Martin Sheen

Martin Sheen is an American actor best known for film and television roles, appearing here as narrator rather than as a classical musician. He speaks the words in Copland's Lincoln Portrait, a piece that pairs orchestral music with a spoken text drawn from Abraham Lincoln's own writings and speeches.

This appearance centers on Aaron Copland's Lincoln Portrait, a work for orchestra and speaker written in 1942. The orchestra plays music that shifts between quiet, folk-tinged passages and big, open-textured fanfares, evoking both the American landscape and moments of national crisis. Partway through, the speaker steps in, reading lines assembled from Lincoln's letters, speeches, and the Gettysburg Address, over a hushed orchestral backdrop. A narrator's job here is not to sing or act in a theatrical sense, but to deliver these words plainly and clearly, letting the music underneath do the emotional work. The rest of the program leans into Copland's Americana style as well, with the brassy calls of Fanfare for the Common Man and the wide-open, gently syncopated textures of Appalachian Spring, alongside a cello concerto performed by soloist Rebecca Burkhardt.