Aaron Copland
and the American Sound

Dealing notes like cards in a game of poker, Aaron Copland gambled on a new American sound. His roots in Brooklyn’s Jewish community, shuffled with depression-era jazz, folk music, and hymns earned him a hand flush with relentless innovation. How such an unlikely outsider managed to capture the spirit of a nation to create classics like Billy the Kid and Appalachian Spring is a tale possible only in America. In this episode of Keeping Score, Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony pare Copland and his music down to their essence, revealing the sound we now recognize as American.