Trinity Alps Chamber Music Fest presents AMERICAN SPRING

Sam Reider - Trinity Alps Summer (world-premiere)
Aaron Copland - Appalachian Spring (original 13-instrument version)

Aaron Copland's "Appalachian Spring" was written in 1944 originally as a "Ballet for Martha", and the interesting scoring for a small 13-piece chamber orchestra was to help Martha Graham's dance company take the ballet on tour.

The music was extraordinarily popular from the outset, winning the Pulitzer Prize the next year. Its structure of alternating dreamy, impressionistic harmonies and motives with rhythmic dances in the "American Folk Style" keeps the listener on the edge of their seat. Its recognizably "American Classical" harmonies mark it with Copland's signature sound, and the appearance of the Shaker hymn "Simple Gifts" creates a poignant and dramatic ending.

Sam Reider, a San Francisco native, trained as a classical pianist, jazz pianist, and folk accordionist at various points in his musical career. He will bring all of those style together in his own new composition, written as a commission from the Trinity Alps Chamber Music Festival.

Sam and the musicians spent a week during the summer of 2023 in the spectacular Trinity Alps of Northern California, arranging, rehearsing, and performing music as part of the Festival's annual tour of North-State California communities.

Sam describes his new work: "Based on my childhood memories of my grandmother Emmy Abraham’s farm in the remote Northern California town of Hyampom in the Trinity Alps mountains. My piece is in conversation with Copland’s Appalachian Spring and incorporates melodies and rhythms from the American folk music my grandmother loved. Beginning with the call of the mourning dove, a sound that throughout my life has drawn my thoughts back to Hyampom, the piece contains six short movements, each one painting a picture of a particular memory, and organized into a portrait of a single day, from dawn to dusk."