This concert/lecture integrates live music and dance performance, pre-recorded popular, folk, and classical music, and video montages of archival Cold War images. The program focuses on music directly inspired by the geopolitical struggle between western and communist ideology that played out in proxy wars, espionage, and the Space Race. Hear music as propaganda, music as patriotism, music as protest, music as satire, and music about the threat of nuclear annihilation written just for fun. 

Featured composers include Aaron Copland, the “Dean of American Music” whose livelihood was threatened by Senator Joseph McCarthy and Dmitri Shostakovich, the Soviet composer whose very life was threatened by Joseph Stalin. The evening also includes music by mathematician turned entertainer turned mathematician Tom Lehrer, songs that rhyme missile with whistle, and a salute to Cold War-inspired television shows and movies.

This is an event in the 2025-2026 Cook Inlet Historical Society Speaker Series. These presentations are virtual, free, and open to the public via Crowdcast; the same link can be used to review the recorded event after the program conclusion. Those attending in person should use the 7th Avenue entrance to access the auditorium.  

Enjoy performances by area thespians and musicians, including program host Kate Egan, musical performers Christine Keene, Kate Moore, Mari Hahn, Don Endres, Laura Koenig, and Janet Carr-Campbell, and dancers Evelyn Johnson and Mary Reed. The producer and coordinator for this event is Laura Koenig. Laura is a member of the Cook Inlet Historical Society Board of Directors, artistic director for the Anchorage Festival of Music, and an adjunct professor in the Music Department at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

Images: (from left to right) Leon Carr, Leo Corday, and Leo Langlois, Bert, the Turtle: The Duck and Cover Song (Sheldon Music, 1953); Aaron Copland, Dirge in the Woods (Boosey & Hawkes, 1954); “Spy vs. Spy” created by Antonio Prohías for Mad Magazine; Старые Погудки Антисоветской Утки-Дудки / Starye Pogudki Antisovetskoi Utki-Dudki / [The Old Tunes of the Anti-Soviet Duck-Flute], 1979; Dmitri Shostakovich, 1950, CBS Television, Public domain; Jerry Enler, Sputnik or Satellite Girl, Jerry Enler the Four Ekkos,1957, LP: Brunswick 9-55037; Cornelius Cardew, Treatise (The Gallery Upstairs Press, 1967), 150; Aaron Copland, 1962, CBS Television, Public domain; Dorothy Marder, “Four Women by Fence, 1975,” Swarthmore College Peace Collection; George Crumb, “Agnus Dei” from Makrokosmos, Volume II ( C.F. Peters, 1973); “The BADGER explosion on April 18, 1953,” NNSA/Nevada Field Office.

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