Philomusica’s spring concert will take place on Saturday, 29 March.

Join members in the Great Hall at Aberystwyth Arts Centre, (7.30pm) as they perform pieces tracing the history of 20th century American music from Florence Price’s classical/African-American music to Gershwin mixing classical and jazz.

Copland with his pared down simple style evoking the vast American landscape and pioneer spirit and John Adams’ minimalist style inspired by Steve Reich and Philip Glass. Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody in Blue’, needs no introduction and excitingly it will be conducted and performed by Philomusica conductor, Iwan Teifion Davies, who is also the Director of Music at Aberystwyth University.

Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ premiered on 12 February, 1924 in New York with Gershwin himself at the piano, supposedly mainly improvising the piano part which he later wrote down.

The Philomusica concert opens with ‘Concert Overture no.2’ (premiered in 1943) by Florence Price, a neglected mixed race composer born in the southern USA 11 years before Gershwin and 13

years before Aaron Copland. Well educated in music, on moving to Chicago in the late twenties, she became well received and successful. When writing to a composer she admired, Price prefaced her work with this: “I have two handicaps - those of sex and race”. Despite this, Price received praise for the blending of both her traditional western education and African-American culture in her music, and she was seen as a pioneer for both her gender and race.

Much of her music was nearly lost. ‘Concert Overture no.2’ was found in an abandoned Chicago residence where she lived towards the end of her life and, in 2009, a substantial collection of her works were found in a summer house she used in St. Anne, Illinois.

Her work has recently seen a revival.

Aaron Copland’s ‘Appalachian Spring Suite’ is another well known and loved piece. With the success of his ballets ‘Billy the Kid’ and ‘Rodeo’, Copland received a ballet commission from the Martha Graham Dance company based on a story set in 19th century rural Pennsylvania. Premiered in 1944, it was performed in New York in 1945 and won for Copland not only the New York music Critic Circle Award for dramatic music, but also the Pulitzer Prize in music.

Copland uses Shaker themes, notably a theme and variations on the shaker tune “Simple Gifts”.

Finally, from living composer John Adams, who was born in1947 and is also a Pulitzer Prize winner, comes one of his most popular pieces, ‘Short Ride in a Fast Machine’. Written in 1986, it is also known as Fanfare for Great Woods. It was commissioned for the Great Woods Festival of the Pittsburg Symphony Orchestra. All of five minutes, it was inspired by being taken for a ride in a fancy sports car, “you know how it is when someone asks you to ride in a terrific spirts car, then you wish you hadn’t?”

Hear this amazing piece and more at Aberystwyth Arts Centre on Saturday, 29 March at 7.30pm.