A Personal Fanfare for Aaron Copland!

It’s less than 3 months until Aaron Copland’s 125^th Anniversary which I’ll be celebrating in Bristol, UK with the Copland 125 Anniversary Concert. The plan has changed and been scaled back since the original iteration where I tried unsuccessfully to get Arts Council England funding. Now, I know that 125 is not a typical anniversary to celebrate and I am well aware that there are also plenty of other composers with equal justification and more round numbered anniversaries this year (Maurice Ravel, Pierre Boulez, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Dimitri Shostakovich, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and Arvo Pärt). However, time is very much of the essence for me.

If I wait to celebrate Copland 150, I will be very old and if I wait for Copland 200, I will be very dead!

Hence, how to blow a big Fanfare for Copland during his big birthday year has occupied a great deal of my daily thoughts. I wanted to to produce a personal tribute to Copland explaining what he means to me and why his music is the perfect entry point into classical music. Here it is – I hope you enjoy watching it as much as I did making it with my friend the film director Robin Toyne.

A Personal Fanfare for Aaron Copland: The Script

Hello I’m Kevin Lindegaard of Aaron-Copland.com, a blog about the life and legacy of Aaron Copland….. a colossus of 20th century classical music.

2025 is Copland’s 125th Birthday year and with the Copland 125 initiative I’ll be celebrating this amazing composer. Through blogs, reviews and videos you’ll get the lowdown on Copland, the man and his music, and my efforts to spread his legacy.

And for an overview of his extensive back catalogue a good place to start is Sony Classical’s 2024 release Copland conducts Copland. Sadly though, you’ll not hear this classic rendition included.

I’m no musician and I can’t read music but I have a pair of ears and in my blogs and videos I aim to communicate what it is about this music that so moves me.

Aaron Copland is the perfect place to start a journey into classical music – he was a brilliant artist painting amazing pictures with vivid scenery. Perhaps more than any composer in history, when you hear his music …. you can see the view.

Copland’s works will evoke images of

Skyscrapers
and Cityscapes

And transform you to

Wide open spaces
and take you Down a Country Lane

At all hours of the day

From a Quiet City at dawn
To Morning on the Ranch
The hustle and bustle of the city during rush hour
to a spooky cemetery at night

Through the energy and rhythms of his music you’ll experience

Trains
Galloping horses
Dance halls, and
Children skipping their way to school.

And through the mood music he created you’ll be able to visualise every emoji under the sun! From the first flush of young love….. to the five stages of grief.

Copland was a master craftsman who could write in any style: Latin, jazz, folk and serial. Accessible populist Americana and modernist pieces that still sound vital and bang up to date.

He practically wrote the movie music blueprint for Westerns, Horror films and Tom and Jery jazz mayhem.

Copland could do it all but whatever he wrote he always sounds …… well, like Copland.

(Referring to Music for a Great City I. Skyline) I love that piece of music. It’s got the full battery of percussion and brass. But not only that it’s also got the kitchen sink and all the pots and pans too! It’s amazing! It’s …. Copland!

Aaron Copland wearing a beret and glasses in a black and white photo taken in 1981.

Aaron Copland in 1981.

Whatever Copland did his mission was to bring everyone with him for the ride and encourage people of all ages to open up their ears to new music!

That includes you sir!

There’s so much to admire about Aaron Copland, not only the music, but also Aaron Copland the man.

He created lots of pieces for children to play
He was a teacher and mentor to countless young composers
a born communicator, who was a man of words and letters as well as music
He was an advocate and cheerleader for his fellow composers and musicians
And perhaps most importantly, he was an engaged citizen who was an outward looking cultural ambassador

He was the very essence of an uncommon man! If any composer deserves a Fanfare it’s Aaron Copland!

One of Copland’s last orchestral works was called Music for a Great City. In my hometown of Bristol, I’ll be using Copland 125 as a vehicle to help resurrect neglected masterworks whilst also shining a light on new music by living, breathing composers.

Follow me on YouTube and Instagram and find out my views and easily digestible listening guides to Copland works and other music I find inspiring.

Join me on an exciting journey of discovery with this genius of modern music.

Locations used in the film

Bristol Cityscape in close showing Radisson Blue hotel

It was never intended to be this way but this project has ended up being a love affair with my City – Bristol. I don’t have the New York skyline to play with like Woody Allen did for Manhattan with its all George Gershwin soundtrack. I think all the Bristol locations are great and work brilliantly though. If you ever fancy visiting Bristol here they are in order:

Clifton Suspension Bridge
My dining room and living room!
Cabot Tower
Castle Park
Victoria Park
Dundry
Eastwood Farm
Bristol City Centre
Parson Street Station, Bedminster
Arno’s Vale Cemetary
Temple Quarter
Harbourside and Floating Harbour
St George’s, Brandon Hill
Pero’s Bridge
St Mary Redcliffe
Clifton Downs
Perrett’s Park

A Personal Fanfare for Aaron Copland – The Music

As my blog is all about shining a light on Copland’s incredible diverse music I purposefully used Copland pieces that are not well known or widely played. All the pieces were conducted by Copland with British orchestras: The London Symphony Orchestra and the New Philhamonia Orchestra. Copland had a purple patch working with these orchestras in the 1960s and early 1970s. Many of these were premiere recordings that are still up there with the very best. All of the pieces in the film are on the recent Sony Classical release Copland conducts Copland: The Columbia Album Collection (20 CD set Sony Classical 19439 97746.2.). The one exception is the music for the moving train which is from the original version of Subway Jam on the Something Wild Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Varese Sarabande VSD-6469) but not used when the music was woven into Music for a Great City. I couldn’t not use that as it is pure Copland genius. If you are starting out as a Copland enthusiast or have loved Appalachian Spring and the ballets but never delved further, then you really should seek out these modernist and film pieces on these albums. You will not be disappointed!

Incredible red sky sunset over Bristol from Perrett's Park © Kevin Lindegaard

Please Note – the scene where I say “a quiet city at dawn” does not use the music from Quiet City. Again this was on purpose as Quiet City is too well known and often played to be used here. The Red Pony and Down a Country Lane are more well known pieces but still seldom played. I have never seen either played in the UK so they therefore do fit the criteria of “neglected masterworks”.