Oregon Festival of American Music is pleased to welcome you to a new adventure: an annual festival dedicated to the exploration of American art music. This year's American Composers Series, Aaron Copland's American Vision, is a perfect theme to kick off this adventure for two reasons. First, in much the way George Gershwin can be said to be the quintessential American popular music composer, Aaron Copland must certainly be recognized as the quintessential composer of American art music. And the claim can be made for him not only because of his best-known compositions like Appalachian Spring and Fanfare for the Common Man, but also because of his more "complicated" works, many of which we will be hearng this week. It can be argued that it is the very breadth of Copland's musical palette that qualifies his vision as essentially American.