Among the works on the seven-week program are The Tender Land, Copland's only opera; Marc Blitztein's opera Regina, starring Lauren Flanigan; and the Clifford Odets play Rocket to the Moon. The Martha Graham Dance Company will perform Appalachian Spring, set to music by Copland; Cave of the Heart, set to music by Samuel Barber; and H_rodiade, set to music by Paul Hindemith.

The 15-year-old Bard Music Festival, the multi-disciplinary event at the center of SummerScape, takes place over two weekends in August. Themed "Aaron Copland and His World" this year, it will include talks, panel discussions, and performances by Bard president Leon Botstein and his American Symphony Orchestra of music by a wide range of American and 20th-century composers, including Leonard Bernstein, Britten, Elliott Carter, Gershwin, Lou Harrison, Ives, Jerome Kern, Ned Rorem, Roger Sessions, and Virgil Thomson.

A series of film screenings includes William Wyler's The Heiress, which has a Copland score; other Wyler films; and other movies of the period with scores by Copland and Virgil Thompson.

Also on the schedule are SummerScape's first jazz mini-festival, with Vince Giordano and His Nighthawks and Jazz at Lincoln Center's Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra, and a performance of the musical The Golden Apple accompanied by the ASO.