Thursday, June 28 at 8 PM
Rose Theater, Jazz at Lincoln Center

Saturday, July 7 at 7 PM
The Channing Sculpture Garden, Bridgehampton, NY

Mark Mangini, Music Director
Choral Society of the Hamptons
Greenwich Village Singers
Brooklyn Philharmonic

FOSS: The Prairie
Elizabeth Farnham, soprano
Julia Spanja, mezzo-soprano
Gerard Powers, tenor
Robert Osborne, bass

FOSS: Renaissance Concerto for Flute and Orchestra
Carol Wincenc, flute

COPLAND: selections from Old American Songs

Tickets for are $35, $50, and $65. Rose Theater tickets may be purchased by calling CenterCharge at 212.721.6500 or go to www.lincolncenter.org. Channing Estate Tickets may be purchased by calling 631-204-9402 or go to www.choralhamptons.org.

The Choral Society of the Hamptons and the Greenwich Village Singers join the Brooklyn Philharmonic, flutist Carol Wincenc, and guest vocalists to celebrate composer Lukas Foss in a concert entitled An American Awakening, on Thursday, June 28 at 8 PM at the Rose Theater in New York, and Saturday, July 7 at 7 PM at the Channing Sculpture Garden in Bridgehampton, NY. An American Awakening features Lukas Foss's cantata The Prairie in honor of the composer's 85th birthday, and reintroduces this rarely heard masterwork to the public. Also on the program are Foss's Renaissance Concerto for Flute and Orchestra and selections from Aaron Copland's Old American Songs. An American Awakening is presented in association with the Bard Music Festival of the Hamptons.
"I was born on the prairie." With these words Carl Sandburg begins his extraordinary journey through the landscapes and lives of the American Midwest in his 1918 work Cornhuskers. Sandburg gives voice to the dust and loam, the generations of men and women that were swept up by successions of change as America adjusted to life as an industrialized nation. In 1944, Foss composed The Prairie, based on a poem of the same name from Cornhuskers, for solo voice, chorus and orchestra. It was previewed as an orchestral suite by Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony in 1943, followed by the premiere in New York City by Robert Shaw and the Collegiate Chorale at Town Hall in 1944, and received honorable mention for that year's New York Music Critics Circle Award. The genesis of The Prairie, Mr. Foss's youthful homage to his newly adopted land, is the unique story of American optimism which characterized the development of civilization in the United States during the early-20th century. The articulation of the pulses and rhythms of America's heartland combined with Foss's musical setting creates a work of unbridled optimism that could not be more relevant or timely in the troubled world of the 21st century.