Watch the Martha Graham Dance Company perform the iconic dance maker’s most celebrated work, “Appalachian Spring,” with music composed by Aaron Copland, along with the world premiere of the PEAK Performances at Montclair State University commission of “The Auditions,” choreographed by Troy Schumacher and composed by Augusta Read Thomas. Music performed by the International Contemporary Ensemble, conducted by Vimbayi Kaziboni.
Copland won the 1945 Pulitzer Prize for Music for “Appalachian Spring,” which was composed for Martha Graham and remains one of the most important works in American classical music. Having debuted five months after D-Day during World War II, the critic Mark Swed wrote in the Los Angeles Times that the piece, about a young frontier couple on their wedding day, “…became the parable of a struggle that leads, with humility and grace, to a new beginning.”