Alec Baldwin To Narrate Copland’s ‘Lincoln Portrait’ for Pasadena Symphony Season Finale

Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning actor joins America@250 concert celebrating the nation's 250th birthday, while Grammy-nominated pianist Terrence Wilson steps in on Gershwin concerto

PASADENA — The Pasadena Symphony has tapped actor Alec Baldwin to narrate Aaron Copland’s Lincoln Portrait at its season finale concert, America@250, on May 30 at Ambassador Auditorium. The program, led by Music Director Brett Mitchell, celebrates the nation’s semiquincentennial with a survey of American orchestral music spanning the last century.

“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.

Baldwin has previously performed Lincoln Portrait with the Philadelphia Orchestra and serves as a board member and radio host of the New York Philharmonic. He follows narrators including Henry Fonda, James Earl Jones, Katharine Hepburn, Vincent Price and Copland himself.

Grammy-nominated pianist Terrence Wilson performs Gershwin’s Concerto in F. Wilson replaces pianist Joyce Yang, who was previously scheduled to perform Jonathan Leshnoff’s Rhapsody on America but is recovering from a temporary injury. The Baltimore Sun has hailed Wilson as “one of the biggest pianistic talents to have emerged in this country in the last 25 years.”

The program opens with John Williams’s Liberty Fanfare and also includes the Suite from Copland’s Appalachian Spring.

Baldwin’s credits include “The Hunt for Red October,” “Glengarry Glen Ross,” “Blue Jasmine” and “30 Rock,” for which he won three Emmy awards, three Golden Globes and seven consecutive Screen Actors Guild Awards — making him the actor with the most SAG Awards of all time.

Click here to read the official press release from the Pasadena Symphony, and here to read a preview from Pasadena Now.