Face to Face with the 30s and 40s: American Music Comes of Age

The 1930s and 40s were trail-blazing decades in the development of American classical music. Many American composers had spent time in the 1920s living and writing music in Paris while studying with Nadia Boulanger. As events in Europe grew increasingly ominous, they returned to the U.S. where Roger Sessions, Virgil Thomson, and Aaron Copland in particular organized concerts to develop audiences and put American music on the map. During the Depression, the WPA sponsored both film and dance projects for which composers such as Copland, Thomson, and Roy Harris wrote. Well-known to Renesan audiences, Ms. Helin will share personal anecdotes of her working relationships with Virgil Thomson and Aaron Copland and play piano works by Thomson, Copland, Sessions, Harris, and Samuel Barber as she explores the work of these fertile decades.

Steinway Artist Jacquelyn Helin has played solo, concerto, and chamber performances in many of the renowned musical venues in the U.S. and Europe. She is especially well known for performing music by American composers such as Copland, Thomson, Barber, and George Gershwin. Her recordings of Thomson’s music for New World and Musical Heritage have garnered critical acclaim and she was a featured artist in the PBS documentary, Virgil Thomson at 90.