Americana!

Saturday, June 6, 2009 at 6:30 pm
On the lawn at Miss Porter's School
60 Main Street
Farmington, Connecticut

Our popular outdoor program includes music by five great American composers in music that was written from the late 1880s until 1956. Gershwin’s Suite from his opera Porgy and Bess forms the centerpiece of the program. Porgy and Bess was written in 1936 and, given its immense popularity now, perhaps surprisingly was not well received in its opening run. Gershwin followed the path of many composers whose work was not successful in its original form and produced this suite containing some of the operas most infectious music.

Copland wrote his Outdoor Overture in 1938 for the orchestra of the New York High School of Music and Art. Ives “Country Band” March was written in 1903, the year of his Second Symphony (performed by the FVSO in our 07/08 season). The work contains many familiar American tunes from popular music of the time. Ives never published the work, instead drawing on it for new works that followed. Bernstein’s Overture to Candide opens his 1956 Broadway show based on Voltaire’s play of the same name. It is energetic music. The three works by Leroy Anderson speak of his unique gifts as a composer. They were written in the middle years of last century and have a charm about them that is difficult to categorize.

Our program concludes with two Marches by the March King himself, John Philip Sousa. Sousa was invited to conduct the United States Marine Band in 1880 and formed his own Sousa Band in 1892. The band became an American institution and he directed it until his death in 1932. He was originally trained as a violinist and played in Offenbach’s orchestra when the great operetta composer visited America in the late 1870s. This led him to write several operettas himself although he is now known almost exclusively for his 128 published marches.