Alec Baldwin [photo credit: Pasadena Symphony and POPS.]
The concert, titled “America @ 250,” pairs the Copland work with a program of American orchestral music timed to the approach of the nation’s semiquincentennial — the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, which falls on July 4, 2026. Music Director Brett Mitchell leads both a 2 p.m. matinee and an 8 p.m. evening performance. Concerts last approximately two hours and include an intermission.
“I can’t imagine a better way to wrap up our season and celebrate America’s 250th birthday than with these two extraordinary artists performing these two iconic works, and I couldn’t be more excited to share the stage with them both,” Mitchell said in a statement released by the Pasadena Symphony.
Baldwin, whose credits include “The Hunt for Red October,” “Glengarry Glen Ross,” “Blue Jasmine” and “30 Rock,” won three Emmy Awards, three Golden Globes and seven consecutive Screen Actors Guild Awards for the NBC comedy, according to the Pasadena Symphony press release. He is no stranger to the Copland piece. He has performed “Lincoln Portrait” with the Philadelphia Orchestra and serves as a board member and radio host of the New York Philharmonic, according to the press release. He joins a lineage of narrators that includes Henry Fonda, James Earl Jones, Katharine Hepburn, Vincent Price and Copland himself.
The first half of the program features Juilliard-trained, Grammy-nominated pianist Terrence Wilson on Gershwin’s Concerto in F, a jazz-infused piano concerto premiered in 1925. Wilson replaces pianist Joyce Yang, who had been scheduled to perform but is recovering from a temporary injury, according to the Pasadena Symphony. The Baltimore Sun has called Wilson “one of the biggest pianistic talents to have emerged in this country in the last 25 years.”
The program opens with John Williams’ “Liberty Fanfare,” written in 1986 to mark the centennial of the Statue of Liberty. The second half opens with the folk-inspired melodies of Copland’s “Appalachian Spring” Suite before Baldwin takes the stage for “Lincoln Portrait.”
The Pasadena Symphony, founded in 1928, is composed of musicians with extensive credits in film, television and the recording industry. Mitchell, the orchestra’s sixth music director, is in his second season leading the ensemble. He previously served as music director of the Colorado Symphony from 2017 to 2021. Ambassador Auditorium, the orchestra’s home since 2010, is a 1,262-seat hall on the former Ambassador College campus often called the “Carnegie Hall of the West.”
A free pre-concert discussion, “Insights,” begins one hour before each performance and features KUSC host Brian Lauritzen with Mitchell. The auditorium’s veranda offers two full-service beverage centers with wines, spirits, coffee, snacks and charcuterie before the concert and during intermission, and nearby Old Town Pasadena provides additional dining options, according to the Pasadena Symphony.
Tickets start at $65 and are available at www.pasadenasymphony-pops.org or by calling (626) 793-7172. Parking may be pre-purchased for $15 or bought onsite for $20, cash only. Valet parking is available for $30.
The season finale also marks a transition for the Pasadena Symphony’s calendar: the POPS Rusnak Summer Concert Series opens June 18 at the Los Angeles County Arboretum, led by Resident Pops Conductor Larry Blank.
Copland composed “Lincoln Portrait” in 1942, drawing on Lincoln’s speeches and letters to create a work he hoped would capture what he called “the mysterious sense of fatality that surrounds Lincoln’s personality.” On May 30, those words will fill a Pasadena concert hall five weeks before the nation turns 250.
