from Mozart to Brahms to ragtime and klezmer, evokes a fantastical "other" world. And the concert also includes Stucky's Partita-Pastorale after J.S.B. which deconstructs a favorite Bach keyboard suite, and John Harbison's November 19, 1828 which conjures up Schubert's life and music before the date he died. In addition to Bermel, Music from Copland House artists include violinists Harumi Rhodes and Curtis Macomber, violist Kathryn Lockwood, cellist Alexis Pia Gerlach, and pianist Michael Boriskin.
The Institute for Advance Study, Wolfensohn Hall is located Einstein Drive in Princeton, NJ. For more information on the show, click here.
The show moves to the Copland House at Merestead (455 Byram Lake Road, Mt. Kisco, NY) on March 6 for a performance at 3:00pm.
MUSIC FROM COPLAND HOUSE is the acclaimed resident ensemble at the award-winning creative center for American music at Aaron Copland's National Historic Landmark home in Westchester County, NY. Hailed by The New York Times for performances that are "bracing, beguiling, and incisive," MCH occupies a special place on the U.S. musical scene for its exclusive focus on 150 years of America's rich musical landscape. The ensemble has been engaged by Carnegie Hall, the Library of Congress, Miller Theatre, Monday Evening Concerts in Los Angeles, the Bard, Cape Cod, Caramoor and Ecstatic Music Festivals, and many other leading presenters in the U.S. and Mexico. MCH has collaborated with NPR and Euro-Radio on a special concert of American music aired in over 20 countries, records for the Arabesque, Koch International, and COPLAND HOUSE BLEND labels, and is regularly featured on Copland House's popular main-stage series at the historic Merestead estate in Mount Kisco, NY.
