A variety of experts on Aaron Copland helped create Aaron Copland's America at the Heckscher Museum and this Creative Expressions site.

Gail Levin
Curator of Aaron Copland's America at the Heckscher
Gail Levin currently serves as a Professor of Art History at Baruch College and the Graduate School of Clay University of New York. She has authored a number of books on Edward Hopper as well as on other aspects of twentieth century American art. Ms. Levin received her Ph.D. in Art History from Rutgers University. She also holds degrees from Tufts University and Simmons College and has studied at Harvard University, the University of Paris, and the Atlanta College of Art. Her articles have appeared in such scholarly journals as USA Today, Arts Magazine, and the New England Quarterly. Books she has authored or co-authored include Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography (Knopf, 1995), Twentieth Century American Painting: The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection (Harper and Row, 1988), Abstract Expressionism: The Formative Years (Cornell University Press, 1981), Theme and Variation: Kandinsky and the American Avant-Garde (Bullfinch Press, 1992) and the forthcoming Aaron Copland's America: A Cultural Perspective (Watson-Guptill, 2000), among many others.

Vivian Perlis
Expert for Creative Expressions
Ask her a question in October's Ask the Expert.

Vivian Perlis is a historian in American music, specializing in twentieth century composers. She is widely known for her publications, lectures, and recording and film productions. On the faculty of the Yale School of Music, Perlis is the Founding Director of Oral History of American Music, a unique archive of oral and videotaped interviews with leading figures in the music world. This important collection of source materials is well-known and widely used by scholars, historians, broadcasters, and producers. Book publications by Perlis include Charles Ives Remembered, An Oral History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), for which she was awarded the Kinkeldey Prize of American Musicological Society, and An Ives Celebration (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976). With composer Aaron Copland, Perlis co-authored Copland: 1900 Through 1942 (New York: St. Martins/Marek, 1984), which garnered a Deems Taylor/ASCAP Award, and Copland: Since 1943 (New York: St. Martins, 1989). Publications by Perlis include numerous articles and reviews. Among these are recordings of the music of Leo Ornstein and Charles Ives, and television documentaries on Ives, Eubie Blake, Aaron Copland, and John Cage. Among honors and awards received by Vivian Perlis are: The Charles Ives Award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters (1972); a Grammy nomination for "Charles Ives 110th Anniversary" (1974); the Harvey Kantor Award for excellence in the field of Oral History (1984); the Guggenheim Fellowship (1987); and the Irving Lowens Award for distinguished scholarship in American Music from the Sonneck Society (1991).

Michael Boriskin
Expert for Creative Expressions
Ask him a question in November's Ask the Expert.

Pianist Michael Boriskin is Artistic Director at The Copland House, a unique creative center for American music that is based at Aaron Copland's recently-restored and longtime home, located in New York's Lower Hudson River Valley. He has been widely hailed as one of the most versatile and imaginative American pianists of his generation, and has performed throughout the United States and in over thirty countries. A native New Yorker, Mr. Boriskin made his Lincoln Center solo recital debut on the Great Performers Series in 1997, and appears at many of the world's foremost concert venues and with leading international orchestras. In 1999, he played a major role in the New York Philharmonic's Completely Copland Festival. His innovative National Public Radio series, CENTURYVIEW, was heard regularly for three seasons on over 200 stations coast-to-coast. A prolific recording artist, he has a wide-ranging discography on BMG/Conifer, Harmonia Mundi, New World, Albany, Koch, CRI, and many other labels. He was recently appointed the Head of Piano Studies at the University of Bridgeport and Mr. Boriskin is also a much-sought after chamber music collaborator who has lectured extensively around the world.

Howard Pollack
Expert on Aaron Copland
Howard Pollack received his B.M. in Piano and Music History at the University of Michigan before earning his M.A. and Ph.D in Musicology from Cornell University. He is a recipient of a Newberry Library Award and other grants and is the author of numerous reviews and articles including entries for Aaron Copland and Walter Piston in the forthcoming New Grove Dictionary. He is also the co-editor of a collection of essays on the interaction of twentieth-century German music and literature. His fourth book Aaron Copland: The Life and Work of an Uncommon Man, is published by Henry Holt (1999).

Judith Tick
Expert on Aaron Copland
Judith Tick is a distinguished Professor of Music at Northeastern University. She has also taught at Brandeis University, Harvard University, Wellesley College, and Brooklyn College. After receiving her B.A. at Smith College, she earned her M.A. at University of California at Berkely and her Ph.D at the City University of New York. Among Judith Tick's honors and awards are the Deems Taylor Award for a biography entitled Ruth Crawford Seeger, A Composer's Search for American Music (Oxford University Press), a Music Teachers' National Association Award for best article of the year in American Music Teacher, a best article of the year award for "Charles Ives and Gender Ideology" from the Sonneck Society for the Study of American Music, an ASCAP Deems Award for the International Society of Women in Music, and an honorary citation/award for contributions to women in music from the New York Society of Women Composers. Among her many books and publications are Ruth Crawford Seeger, A Composer's Search for American Music, American Women Composers Before 1870 (UMI Research Press), The Lieder of Josephine Lang (Da Capo Press), and a forthcoming essay in Aaron Copland's America: A Cultural Perspective (Watson-Guptill, 2000). Her articles have been published in an array of scholarly journals including Journal of Music Theory, Journal of the American Musicological Society, and Musicology and Difference: Essays on Gender and Sexuality.