Stop at the Sound: Music from Copland House Launches New Rochelle ArtsFest with World Premiere

Westchester’s renowned “house band,” the internationally-acclaimed Music from Copland House ensemble, kicks off the 2022 New Rochelle ArtsFest with the World Premiere of a new work by award-winning composer Steven Snowden that celebrates the unique culture and history of “the Queen City on the Sound.” Snowden’s new composition headlines Music from Copland House’s dazzling salute to New Rochelle’s rich musical legacy, which also features works by native or transplanted composers such as Grammy-winner Joan Tower and Derek Bermel, as well beloved songwriters George M. Cohan, Alan Mencken, and George Gershwin. The hour-long program at the New Rochelle Public Library’s Ossie Davis Theatre begins at 7pm on Thursday evening, October 20, and is free to the public.

Snowden’s new work was commissioned especially for this concert by two longtime friends of Copland House, artist Creighton Michael and his wife Leslie Cecil. While generations of composers have often evoked the sounds of cities, countrysides, churches, and cabarets, this may be the first time that the electronic controls of a traffic signal have inspired a musical composition! Snowden’s brilliant piece “musicalizes” the mathematical algorithms and sequences of the traffic lights at one of New Rochelle’s busiest intersections – Centre and Huguenot Avenues. Snowden’s music has hailed as “the most wildly intriguing sight and sound I have experienced” (The Boston Musical Intelligencer), and often focuses on underground American history and how past events relate to modern society.

Fresh from its triumphant debuts at Tanglewood and the Kennedy Center, Music from Copland House 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 Carnegie Hall, the Library of Congress, University of Chicago, Smithsonian Institution, and the Caramoor, Bard, Bowdoin, and Ecstatic Festivals. The group also presents two mainstage performance series in Westchester County and at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and can be heard on the Arabesque, Koch International, and COPLAND HOUSE BLEND labels. Based at Aaron Copland’s National Historic Landmark home in Cortlandt Manor, an award-winning creative center for American music (www.coplandhouse.org), this singular American repertory ensemble has been hailed for its “absorbing concert experiences” (Opera News), and boasts a stellar roster of Founding, Principal, and Guest Artists; as The Chicago Tribune raved, “Copland would have been proud of all of them.”

This concert is made possible by support from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, ArtsWestchester, the Jandon Foundation, and Friends of Copland House.

For more concert information, please visit www.newrochellearts.org or https://newrochelle.librarycalendar.com/events/month/2022/10

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