At the center of this program is John Cage’s Four Dances, an early Cage work written in 1942 for the dancer and choreographer Hanya Holm. Premiering in New York City, it originally carried the title What So Proudly We Hail, a celebration of American sounds and styles in the midst of the uncertainty of World War II. The piece folds together elements of string-band music, autoharp strums, blues, and percussive grooves and claps into four movements that feel both personal and communal. It feels joyful without the moralizing sheen that sometimes covers mid-century “Americana” with an unfiltered exuberance that moves easily between the intimate and the collective. Calling for both instrumentalists and a dancer, the work has movement baked into it, reminding us that sound and movement are inseparable.

Listening to Four Dances, it’s impossible not to hear its kinship with Aaron Copland, who, two years later, would write Appalachian Spring. There was definitely something in the water. On this program, we meet Copland in several lights: the generous expansiveness of his late career Duo for flute and piano; the intimacy of In Evening Air and choral textures (or perhaps shape note textures) of Down a Country Lane, and finally Midday Thoughts, a piece written in 1944, lost for decades, and published only after his death that feels like a portal into the same world as Appalachian Spring and Cage’s Four Dances. Meredith Monk extends this lineage. With movement central to her artistic practice, you can feel the presence of bodies, and history, in Ellis Island and Phantom Waltz. 

Artists like Bobby Leecan and Robert Cooksey, alongside so many folk, blues, and old-time musicians,  shaped the sound world that would filter its way into the music of composers like Cage, Copland, and Monk. In their recordings as the South Street Trio, Cooksey’s harmonica sometimes sounds flute-like and the rhythmic crispness (and funkiness) of the guitar preceded similar textures in Cage’s prepared piano works. 

And as Four Dances continued to live in my head, I found hearing two later works that it conjured up in my ear: Dave Brubeck’s Unsquare Dance and Sinnerman (On Judgment Day) as made famous by Nina Simone. 

Together, the works on this program sketch a portrait of American music that is physical, reflective, and joyful. A tapestry of intertwined folk tradition and classical craft.