Paul Terracini | conductor

Jenny Liu | soprano
Kaine Hayward | baritone

STRAVINSKY     Circus Polka       
COPLAND  Variations on a Shaker Melody (from Appalachian Spring)
COPLAND   Billy the Kid Suite    
GERSHWIN, GREEN, FAIN, JENKINS  Classic songs from the 1930s
GINASTERA  Suite Estancia 

Many strands of North and South American musical tradition are brought together in this rich and varied program. Aaron Copland, often described as the quintessential American composer, is heard in two orchestral works derived from ballet scores originally for much smaller forces. Stravinsky, on the other hand (a Russian émigré who adopted the United States as his homeland), wrote his Circus Polka for a circus ballet performance involving 50 elephants and 50 ballerinas! No musical overview of the Americas would be complete without tribute to the jazz and popular song traditions of the 1930s, as heard here in Gershwin standards including Summertime and songs by Johnny Green, Sammy Fain and Gordon Jenkins. The ballet suite Estancia by Argentinian composer Alberto Ginastera (a student of Copland), exemplifies the composer’s integration of Argentinian folk idiom into his modern classical style.