{"id":360834,"date":"2026-09-30T14:46:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T14:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/360834\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T14:46:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T14:46:10","slug":"from-appalachian-spring-to-the-psycho-score-the-chamber-music-society-of-lincoln-center-celebrates-american-composers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/360834\/","title":{"rendered":"From Appalachian Spring to the Psycho Score, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Celebrates American Composers"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s\u00a0opening night concert takes place on October 13. The program will feature American composers in a range of genres from ragtime to music for ballet and film: William Bolcom<\/a>, an American icon as prolific as Mozart; Amy Beach, who broke the gender barrier with works of genius; Bernard Herrmann, a New York City wunderkind who took Hollywood by storm; and Aaron Copland<\/a>, whose music personified the American spirit.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Below, violinist Kristin Lee reflects on what exactly is “American music.” Lee released her critically acclaimed debut solo album, American Sketches, in November 2024.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve recently recorded a number of American works for your album American Sketches, and because of the 250th anniversary of the US this year, you\u2019ve been playing a lot of American music. What binds together the American works that you\u2019ve played?
Kristin Lee:\u00a0I would say it\u2019s impossible to reduce American music into any one kind of sound. Whether we\u2019re talking about minimalism or the Appalachian-style folk sound or jazz or ragtime, these kinds of music come from very different areas, and that\u2019s ultimately what makes American music what it is. If you had to tie it all together, I think of the words exploration and discovery. American music really stands for a celebration of different sounds and the history of those sounds.<\/p>\n

How did you come to love American music?
My personal journey with American music began over a decade ago, when I was asked to do a program of American repertoire. I\u2019ve\u00a0always been a big fan of minimalist composers like Steve Reich, John Adams<\/a>, and Terry Riley, but I didn\u2019t really know what else represented American music. I did a lot of research and was completely mesmerized by the vast number of composers that we never really hear about today. And when you do a deeper dive into these composers, so many of their stories are tied to parts of American history.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll be opening CMS\u2019s new season with Three Rags for String Quartet by William Bolcom. What is so special about Bolcom\u2019s approach to ragtime, which was a genre that was pioneered by Scott Joplin<\/a> and other Black composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries?
Ragtime is essential to the American sound. If you go back to its roots, it comes out of spirituals and is very much intertwined with American history. In terms of harmonic structure, it has a lot of similarities to blues and to jazz, which came out of ragtime. However, it has a very distinct, syncopated characteristic to its rhythm that allows it to be dance-like, whether it\u2019s in a fast or slow tempo.\u00a0<\/p>\n

William Bolcom is a wonderful American composer who helped to revive ragtime in the middle of the 20th century. He has written a lot of pieces that are purely ragtime style, but he has also written pieces that blend ragtime style with something that\u2019s a little bit more modern or even atonal sounding. One of his most celebrated pieces is the slow rag \u201cGraceful Ghost,\u201d which is included in the Three Rags for String Quartet. In it, he mostly writes something in the traditional style of ragtime that you find in a piece like Scott Joplin\u2019s The Entertainer. It\u2019s like a vignette of a\u00a0traditional rag, translated into what Bolcom believes rags should be.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll also be playing a concert suite of music written by Bernard Herrmann for the Alfred Hitchcock movie Psycho. I imagine many listeners are familiar with the terrifying, screeching music that accompanies the murder scene in the shower. What is it like experiencing this music in the absence of the film?\u00a0
I think everyone listening to Psycho Suite is probably going to be waiting for the famous moment from the shower scene. Everyone\u2019s going to wowed by that, because those screechy sounds that we\u2019re able to create with our string instruments are pretty neat, I have to say. But it\u2019s fascinating to realize how all of Herrmann\u2019s writing is so in line with the movie. Right off the bat, when the suite starts, it has this very anxious quality.<\/p>\n

When you\u2019re watching a film, you may neglect the music that you\u2019re hearing, but the music is still influencing the experience. This is a very exciting opportunity to flip that around.When I first played this piece, I didn\u2019t recognize the tunes themselves, but then the film started coming back into my mind, even if they were tunes that I didn\u2019t think I remembered.<\/p>\n

This program also features a landmark piano quintet by Amy Beach. Can you tell me more about her role in early American music?
Amy Beach was the very first female composer to have a symphony premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. When you are introduced to her music, you can sense her ambition to bring great art and great compositions to the world, whether the world was accepting it or not. This piano quintet is so big in scale, and I feel like she put so much heart and soul and effort into what she wrote. Her music in general is a great combination of things. It sounds a little bit like Gabriel Faur\u00e9<\/a>, because she\u2019s good at creating extremely long phrases that feel like they never end, but she also uses German Romantic harmonies. I\u2019ve only discovered Amy Beach fairly recently, and I\u2019m really glad that in the times that we\u2019re living in right now, and also through the\u00a0celebration of America\u2019s 250th, her music and her name are becoming better known.<\/p>\n

CMS\u2019s opening night ends with Aaron Copland\u2019s Appalachian Spring, probably one of the most familiar pieces of American music for concert audiences. What is it about this piece that makes it sound so American?
Aaron Copland represents America by creating an incredible musical landscape. It has a scenic element, where just the music itself helps you visualize the beauty of the land. You also have a little hoedown and you hear a lot of these very joyful qualities\u2014a kind of American excitement that feels very adventurous. Then, of course, it ends with one of the greatest representations of an American folk tune, \u201cSimple Gifts.\u201d It\u2019s a real journey. This is probably one of the pieces I play the most in any kind of chamber ensemble setting. It\u2019s incredible, it\u2019s kind of like how a violinist feels always delving into solo Bach\u2014every single time I play it, I\u2019m so moved, becauseI feel the celebration of America in away that\u2019s reflective, but also forward-thinking. It\u2019s a very special work.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Visit\u00a0ChamberMusicSociety.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s\u00a0opening night concert takes place on October 13. The program will feature…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":360835,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[75,84,83,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-360834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360834","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=360834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}