Performed live at Bryant Park on September 17, 2022, Celebrating New York, highlighted composers who have influenced the artistic landscape of New York and works that were inspired by our great city. A full livestream of the concert is available to watch on-demand on ASO Online through November 1, 2022. 

The program opens with a work by one of New York City’s native sons, Aaron Copland, arguably the best known American classical composer of the 20th century. The second piece is by one of the finest and most productive African American composers, William Grant Still, to whom the ASO dedicated an entire program at Lincoln Center in 2009. It features a work by a remarkable composer and teacher (at Hunter College), a pioneering advocate of women composers, Louise Talma. Followed by a work by one of the most compelling and imaginative modernist composers of the last century, Jacob Druckman, who like Louise Talma, left an admirable legacy as a teacher of composition. The program concludes with an idiosyncratic arrangement of music by Johann Sebastian Bach, put together for the New York Philharmonic by its then music director, Gustav Mahler.

This concert was presented for free in partnership with the Bryant Park Corporation to celebrate the ASO’s 60th Anniversary.

This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

The ASO’s Vanguard Series is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.