Scott Lee: Between the Lines (2020, Copland House CULTIVATE commission)

Tuesday, April 27, 2021 at 5pm EDT

Performed by Music from Copland House
(Pala Garcia, violin; Alexis Pia Gerlach, cello; Margaret Kampmeier, piano)

 

Notes from the composer

Between the Lines explores the idea of a groove that is both patiently-developing and incessant. The piece opens with a colorful and noisy flourish, which is relentlessly repeated to form this groove. A compound melody appears next, shared among the three instruments and slithering in between the grid of pulses formed by the repeated flourish–hence the title. Over the course of the piece, this melody returns in a number of guises, always accompanied by the pulse, and eventually leads to a raucous climax. Ghostly echoes follow, but once again the opening flourish slowly begins to dominate the texture, bringing the piece to a boisterous close.

 

About Scott Lee

SCOTT LEE writes concert works infused with the visceral sounds of popular music. He has worked with the Baltimore, North Carolina, and Portland Symphonies, JACK Quartet, Symphony in C, yMusic, Da Capo Chamber Players, Deviant Septet, ShoutHouse, and pop artist Ben Folds. Recent commissions include those from the Tanglewood and Aspen Festivals, Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra, loadbang, Baltimore Classical Guitar Society, and Raleigh Civic Symphony. His honors include a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and two ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards.

 

About Music from Copland House

Hailed by The New Yorker as “bold,” “adventurous,” and “superb,” MUSIC FROM COPLAND HOUSE offers ear-opening, mind-expanding experiences gathered from its journeys across 150 years of America’s vast musical landscape. Whether celebrating classic or forgotten voices from the nation’s past, or reveling in established or rising artists from the present, this wide-ranging American repertory ensemble creates memorable and richly diverse narratives in sound, linking music to the wider worlds from which these works emerged. “Illuminating essential truths about the music” (The New York Times), MCH has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning, NPR, Euro-Radio, and other major media; and engaged by Tanglewood, the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, Smithsonian Institution’s Freer Gallery of Art, Library of Congress, University of Chicago, Monday Evening Concerts in Los Angeles, and the Caramoor, Bard, Ecstatic, Bowdoin, and SONiC Festivals. It also records for the Arabesque, Koch International, and COPLAND HOUSE BLEND labels. Called “one of the leading champions of contemporary music” (Louisville Weekly), the ensemble presents two mainstage concert series in Westchester County, NY (now in its 12th season), and at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York (in its 2nd season). Inspired by Copland’s peerless, lifelong advocacy of American composers, MCH presents a wide variety of educational and community outreach activities. Launched in 1999 by flutist Paul Lustig Dunkel, clarinetist Derek Bermel, violinist Nicholas Kitchen, cellist Wilhelmina Smith, and pianist Michael Boriskin, MCH boasts a stellar roster of Founding, Principal, and Guest Artists, of whom, The Chicago Tribune raved, “Copland would have been proud of all of them.”

 

About Cultivate

CULTIVATE, now in its 10th season, is Copland House’s flagship annual emerging composers institute, directed by Grammy-nominated composer-clarinetist Derek Bermel. Embracing exploration, process, and community, this weeklong, all-scholarship creative workshop and mentoring program is an important destination on the early-career paths of gifted young composers of all artistic and personal backgrounds and identities. Linking creation, performance, and education, Copland House commissions six CULTIVATE Fellows to compose a short new chamber piece that is the heart of their work during an intensive week of rehearsals, workshops, discussions, and other individual and collective sessions with Bermel, the Music from Copland House ensemble, and prominent, visionary arts leaders. The institute concludes with public concerts where all the new works are premiered and filmed for delayed telecast. CULTIVATE is also a portal for additional performance, recording, commissioning, and other career-development opportunities.

Support for CULTIVATE 2020 and Cultivated Spaces comes the ASCAP and BMI Foundations, Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, Friends of Copland House, Jandon Foundation, and NewMusicUSA.  Additional program support comes from the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Amphion Foundation, ArtsWestchester, the National Endowment for the Arts, and New York State Council on the Arts. Donate to CULTIVATE.

 

Scott Lee – Copland House Cultivated Spaces [4.27.2021]