{"id":187319,"date":"2026-04-06T17:14:38","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T17:14:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/187319\/"},"modified":"2026-04-06T17:14:38","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T17:14:38","slug":"born-and-buried-in-brooklyn-celebrates-the-boroughs-legendary-composers-with-winds-strings-and-song-brooklyn-paper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/187319\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Born and Buried in Brooklyn\u2019 celebrates the borough\u2019s legendary composers with winds, strings and song \u2022 Brooklyn Paper"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\"brooklyn\t\t\t<\/p>\n

The Brooklyn Chamber Orchestra celebrates Leonard Bernstein, George Gershwin and Aaron Copland with \u201cBorn and Buried in Brooklyn.\u201d<\/p>\n

Photo courtesy of Brooklyn Chamber Orchestra | Allan Warren\/Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n

\t\t Search our comprehensive guide to things to do in Brooklyn<\/a> for more local events \u2014 or submit your own<\/a>!<\/p>\n

For three years, Phillip Nuzzo has been planning a tribute to Brooklyn\u2019s great composers.\n<\/p>\n

On April 11, his vision will finally come to life as he conducts the Brooklyn Chamber Orchestra in \u201cBorn and Buried in Brooklyn<\/a>,\u201d a one-night only concert celebrating the lives and work of three beloved musicians who called the borough home in life or in death: George Gerswhin, Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein.<\/p>\n

Nuzzo, the founder and artistic director of BCO, is a lifelong Brooklynite himself, and has tremendous pride in his home and its rich musical history.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI was born and raised in Brooklyn, absolutely. And there\u2019s nothing wrong with that,\u201d he said. \u201cThere needs to be no odium on the podium.\u201d
\n\"phillipPhillip Nuzzo, conductor and artistic director of the Brooklyn Chamber Orchestra, was born and raised in Brooklyn himself. Photo courtesy of Brooklyn Chamber Orchestra\n<\/p>\n

As Nuzzo planned the concert, he struggled to whittle down the long list of composers with ties to the borough. There was John Corigliano, who graduated from Midwood High School in the 1950s; Benjamin Britten, a Brit who spent a year living in an artists commune in Brooklyn Heights in 1940; and, of course, a host of contemporary composers still working today.<\/p>\n

In the end, he opted for two of the most influential composers born in Brooklyn and one who became a permanent resident after his death.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\u201cGershwin lived in Brooklyn for exactly six weeks, but he was born here,\u201d Nuzzo said. \u201cAnd Copland was born on Washington Avenue in Brooklyn, his family \u2014 Russian-Jewish immigrants \u2013 owned a store on Washington Avenue. And Copland, of course, is the \u2018Dean of American Music<\/a>\u2018. A great teacher to even Bernstein.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bernstein, who learned from Copland, is buried at Green-Wood Cemetery<\/a>. So is Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Nuzzo noted, \u201cthe first great American pianist.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHis music doesn\u2019t lend itself to be orchestrated, so we had to leave Gottschalk where he is, for now, in Green-Wood Cemetery,\u201d Nuzzo said.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

All three created a lot of \u201cserious works,\u201d but for this concert, the BCO decided to go light.\u00a0
\n\"georgeThe legendary George Gershwin, who was born in East New York. Photo courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection\n<\/p>\n

From Gershwin, who Nuzzo described as \u201cuniversal,\u201d they\u2019ll play the famous \u201cRhapsody in Blue\u201d and the jazzy \u201cSummertime\u201d from the musical \u201cPorgy & Bess,\u201d along with a few musical interludes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He made his selections from Copland\u2019s catalogue with a sense of humor. Accompanied by bass-baritone singer Rocky Sellers, the orchestra will perform Copland\u2019s \u201cOld American Songbook, Book 1,\u201d filled with folk-adjacent songs; and the bouncy \u201cHoedown.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere did this come from?\u201d Nuzzo said. \u201cThis Jewish kid from Brooklyn, writing cowboy music. Which is why I picked these pieces, because they have a certain amount of tongue-in-cheek irony in saying, \u2018Oh, that guy\u2019s from Brooklyn \u2014 hey, wait a minute, that\u2019s a lot of cowboy music.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The evening will end with Bernstein, famous for his high-energy, expressive conducting.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to do the overture from \u201cCandide,\u201d his most famous stage work, and, of course, a magnificent arrangement of \u201cWest Side Story\u201d for solo violin and strings,\u201d Nuzzo said.<\/p>\n

\"leonardLeonard Bernstein in 1955. World-Telegram photo by Al Revenna\/Courtesy of Library of Congress<\/p>\n

Each arrangement has been tweaked some, Nuzzo said, to make them \u201ca little bit more Brooklyn.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf [people] have not experienced a Brooklyn Chamber Orchestra concert before, they should come,\u201d he said. \u201cIt really does smack of Brooklyn. Because it is a little \u2013 it is a lot less formal than Manhattan. Come as you want.\u201d<\/p>\n

The acoustics at the historic St. Ann\u2019s Church, where the concert will be held, are \u201cperfect,\u201d he said, and the Brooklyn Chamber Orchestra is \u201cthe most versatile\u201d group he\u2019s conducted in his decades-long, globe-spanning career.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are no divas in the orchestra. It\u2019s a blue-collar group \u2026 and I have to have the same attitude,\u201d he said. \u201cThis has to be lunch-pail, get-your-hands-dirty, blue-collar way of doing things. And that\u2019s not necessarily bad, and that does not take away from music. You don\u2019t have to be a snob to do this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBorn and Buried in Brooklyn<\/a>\u201d will take place for one night only on Saturday, April 11, at 7:30 p.m. at St. Ann & The Holy Trinity Church in Brooklyn Heights.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Brooklyn Chamber Orchestra celebrates Leonard Bernstein, George Gershwin and Aaron Copland with \u201cBorn and Buried in Brooklyn.\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":187320,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[75074,2571,75075,98,33206,100,99,75076,221,48586,75077,75078,2538,93,9,24,12,370,63,74146,75079,75080,75081,75082,904,75083],"class_list":{"0":"post-187319","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brooklyn","8":"tag-aaron-copland","9":"tag-arts-and-entertainment","10":"tag-born-and-buried-in-brooklyn","11":"tag-brooklyn","12":"tag-brooklyn-chamber-orchestra","13":"tag-brooklyn-headlines","14":"tag-brooklyn-news","15":"tag-candide","16":"tag-concert","17":"tag-conductors","18":"tag-george-gershwin","19":"tag-leonard-bernstein","20":"tag-music","21":"tag-new","22":"tag-new-york","23":"tag-new-york-city","24":"tag-news","25":"tag-newsletter","26":"tag-nyc","27":"tag-orchestra","28":"tag-phillip-nuzzo","29":"tag-rhapsody-in-blue","30":"tag-st-anns-church","31":"tag-st-ann-and-the-holy-trinity-church","32":"tag-things-to-do","33":"tag-west-side-story"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}