The windwood quintet Windscape will open the program and then join the Windham Festival Chamber Orchestra for this all-American concert. This special program includes Samuel Barber's Summer Music for wind quintet, Robert Manno's Three Scenes from the Mountains for flute, clarinet, piano and strings, and his Adagio for Strings, Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring and the world premiere of a new work by Eric Ewazen.

Samuel Barber (1910-1981). In 1971 Barber wrote: "While I'm writing for words, then I immerse myself in those words, and I let the music flow out of them. When I write an abstract piano sonata or a concerto, I write what I feel. I'm not a self-conscious composer. It is said I have no style at all, but that doesn't matter. I just go on doing, as they say, my thing. I believe this takes a certain courage." Richard Jackson writes: "Barber's fondness for romantic fullness and lyricism combined with classical procedures places him in a position within his era somewhat similar to Brahms in his. Also, neither Barber nor Brahms was known as an innovator and both produced works of substance and beauty with a distinct personal stamp." Summer Music, written and premiered in Detroit in 1956, is his only piece for wind quintet and has been described as "neo-impressionist," worlds away from the "Serialism" of Schoenberg embraced by so many composers during the 1950's.

Robert Manno (b. 1944). The Adagio for Strings was composed in 2004 and premiered in Windham, NY in 2006. John Paul Keeler writing in the Hudson Register-Star said "...the surprise of the evening was the premier performance of Robert Manno's Adagio for Strings...this stunningly beautiful work could stand beside Samuel Barber's famed Adagio and a string of lush adagios reaching back to the Baroque." Three Scenes from the Mountains was premiered in Windham, NY in 2005 and Manno writes that the piece "was inspired by views from my home overlooking a mountain range in the Northern Catskills. The first movement, The Wind on the Water, depicts the visual movement of the rippling of wind-driven water on our pond, sometimes still, sometimes flowing and always with a sense of calm and change. The Meadow at Dawn is a song-like description of a gentle summer morning in our meadow when the mist is just beginning to clear. The third movement The Forest at Night attempts to elicit the sense of loneliness one experiences when walking in the woods by moonlight." The Elegy in Memory of Constance Doctorow was written for piano, premiered by Vladimir Pleshakov, and later scored for chamber orchestra.

Eric Ewazen (b. 1954) holds an undergraduate degree from the Eastman School of Music, and Masters and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees from the Juilliard School. His teachers include Milton Babbitt, Samuel Adler, Warren Benson, Joseph Schwantner and Gunther Schuller. He is a recipient of numerous composition awards and prizes and his works have been commissioned and performed by many soloists, chamber ensembles and orchestras in the U.S. and overseas. His recordings include Summit Records, CRS Records, New World, Clique Track, Helicon, Hyperion, Cala, Albany and EMI Classics. New World Records has released his concerto for brass quintet, Shadowcatcher, with the American Brass Quintet and Juilliard Wind Ensemble, both conducted by Mark Gould. Individual works of Ewazen have recently been released by the Ahn Trio, as well as by many different soloists from many of the leading American orchestras. The Doctorow Family Foundation has commissioned Eric Ewazen to compose this New Work for Chamber Orchestra to commemorate the Quadricenntenial of the Discovery of the Hudson River.

Aaron Copland (1900-1990) was instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition and was widely known as "the dean of American composers." Copland's music achieved a balance between modern music and American folk styles. Aside from composing, he was a teacher, lecturer, critic, writer, pianist and conductor. Appalachian Spring was composed in 1943-44 as a ballet for Martha Graham on a commission from the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation and was first performed by Graham at the Library of Congress in 1944. Tonight's version is for the original chamber ensemble of 13 instruments. In 1945 Appalachian Spring received the Pulitzer Prize for music.