Copland wrote the score to the film version of Thornton Wilder’s play in 1940. Comparable to Copland’s other orchestral suite, Appalachian Spring, Our Town is smaller in scale, but holds the same traditional Copland characteristics: the sunrise wake up call in the beginning, the call and response, exploiting the reflective quality of the woodwinds, brass chorales, and the desperately aching sounds of the strings. Performance led graduate conductor Su Jin Susanna Cervantes