Born on November 14, 1900, in Brooklyn, New York; Died on December 2, 1990, in North Tarrytown, New York.
Old American Songs
Composed: 1950–52; Orchestrated: 1954–57
Estimated length: 25 minutes
Aaron Copland’s Old American Songs forms the centerpiece of the program. Slatkin’s idea is to use excerpts from this collection to “connect different worlds of music” by bringing together performers associated with country music, popular entertainment, and the classical stage. Nashville may be identified internationally with particular styles, but this presentation asks what happens when those musical communities meet inside the concert hall.
Copland published the songs in two sets of five, the first in 1950 and the second in 1952. Their apparent simplicity conceals the care with which he gathered, selected, and arranged material from a wide variety of American traditions. The result is what his biographer Howard Pollack calls “a diversified portrait of America itself, held together by the unity of Copland’s style.” “Give me a book of tunes,” Copland once remarked, “and I’ll immediately know what tune attracts me and what one doesn’t.” He selected memorable melodies and developed orchestral settings that sharpen the character of each. The songs chosen for this performance range from the revivalist fervor of “Zion’s Walls” and the Shaker simplicity of “Simple Gifts”—which Copland had famously woven into his 1944 ballet Appalachian Spring—to the hymn tune “At the River” and the campaign song “The Dodger,” before the children’s song “I Bought Me a Cat” brings the sequence to its comic conclusion.
The five guest soloists bring distinctive vocal styles to Slatkin’s idea of connecting different musical worlds: country singer-songwriter Suzy Bogguss, a 2026 Grand Ole Opry inductee; singer-songwriter and guitarist Baxter Hall; Storm Large, known for her work with the genre-crossing ensemble Pink Martini; country and bluegrass singer Kathy Mattea, host of NPR’s Mountain Stage; and soprano Sylvia McNair, whose career spans opera and the American Songbook. Each will bring an individual vocal personality to Copland’s arrangements.
The finale, “I Bought Me a Cat,” turns the experiment into outright theater. Each guest singer or section of the Nashville Symphony Chorus takes responsibility for one of the song’s accumulating characters, returning with the same line in every succeeding verse. Slatkin himself joins for the final round. “This is going to fall apart at some point,” he predicts with evident delight. That possibility is part of the design: it will “give us a chance to have some fun” as the increasingly elaborate chain becomes a test of timing and ensemble coordination.
WHAT TO LISTEN FOR
Copland gives each tune its own character. “Zion’s Walls” has the buoyancy of a revival song; “Simple Gifts” unfolds with charming directness and restraint; “At the River” broadens into the dignified sonority of a hymn; and “The Dodger” brings in the political satire of an old campaign song.
For this performance, in addition to solo voices and mixed chorus, scored for flute (doubling piccolo), oboe, 2 clarinets, bassoon, 2 horns, trumpet, trombone, harp, and strings.
− Thomas May is the Nashville Symphony's program annotator.
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