The celebrated Copland House Ensemble will kick off its two 2025-26 mainstage concert series, featuring premieres, revivals, and modern classics by several generations of American composers.
Called Sonorous Images, the two series will take place at Copland House at Bluestone Farm in Brewster, NY and at Baisley Powell Elebash Hall at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, starting October 26-28 and run through June 7-9, 2026.
The celebrated Copland House Ensemble offers “spellbinding journeys” (Atlanta Journal-Constitution) across 150 years of America’s vibrant musical landscape. Linking centuries and cultures within exhilarating human and historical narratives, the nation’s only wide-ranging American repertory ensemble celebrates classic and forgotten voices from the past, and champions today’s established and rising composers of all backgrounds and identities.
Based at the unique creative center for American music and the arts at Aaron Copland’s National Historic Landmark home and its vast new satellite venue at Bluestone Farm, just an hour north of NYC, the Ensemble has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning, NPR (including Tiny Desk Concerts), Euro-Radio, and other major media, and engaged by Tanglewood, the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, Library of Congress, Smithsonian Institution, Universities of Chicago and Virginia, the Bard, Bowdoin, and Caramoor Festivals, and many others.
The series title is borrowed from the legendary Aaron Copland, for whom “the sonorous image” centered on “the impact of sheer sound [and] the force it represents” – the channel that connects creator and audience. For the Copland House Ensemble, this link is the meeting place where listeners, composers, and performers share exhilarating journeys across America’s boundless musical landscape.
Embracing 100 years of master composers and rising stars, the 2025-26 season will celebrate the 125th anniversary of Copland’s birth, dive into the powerful symbolism and imagery of water, reimagine popular song and dance forms, explore wordless instrumental theater masked as real or abstract narratives, and visit the frontiers of contemporary music staked out by today’s freshest young creative pioneers. The internationally-acclaimed Copland House Ensemble (above) will feature 23 works by 18 American composers, including eight World Premieres, in “carefully-crafted programs, beautifully and seductively played” (The Los Angeles Times).
Welcoming a wide audience, tickets are modestly priced or free with a pay-as-wish contribution. Concerts are one-hour long, without an intermission. Each Elebash Hall concert is followed by a lively, post-performance OFFBEAT / ONSTAGE talkback with the artists and audience Q&A. Each Bluestone Farm program includes a post-concert meet-the-artist reception.
Elebash Hall tickets are available at bit.ly/CHGC2025-26 while Bluestone Farm tickets are available at bit.ly/CHBF2025-26.
Copland House Ensemble 25-26 Season at a Glance
Sundays at 3:00pm: Copland House at Bluestone Farm, 100 Federal Hill Road, Brewster, NY
FREE tickets with reservation, Pay-As-You-Wish
Tuesdays at 6:30pm: Elebash Hall, CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY
Tickets: $20; $15 for Friends of Copland House, students, seniors 65+, and CUNY Faculty or Staff
COPLAND AT 125!
Sun, Oct 26, 2025 (Bluestone Farm)
Tues, Oct 28, 2025 (Graduate Center)
Aaron Copland: Sextet for Clarinet, Piano, and Strings; Quartet for Piano and Strings; Two Pieces for Violin and Piano
CHE Artists: Graeme Steele Johnson, clarinet; Siwoo Kim and Yebin Yoo, violins; Tanner Menees, viola; Ari Evan, cello; Michael Boriskin, piano
Launching the 2025-26 season is a celebration of the 125th Anniversary of Copland House’s legendary namesake, “the Dean of American Music.” This journey across a quarter-century of Aaron Copland’s transformational career spotlights two major works: the exuberant Sextet – widely regarded as his chamber music masterpiece, which he called “as perfected a piece as I could possibly write” – and his dark, intensely lyrical Piano Quartet. Kicking off the program is his early, Jazz Age Two Pieces for Violin and Piano, among his first works searching for a distinctly American concert idiom.
TANGOS, BALLADS, AND BLUES … REIMAGINED
Sun, Dec 7, 2025 (Bluestone Farm)
Tues, Dec 9, 2025 (Graduate Center)
John Musto: Sonata for Clarinet and Piano (World Premiere); John Mackey: Breakdown Tango; Pascal LeBoeuf: Snapshots; Liliya Ugay: … Without Words; Kian Ravaei: Unstoppable
CHE Artists: Derek Bermel, clarinet; Siwoo Kim, violin; Alexis Pia Gerlach, cello; Michael Boriskin, piano
Following Igor Stravinsky’s motto that “music must sing and it must dance,” our program transplants wild tangos, sultry ballads, and leisurely ruminations into evocative vignettes about remembrance and resilience. Headlining the evening is The Graduate Center’s own musical wizard John Musto, whose wide-ranging, multi-part Sonata for Clarinet and Piano receives its World Premiere by its two brilliant dedicatees, Derek Bermel and Michael Boriskin.
THEATER IN DISGUISE
Sun, Feb 1, 2026 (Bluestone Farm)
Tues, Feb 3, 2026 (Graduate Center)
George Tsontakis: Piano Quartet No. 3; Shawn Okpebholo: Black Music (World Premiere, string version); John Musto: Sonata for Cello and Piano
CHE Artists: Siwoo Kim and Yebin Yoo, violins; Tanner Menees, viola; Alexis Pia Gerlach, cello; Kris Saebo, double bass; Michael Boriskin, piano
These vivid, formidable works by outstanding American masters are a kind of disguised theater, with virtuoso instrumentalists engaged in dramatic yet wordless narratives – elusive, abstract, representational. Only in Black Music does composer Shawn Okpebholo explicitly convey “the physical manifestation of the color black as well as artistic elements associated with African American experience and musical culture.” These musical actors converse cooperatively or contentiously, swerving from ethereal to intense, reflective to impulsive, serene to volatile. Their sonic journeys are breathtaking!
WATERS … FRACTURED
Tues, Apr 21, 2026 (Graduate Center)
Sun, Apr 26, 2026 (Bluestone Farm)
Joan Tower: Rain Waves; Chen Yi: Happy Rain on a Spring Night; Shawn Okpebholo: Fractured Water; Mason Bates: Red River
CHE Artists: Emi Ferguson, flute; Alan R. Kay, clarinet; Siwoo Kim, violin; Caleb van der Swaagh, cello; Michael Boriskin, piano
Strong yet fragile, nourishing yet destructive, mythological yet tangible – across centuries, water has been viewed as a primal life-force, religious symbol, geographical marker, natural resource, and so much more. It has also served as a fertile artistic inspiration, and this vibrant program flows sonically through China’s 8th-century Tang Dynasty, the crests and valleys of the Colorado River, rain in its many forms, and even an ecstatic riverside Baptism.
CULTIVATE 2026
Sun, Jun 7, 2026 (Bluestone Farm)
Tues, Jun 9, 2026 (Graduate Center)
Program TBA
CHE Artists: Moran Katz, clarinet; Pala Garcia, violin; Alexis Pia Gerlach, cello; Margaret Kampmeier, piano
Hear the future here! Six World Premieres by the gifted 2026 Fellows of our acclaimed CULTIVATE Emerging Composers Institute (Derek Bermel, Director), commissioned by Copland House especially for this program.
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