BERNSTEIN IN BLACK AND WHITE Kicks Off Copland House's 2012-13 Season Tonight, 9/8

Spirituals, several premieres, the sounds of Broadway, appearances by two Pulitzer Prize-winners and five Copland House resident composers, and music inspired by the words of Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, and William Shakespeare are among the highlights of Copland House's 2012-13 mainstage concert season.

The season's Opening Night Celebration takes place this evening, September 8 at 8PM with Bernstein in Black and White. Pianist Michael Boriskin will join Emmy Award-winning composer and pianist John Musto, a Copland House favorite, to perform Musto's dazzling two-piano version of the iconic West Side Story. Other classics from Candide and Wonderful Town, as well as tantalizing Bernstein rarities, will complete a dynamic and personal portrait of this American music giant.

Paul Moravec's stunning Tempest Fantasy won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize, and is the featured work on a program called "Sounds and Sweet Airs": Shakespeare in Music on Sunday afternoon, October 14 at 3PM. The concert also includes music by the inspiring and indefatigable David Amram, who wrote many scores for legendary director Joseph Papp's first Shakespeare in the Park productions, and Foor for Love by Copland House Resident Robert Xavier Rodriguez. Moravec will be on hand to discuss the Bard's influence on his music.

Sounds of the American Riviera: German Emigres in Hollywood, on Sunday, November 18 at 3PM, showcases southern California's brilliant gathering of composers, conductors, and other musicians who fled Nazi tyranny before and during World War II turning the region in to a hotbed of creativity. Featured are works of Kurt Weill, Ernst Toch, Hanns Eisler, Ingolf Dahl, Franz Waxman, and other renowned émigrés who transformed the music world and influenced two generations of American composers. Composer Arnold Schoenberg's son Lawrence and music historian and Schoenberg student Pia Gilbert re-create that vibrant milieu and lead an audience Q&A.

Hol' de Light, on Sunday, December 2 at 3PM, revels in the rich tradition of African-American spirituals, hymns, and art songs by Duke Ellington, Scott Joplin, Harry T. Burleigh, William Grant Still, and others. Copland House's first holiday program features renowned baritone James Martin, who has captivated Copland House audiences in previous appearances, and will guide this festive musical panorama.

From Stravinsky to Sophia Loren is a multi-media collaboration with the Jacob Burns Film Center's

International Film Artist-in-Residence program, which features the Burns's first composer-in-residence, Lucio Gregoretti, on Sunday, March 3 at 3PM. In addition to being part of a prominent Italian theatrical family, and working with film legends Lina Wertmuller, Sophia Loren, Giancarlo Gianinni, and many others, Gregoretti has written operas and concert works that have been performed across Europe. The concert presents the world premiere of a brand new work Gregoretti is writing especially for this program, as well as music by Stravinsky, Ravel, and others who have deeply influenced him.

On Sunday, April 7 at 3PM, A Solitude of Sound offers the work of several generations of composers who were inspired by the elusive, vivid imagery of the writings of Emily Dickinson. One of Aaron Copland's masterworks, the richly-evocative Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson, and the New York premiere of Henry Mollicone's Flowers of the Soul, commissioned for Music from Copland House, are featured, along with songs by Lee Hoiby, Craig Urquhart, and Copland House residents Tom Cipullo and Greg Kallor, setting Dickinson texts about life and death, love and longing, nature and gardens, and cooking and writing.