Born and Buried in Brooklyn

PROGRAM

Aaron Copland
Old American Songs, Book I
Rocky Sellers, bass-baritone

George Gershwin
Three Preludes (arr. for clarinet and orchestra)
Yu-Ting Cheng, clarinet

George Gershwin
Rhapsody in Blue
Catherine Miller, piano

Leonard Bernstein
Suite from West Side Story

Runtime: Approx. 80 minutes, no intermission

ABOUT

The Brooklyn Chamber Orchestra continues its 24th season with a program celebrating Brooklyn’s enduring imprint on American music, featuring works by Aaron Copland and George Gershwin, alongside Leonard Bernstein, who is laid to rest in Greenwood Cemetery. Artistic Director Philip Nuzzo leads the Orchestra in a program that traces the borough’s influence on some of the most enduring voices in American music.

Metropolitan Opera bass baritone Rocky Sellers joins the Orchestra in Copland’s Old American Songs, Book I, bringing vivid narrative character to these iconic portraits of American life. Gershwin’s Three Preludes appear in a special arrangement for clarinet, performed by Principal Clarinet Yu-Ting Cheng, and staff pianist Catherine Miller joins the Orchestra in Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.

The evening concludes with Bernstein’s Suite from West Side Story, a landmark of American music theater that fuses symphonic power with Broadway vitality, honoring a composer whose legacy remains inseparable from New York.