CULTIVATED SPACES: “Machine Learning” by Will Healy

The launch of a new 6-program weekly mini-series every Tuesday at 5:00pm, featuring the virtual premieres of works commissioned by Copland House for its acclaimed CULTIVATE 2020 emerging composers institute.

In this first program, Will Healy’s new “Machine Learning” looks both forward and back. This kinetic piece is an analogue to the process of a computer algorithm improving on its own, taking and extrapolating from a data set to make predictions and decisions without any additional programming. But it also acknowledges J.S. Bach’s uncanny and seemingly endless ability to spin an entire piece out of a small motive, using techniques of musical counterpoint and form that are not unlike an algorithm. Composed during the isolation of the pandemic, the work is anything but desolate and withdrawn … instead, the composer said, “I aimed to write a piece that was simultaneously beautiful, exhilarating, overwhelming, and exhausting!”

Please join Music from Copland House (hailed by The New York Times as “all exuberance and bright sunshine”) for the first performance anywhere of this exciting new work.  Featured Music from Copland House artists:  Moran Katz, clarinet; Pala Garcia, violin; Alexis Pia Gerlach, cello; Margaret Kampmeier, piano.

(image: composer, Will Healy)