Ives at 150

October 20, 2024 marks the 150th birthday of America’s great original composer Charles Ives (1874 - 1954). Growing up in New England as the son of a bandmaster, Ives developed a uniquely American compositional voice as the leading American concert composer of his time. An iconic American genius whose story links to Transcendentalism, the Civil War, camp meetings, and Wall Street, Ives is often viewed as an outsider, an oddball, an accident, an avant-gardist ahead of his time, but also vividly exemplified his own American time and place: the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era. His music includes ragtime, gospel hymns, parade marches, and wild, visionary dissonance, all woven into a sound never before heard in classical concert music.