Concert Program Notes
University Symphony Orchestra • Saturday, October 7, 2023
The Creatures of Prometheus Overture, op. 43 | LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Beethoven was commissioned to compose the music for the ballet The Creatures of Prometheus to be presented at the Burgtheater in Vienna in March 1801. Italian choreographer Salvatore Viganò created the ballet for presentation to Queen Maria Theresa and tapped Beethoven as his creative partner in hopes of maximizing the impact of his work. The moment was significant for the still-young composer: a high-profile commission that would provide him with exposure and much-needed financial reward. Creatively, it was also an excellent opportunity to work on his first major stage work—Beethoven composed over an hour of music for the piece—and it would end up being the only full-fledged ballet he would compose in his lifetime.
Beethoven was thrilled to be composing for the court stage and enthusiastically embraced the scenario of the Greek Prometheus myth, reinterpreted in the spirit of the Enlightenment. The Prometheus of myth is severely punished for stealing fire from the gods and giving it to humans. In the ballet he brings two statues to life and enlightens them with knowledge and art. Instead of depicting the prolonged martyrdom of Prometheus, the ballet presents his death, rebirth, and the subsequent celebration of his creatures, who begin to understand his heroism. The Creatures of Prometheus opened on March 28, 1801, for 28 performances, a modest success compared to other ballets, but ironically, as pointed out by David Wyn Jones, the largest number of public performances of any of Beethoven’s works in his lifetime. The ballet has hardly ever been revived, though Constantin Floros was able to reconstruct most of the choreography in the 1970’s. Nor has Beethoven’s complete music—an overture and 17 numbers—become a feature of concert programs. Had audiences remained familiar with the entire piece they would have recognized its importance to the Eroica Symphony: not only do the variations of the Eroica finale share the theme of the ballet’s final section, but other movements borrow from the ballet as well. Like the more commonly cited Symphony, the ballet plays an important role in Beethoven’s self-proclaimed “new artistic path,” in the symbolism of heroism, and in the composer’s struggle against his own physical suffering from increasing deafness. Only the Overture has survived in the concert hall. Setting the scene rather than previewing all the events of the story, the Overture focuses on the ballet’s concluding section, from which it draws its effervescent main theme and possibly its contrasting second theme from certain triadic motives. Connections to the First Symphony might also be perceived in the opening chord of the solemn introduction and the configuration of the first and second themes. As with many overtures in sonata form, Beethoven skirts a real development, offering elaborated material to close the exposition and a brilliant coda.
Appalachian Spring Suite (Ballet for Martha) | AARON COPLAND
Aaron Copland's name is, for many, synonymous with American music. It was his pioneering achievement to break free from Europe and create a concert music that is recognizably, characteristically American. At the same time, he was able to stamp his music with a compositional personality so vivid as to transcend stylistic boundaries, making every work—from the easily-grasped to the demanding—identifiable as his alone.
Aaron Copland and Martha Graham had flirted with the idea of collaborating as early as 1941, when Graham was envisioning a ballet that might be described as Medea set in New England. When Copland didn’t evince much enthusiasm, Graham turned her thoughts instead to something that would reflect the sort of gentle spirit that had made such an impact in Thornton Wilder’s 1938 play Our Town. This would be the emotional heart of Appalachian Spring. According to Copland, the first script he received from Graham began: “This is a legend of American living. It is like the bone structure, the inner frame that holds together a people.” Such an approach was not atypical of Graham’s method, and, although it understandably vexed many of the composers with whom she worked, it appears not to have rattled Copland, who diplomatically called his score-in-progress simply Ballet for Martha and wisely allowed the project to develop considerably in Graham’s imagination before he invested much time in actually committing music to the page. As it developed, Graham’s scenario seemed a conflation of many strands of American social history, all intersecting around the time of the Civil War in some generalized place in the American heartland. Eventually the setting coalesced in rural western Pennsylvania, a region well known to Graham, who spent her childhood in the town of Allegheny, close to Pittsburgh.
Since the action of the ballet takes place in the springtime, everybody assumes, not unreasonably, that the “spring” of Appalachian Spring refers to the season. In fact, the title was attached to the piece only a few weeks before the premiere, when Graham stumbled across those words in a poem by Hart Crane. In the poem the Appalachian spring is unquestionably a stream of water trickling through the hills, rather than a season. Graham seems to have been taken with the words in an abstract sense, and since no babbling brook appears in the setting of her ballet, it seems likely that she herself meant the title to refer to the season rather than to the stream. That is certainly the implication in the brief scenario she supplied for the ballet’s premiere:
Part and parcel of our lives is that moment of Pennsylvania spring when there was “a garden eastward of Eden.”
Spring was celebrated by a man and woman building a house with joy and love and prayer; by a revivalist and his followers in their shouts of exaltation; by a pioneering woman with her dreams of the Promised Land.
In the end, the ballet’s plot was straightforward. A bride and bridegroom get to know one another, somewhat shyly and nervously, and members of their community, including a revivalist preacher, express their own sentiments. The couple grows more comfortable with the ritual of daily life that lies ahead, their humility underscored by Copland’s use of the Shaker tune “Simple Gifts,” and they greet the future with a sense of serenity. The “Simple Gifts” section of Appalachian Spring is the part that has lodged most insistently in the popular memory, and Copland’s variations on that melody are indeed remarkable. Nonetheless, it is a curious inclusion in the context of the final scenario. Copland later remarked, “My research evidently was not very thorough, since I did not realize that there have never been Shaker settlements in rural Pennsylvania!”
Although the general sound of Appalachian Spring can be found elsewhere in Copland’s works of this period, this is the music that established its vocabulary as representing the quintessential “American sound.” Rich in wide-open, disjunct intervals, it is a sound that became much imitated by American composers in ensuing years—including very often by Copland himself. That it seemed to evoke something inherently American made it irresistible to composers of strictly commercial music, and in a sentimentalized form it thrives to this day as the inspiration for countless movie and television soundtracks. Copland himself was aware of the pitfalls of empty nostalgia that might torpedo his score, and some years later, after he had conducted it frequently, he would write, “I have often admonished orchestras, professional and otherwise, not to get too sweet or too sentimental with it.”
Symphony No. 5 in E Minor, op. 64 | PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY
When Tchaikovsky began work on his Fifth Symphony in 1888, it had been over 10 years since the completion of his Fourth. While the Fourth had emerged out of personal crisis (Tchaikovsky’s disastrous sham marriage and his subsequent mental collapse), the Fifth came at a time of professional challenge for the composer. Ostensibly at the height of his career, Tchaikovsky had fears that his creative inspiration was drying up. In a letter from June 10, he confessed to his patron and confidante Nadezhda von Meck:
“I’m terribly anxious to prove not only to others but also to myself that I’m not yet played out. I often have doubts about myself, and ask myself, hasn’t the time now come to stop, haven’t I always overstrained my imagination too much, hasn’t the source dried up?”
If this sounds vaguely familiar, you might be remembering Tchaikovsky’s similar expressions of anxiety over an absence of creative spark during the composition of his 1890 sextet, Souvenir de Florence, which was performed earlier this summer. As in that case, his “composer’s block” dissipated rapidly. By the end of August, Tchaikovsky had completed the score of the new symphony and even expressed some tentative pride in his accomplishment.
After the initial performances, though, his insecurities were fed by some negative reviews (despite an enthusiastic audience reception). The critics—primed by Tchaikovsky’s previous two symphonies, which had explicit extra-musical programs attached to them—seemed to judge the work against their own narrative interpretations. These criticisms fundamentally misconstrued a piece that was designed (at least in part) to explore the possibilities of an evolving musical motto as a structural symphonic force. Tchaikovsky took the condemnations to heart, however, and declared the symphony “a failure…repellent, superfluous, patchy, and insincere,” rekindling his growing fears of his eroding skills. However, his monumental Sixth Symphony lay ahead of him, and the passionate response of the concert-going public for the past 120 years has reduced the initial harsh assessment of the Fifth to an amusing historical sidebar.
Although not the most complex opening symphonic movement in Tchaikovsky’s output, the first movement is arguably the richest in theme and melody. Tchaikovsky skirts the line between march and dance with his material here. There are moments of dark contemplation (as in the introductory clarinet melody and the closing, fading march), childlike joy (in the swirling, syncopated violin-led dance), and exuberant triumph (in the culmination of the main theme). Keep the opening clarinet melody (which Tchaikovsky considered to represent “complete resignation before Fate”) in your ear; it is the “motto” theme that will return in each subsequent movement, taking on a completely different character by the end.
The beautifully lyrical second movement is marked con alcuna licenza, or “with some license,” indicating that a certain freedom in tempo may be exercised to better shape the sustained melodies, the first being introduced by a soulful solo horn. A quicker-moving middle section leads to a more animated revisitation of the original themes, with a surprisingly violent interjection of the motto theme from the first movement.
Right from the start, Tchaikovsky lets us know that the third movement won’t be an ordinary waltz. Rather than emphasizing the first of the three beats of each measure as is typical in the waltz, the accompaniment completely rests on these beats. Later, a bassoon melody enters and eventually settles into an extended syncopation, undermining the three-beat feel altogether. At the very end of the movement, in the clarinets and bassoon, we get a reminder of the “resignation before Fate” motto theme from the first movement in preparation for its grand transformation.
The Finale immediately picks up on the hint and gives us a completely recast version of the motto theme, now in a majestic major key. The dramatic, bold gestures that pervade this movement culminate in a final triumphant, full-voiced return of this transformed march theme, a rousing conclusion to Tchaikovsky’s moving work.
-Jon Kochavi
University Wind Symphony with Hub New Music • Friday, October 13, 2023
An Outdoor Overture | AARON COPLAND
A funny thing about Aaron Copland’s buoyant, invigoratingly open-air piece, An Outdoor Overture: it was written in 1938 for performance in the indoor auditorium of the High School of Music and Art in New York City. The work owes its existence to a request from the school’s orchestra director, Alexander Richter, for a composition to begin the institution’s long-term plan to concentrate on “American music for American Youth.” Who better to inaugurate such a campaign than an American composer who had so recently effected a radical and crucial stylistic change in his music, a change from austerity and dissonance into folkish simplicity? After beginning with the south-of-the-border folksiness of El Salón Mexico in 1936, Copland settled creatively within the continental U.S. for a high school opera, The Second Hurricane, in 1937, and followed it with An Outdoor Overture, in the same year (1938) as the first of the Americana ballets, Billy the Kid.
An Outdoor Overture could be considered a warm-up for the extended ballets that followed, although Copland interrupted work on Billy the Kid to write it. Still, it emerged as a fully-formed essay in the composer’s new style. The melodic materials are the essence of simplicity. The main theme proceeds from a descending C-major triad and contains plenty of straightforward scales. Later comes a rousing march tune that almost slips into “Camptown Races,” strangely enough with a slight Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev accent, followed by a lyric idea sung first by the flute.
In composing the piece, Copland kept in mind that, although he was writing for a high school orchestra of near-professional capability, he still had to rein in the overall difficulty. By the same token, he did not underestimate the expertise of the student players; devising music in his typically syncopated, brilliant manner, he provided them, and professional orchestras, with an attractive work in his emerging Americana style.
In 1941, Edwin Franko Goldman, a celebrated American band conductor, convinced Copland to make a second version of the work for his professional band in New York City. The Goldman Band premiered this new version in 1942.
-program note by Orrin Howard
Yosemite Autumn | MARK CAMPHOUSE
Mark Camphouse (b. 1954) is an American composer and conductor. He has written more than a dozen emotional works for wind band. He is also Director of Bands Emeritus at George Mason University. He is the creator and editor of the series Composers on Composing for Band, published by GIA Publications. He coordinates the National Band Association’s Young Composer Mentor Project, which matches emerging composers with experienced professionals.
Camphouse wrote Yosemite Autumn in 2004 on a commission from Jason Noble and the Miami Coral Park High School Wind Orchestra in Miami, Florida. He provides a detailed program note on the piece:
I put forth considerable effort in trying to separate my seemingly non-stop professional activities from increasingly all-too-infrequent family activities. The first ten days of a
two-week family vacation in 2003 to the Northern California region was shaping up just that way: San Francisco was fascinating and entertaining, Big Sur was spectacular, and the Wine Country, Redwood and Lassen National Parks, and Lake Tahoe were all truly magnificent! Everything was going as planned. Musical projects and work-related responsibilities were some 2,700 miles back east. I was on vacation, enjoying some “quality time” with my family in the truly gorgeous and exciting Northern California region for the very first time.
Then we reached Yosemite.
How could any human not be profoundly moved by such stunning beauty? How could any American not take immense pride in our nation being so richly blessed with such an abundance of natural beauty? But, at the same time, we Americans share a genuine concern over the dangers of shortsighted and ill-advised environmental policies of government as well as private sector greed with related encroachment and pollution issues.
And finally, how could any composer not be inspired and hopelessly tempted to “get the creative juices flowing” in trying to capture the rich history and majestic landscape that is Yosemite? The remaining portion of this family vacation was doomed. I was there physically with my family—hiking, horseback riding, and doing the things tourists do. But the creative part of me was definitely somewhere else—absorbed in thinking about ways I might try to go about capturing musically the awe-inspiring sights and sounds of Yosemite: Glacier Point, Half Dome, El Capitan, and Yosemite Falls, just to name a few.
The great American naturalist, conservationist, and writer John Muir certainly said it best: “No temple made with hands can compare with Yosemite. Every rock in its walls seems to glow with life.”
Yosemite Autumn is dedicated to the memory of my mother-in-law, Daphna Lodean Wilson (1930-2003), whose spirit will always seem “to glow with life.”
The Bird-While | GALA FLAGELLO
Gala Flagello is a composer, educator, and nonprofit director whose music has been described as “both flesh and spirit, intensely psychological without sacrificing concrete musical enjoyment” (I Care If You Listen). She is the Festival Director and co-founder of the nonprofit contemporary music festival Connecticut Summerfest.
Gala was selected as a 2023 Composition Fellow at Tanglewood Music Center, a 2022–2023 Composer Fellow at the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music, and a 2022 Composition Fellow at Aspen Music Festival. She was awarded the Musicians Club of Women
Gerts and Hammond Award (First Prize, 2022 Composition Competition) and was commissioned by Hub New Music to write The Bird-While, a concerto for Hub New Music and symphonic winds. Other recent commissions include works for the Albany Symphony, the Virginia Tech Wind Ensemble, the Peabody Essex Museum, the Keene State College Concert Band, the University of Michigan Men’s Glee Club, and the Young New Yorkers’ Chorus. Recent accolades include the 2021 Composer Residency at Promenade Opera Project, first prize in the 2020 Sinta Quartet Composition Competition, and the 2020 Michigan Music Teachers Association Commissioned Composer Prize.
Gala is committed to forging ties with performers and educators alike through intricate collaborative projects. Some of these include Educational New Music for Developing Voices (2017), The Contemporary Solo Horn (2018), and the web premiere events for her wind quintet Matriarch (2020) and saxophone quartet Dabble (2022), each supported by the University of Michigan’s Excellence in Entrepreneurship, Career Empowerment & Leadership (EXCEL) Lab. Her Self-Talk was written for Vanguard Reed Quintet who premiered the piece at National Sawdust in 2018 and included it on their debut album, Red Leaf Collection.
Gala strives to use music as a vehicle for social change, frequently engaging with topics such as environmental advocacy, gender equity, and mental health in her work. In January 2021, she participated in the Georgia Run-Off Commissioning Project, raising funds for the senate campaigns of Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff. Other recent projects speaking to these issues include commissions from Diversify the Stand; bassoonist Joseph Swift for his project “Room to Breathe;” mezzo-soprano Samantha Williams for her “American Patriots” which investigates the concept of the American Dream; and Latitude 49 for their Bagatelles Project in support of the Coalition for African Americans in the Performing Arts.
Gala is a passionate educator in the classroom, privately, and as a guest lecturer. She has been engaged to speak on composition, orchestration, arts administration, and entrepreneurship at institutions such as University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Virginia Tech, Heidelberg University, and Central Connecticut State University.
Gala holds a Bachelor of Music in Composition degree from The Hartt School, a Master of Music in Composition degree from the University of Michigan, and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Michigan, where she was awarded the Dorothy Greenwald Graduate Fellowship.
Please visit www.galaflagello.com for more information.
The composer’s inspiration for The Bird-While is outlined below:
The Bird-While is a concerto for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and symphonic winds commissioned by Hub New Music. The piece is titled after and based on Keith Taylor’s poem “Acolytes in the Bird-While,” which explores the flora and fauna of Michigan and the struggle to persist in the face of climate change. I aimed to write a concerto for an unconventional group of instruments that demonstrates their virtuosity while providing a platform for awareness of and education around environmental and climate justice. Each movement derives its title from Taylor’s poem, drawing attention to pivotal lines in the poem’s narrative.
The first movement, “Avian Gods,” is inspired by the calls of the pileated woodpecker and redstart warbler, two Michigan bird species central to Taylor’s poem. This movement’s 5/8 motif follows the woodpecker’s five-note call, often separated into three- and two-note groupings that can be heard in both the soloists’ and ensemble’s parts. Snap pizzicato in the solo violin and cello evoke the woodpecker’s pecking, and the ensemble’s driving 5/8 ostinato conjures the warbler’s high, repetitive five-note shriek.
The second movement, “Fragile, Vanishing Gifts,” highlights the individual natural elements that surround us every day. The flute, clarinet, violin, and cello articulate the future loss of these elements due to climate change as they introduce the movement’s theme separately, then come together in canon; our environment is a delicate balance between the individual and the collective. This theme originates from my Moon Dream (2020) for solo soprano saxophone, an early pandemic-era lullaby commissioned by Latitude 49 for their Bagatelles Project in support of the Coalition for African Americans in the Performing Arts.
The third movement, “Survive,” is both a question and a call to action: can the performers—and our environment—withstand disruption and damage? As I was writing this movement, my best friend and horn player, Marina Krol Hodge, suddenly passed, leaving me pondering my own ability to weather life’s storms. Dedicated to Marina, “Survive” features horn solos and a brass chorale throughout to commemorate her bright, resilient spirit and her support of new music. The movement’s title also references the way in which music itself might survive through history, which I illustrate by quoting the prelude of J.S. Bach’s Violin Partita No. 3. Two more nods to Bach appear later in this movement in the solo violin and cello. Piping plover calls are referenced in the fleeting, staccato woodwind parts, and the movement’s focus on quintal harmony and recurring fifths harken to the woodpecker’s opening five-note call.
5% of proceeds from The Bird-While sales and rentals will be donated to the Bird Center of Michigan. More information can be found at www.birdcentermi.org.
Acolytes in the Bird-While
by Keith Taylor
We have lingered in that space
granted by a woodpecker
before it disappears on the far side
of a dying elm. We have held
our collective breath as a warbler—
redstart, prothonotary, or golden-winged—
brushes across our shoulders. We have prayed
to avian gods we don’t believe in
that piping plovers may avoid
windows, cats, and windmills,
will survive habitat loss,
climate change, and oil spills,
to allow us that one
immeasurable moment at sunset
when we count their glowing bills
among our fragile, vanishing gifts.
The Bird-while, by Keith Taylor
(Detroit, Mi.: Wayne State University Press, © 2017).
Used with the permission of the author.
Deciduous | VIET CUONG
Called “alluring” and “wildly inventive” by The New York Times, the music of American composer Viet Cuong has been performed on six continents by musicians and ensembles such as the New York Philharmonic, Eighth Blackbird, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Sō Percussion, Alarm Will Sound, Atlanta Symphony, Sandbox Percussion, Albany Symphony, PRISM Quartet, and Dallas Winds, among many others. Cuong’s music has been featured in venues such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and the Kennedy Center, and his works for wind ensemble have amassed several hundreds of performances worldwide. Passionate about bringing these different facets of the contemporary music community together, his recent projects include a concerto for Eighth Blackbird with the United States Navy Band. Cuong also enjoys exploring the unexpected and whimsical, and he is often drawn to projects where he can make peculiar combinations and sounds feel enchanting or oddly satisfying. His works thus include a snare drum solo, percussion quartet concerto, and double oboe concerto. He is currently the California Symphony’s Young American Composer-in-Residence, the Pacific Symphony’s Composer-in-Residence, and serves as Assistant Professor of Music Composition at The University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Cuong holds degrees from Princeton University (MFA/PhD), the Curtis Institute of Music (AD), and Peabody Conservatory (BM/MM).
Regarding Deciduous, the composer writes:
For a long time after my father passed away, I felt like I had “lost my leaves.” In the ways that leaves harness light to create energy for trees and plants, I felt like I had so little left to harness creatively. Many days, I feared those leaves would never grow back. After struggling for months to write, I finally found some healing while creating Deciduous. This involved revisiting chord progressions that brought me solace as a child and activating them in textures that I have enjoyed exploring as an adult. The piece cycles through these chord progressions, building to a moment where it’s stripped of everything and must find a way to renew itself. While I continue to struggle with this loss, I have come to understand that healing is not as much of a linear process as it is a cyclical journey, where, without fail, every leafless winter is followed by a spring.
Southern Harmony | DONALD GRANTHAM
In a citation awarded by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, Donald Grantham’s music has been praised for its “elegance, sensitivity, lucidity of thought, clarity of expression and fine lyricism.” Grantham earned his Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Oklahoma and Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition from the University of Southern California. He is the recipient of numerous awards and prizes in composition, including the Prix Lili Boulanger, the Nissim/ASCAP Orchestral Composition Prize, First Prize in the Concordia Chamber Symphony’s Awards to American Composers, a Guggenheim Fellowship, three grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, three First Prizes in the NBA/ Revelli Competition, two First Prizes in the ABA/Ostwald Competition, and First Prize in the National Opera Association’s Biennial Composition Competition. Southern Harmony, for wind ensemble, won both the National Band Association/William D. Revelli Prize, and the American Bandmasters Association/Ostwald Award. Grantham resides in Austin, Texas, and is Professor of Composition at the University of Texas.
Southern Harmony was composed on commission from the Southeastern Conference of Band Directors and premiered on February 27, 1999, at the National Convention of College Band Directors National Association.
Regarding the heritage of the piece, the composer writes the following:
In 1835, William “Singin’ Billy” Walker’s songbook Southern Harmony was first published. This remarkable collection contains, according to its title page, “a choice collection of tunes, hymns, psalms, odes, and anthems, selected from the most eminent authors in the United States.” In fact, few of the numbers in the book are identified as the work of a particular composer. Many are folksongs, others are traditional sacred hymns, while some are revival songs that were widely known and sung throughout the South. The book was immensely popular, selling 600,000 copies before the Civil War, and commonly stocked “along with groceries and tobacco” in stores across the American frontier.
The music in Southern Harmony has a somewhat exotic sound to modern audiences. The tunes often use modal or pentatonic rather than major or minor scales. The harmony is even more out of the ordinary, employing chord positions, voice leading, and chord progressions that are far removed from the European music that dominated concert halls at the time. These harmonies were dismissed as crude and primitive when they first appeared. Now they are regarded as inventive, unique, and powerfully representative of the American character. In his use of several tunes from Southern Harmony, the composer has attempted to preserve the flavor of the original vocal works in a setting that fully realizes the potential of the wind symphony and the individual characteristics of each song.
University Singers & Concert Choir • Sunday, October 22, 2023
The Music of Living | DAN FORREST
Dan Forrest is a highly regarded American composer known for his contributions to choral and orchestral music. He has earned recognition for his ability to craft emotive and spiritually uplifting compositions. Forrest's music ranges from being performed by professional ensembles around the world to the accessibility of being performed by church and community choirs of any skill level. The Music of Living is a text that speaks of the joy of life that has been given to all of us. This composition is a favorite among honor choirs, festivals, and conferences around the country.
Giver of life, creator of all that is lovely,
Teach me to sing the words to your song.
I want to feel the music of living;
And not fear the sad songs, but from them make new songs,
Composed of both laughter and tears.
Giver of life, creator of all that is lovely,
Teach me to dance to the sounds of your world.
I want to move in rhythm with your plan.
Help me to follow your leading
To risk even falling, to rise and keep trying,
For you are leading the dance.
Musica Animam Tangens | JOSHUA SHANK
Joshua Shank has earned acclaim for his innovative and emotionally resonant compositions. Shank's music often combines elements of traditional choral writing with modern techniques such as chord clusters with lots of dissonance, resulting in a unique and compelling sound. What makes Musica Animam Tangens even more unique is the Latin text that was translated from a contemporary poem in English. This piece was the winner of the 2003 Raymond W. Brock composition contest as a part of an American Choral Directors Association annual conference. It is dedicated to one of Shank’s mentors and the late conductor of the Nordic Choir at Luther College, Weston Noble.
Musica animam tangens
Maria vitae effundens
Flumina cor liberantia omnes
amore amantia
Musica sonans resonans
Implens meam essentiam
Meam inundat animam
Velut fluctibus montem
submersum
Ut tangam Deum.
Music touching the soul;
Exhaling breathless oceans of life
Currents that free hearts
giving love
The sound of music echoing
Filling my essence
It floods my soul
The mountain of my existence
And overflow my soul
to touch God.
Tykus Tykus | VACLOVAS AUGUSTINAS
Vaclovas Augustinas is a prominent Lithuanian composer and conductor. Born in 1959, he has made significant contributions to the world of choral music. Augustinas is known for his ability to blend traditional Lithuanian folk elements with contemporary choral techniques, creating music that resonates with audiences worldwide. His piece Tykus Tykus is a double choir a cappella composition that tells the story of a young man who seduces a young lady. Rather than marrying her, he hops on his horse and rides off to battle. The word tykus means “quietly” which is how the young man sneaks off on his horse without the young lady discovering his leave.
Tykus tykus
Tai tykus bernelis,
Tai tykus raitelis,
Tai tykiai privilioj
Mergelę klėtelėn.
Žalią rūtų vainikėlį
Tai tykiai nuėmė
Rūtų vainikėlį,
Tai tykiai numovė
Aukselio žiedelį.
Bernelis pabudo,
Nelaimę pajuto, -
An žirgelio sėdo,
In vainelę jojo.
Quietly, quietly
What a quiet lad,
what a calm rider,
how quietly he enticed away
a maiden into the granary.
Green rue crown
How calmly he took away
her maidenhood,
how quietly he worked off
her golden ring.
But suddenly he awaked
and sensed danger, -
took a horse
and moved away to the battle.
All Works of Love | JOAN SZYMKO
Joan Szymko has gained recognition for her ability to craft music that addresses important social and cultural themes. Szymko's compositions often explore topics such as love, justice, and peace. All Works of Love was another winner of a Raymond W. Brock composition contest in 2010 at the American Choral Directors Association annual conference in Tucson, AZ. The text for All Works of Love is taken from the words of Mother Teresa and is set to lyrical and melodic vocal lines as well as a flowing piano accompaniment. The many different meters and time signatures make for a more natural and conversational vocal line that can more clearly communicate the simple message of peace, belonging, and love.
All Works of Love
If we have no peace
it is because we have forgotten that
we belong to each other. Remember.
All works of love are works of peace.
Measure Me Sky | ELAINE HAGENBERG
Elaine Hagenberg has gained recognition for her ability to craft emotive and spiritually uplifting compositions. Hagenberg's music often explores themes of nature, spirituality and the human condition. The text of Measure Me Sky by poet Leonora Spyer evokes a sense of yearning and introspection as the singer contemplates their place in the world and compares it to the vastness of the sky above. The music that Hagenberg pairs with the text mirrors these emotions with lush harmonies, soaring melodies, a driving accompaniment, and delicate textures, creating a powerful and evocative musical experience.
Measure me, sky!
Tell me I reach by a song
Nearer the stars;
I have been little so long.
Horizon, reach out!
Catch at my hands,
stretch me taut,
Rim of the world:
Widen my eyes by a thought.
Sky, be my depth,
Wind, be my width
and my height,
World, my heart’s span;
Loveliness, wings for my flight.
I Love You/What A Wonderful World | ARR. CRAIG HELLA JOHNSON
Craig Hella Johnson is the founder and artistic director of the Grammy-winning vocal ensemble Conspirare, which is renowned for its innovative and emotionally resonant performances. Johnson's arrangements and compositions often combine elements of classical choral music with contemporary and popular influences, resulting in a unique and captivating sound. "I Love You/What A Wonderful World" is a choral arrangement that combines two beloved songs, "I Love You" by 70s Christian Rock artist Larry Norman and "What A Wonderful World" by 60s Jazz/Pop artist Louis Armstrong, into a single harmonious expression of love and gratitude. The arrangement seamlessly weaves together the lyrics and melodies of the two songs, creating a musical narrative that explores themes of love, beauty, and the appreciation of life's simple pleasures.
We can be together for now and forever
I love you, I love you
And when I’m prayin’, I hear him sayin’,
“I love you, I love you”
People all over the world,
They’re opening up, they’re comin’ around
And they’re sayin’, “I love you, I love you…”
I see skies of blue and clouds of white
Bright blessed day and dark sacred night
And I think to myself, “What a wonderful world.”
The colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces of people going by
I see friends shaking hands saying, "How do you do?"
They're really saying, “I love you.”
I hear babies cry, I watch them grow
They'll learn much more than I'll ever know.
And I think to myself, “What a wonderful world.”
Operator | ARR. KIRBY SHAW
Kirby Shaw is a highly regarded composer, arranger, conductor, and educator in the world of choral and vocal music. His music spans a wide range of genres, from jazz and pop to traditional choral styles. Shaw has a knack for reimagining classic songs and making them accessible to contemporary vocal groups. His creative approach to vocal harmony and style adds a fresh perspective to the original song while preserving its timeless appeal. His arrangement of Operator sticks very closely to the original version written and performed by the widely popular vocal jazz ensemble from the 60s, Manhattan Transfer. This song is full of energetic and fun vocal solos as well as a live jazz band.
Operator, give me information.
Information, give me long distance.
Long distance, give me heaven...
Operator, information, give me Jesus on the line
Operator, information, I'd like to speak to a friend of mine.
Oh prayer is the number, faith is the exchange
Heaven is the street and Jesus is his name
Operator, information, won't you tell me why
Operator, information, don't try to tell me what number to call
My mother used this number when I was very small
And everytime she dialed it, she always got the call
Operator, information, please give me Jesus on the line.
Bura Fera | ARR. OLLIE LAMBERT
Traditional Yorta Yorta
Bura Fera is a song that comes to us from the Yorta Yorta people of Australia, an Aboriginal Australian tribe from Southeastern Australia. The Yorta Yorta people learned the song from a series of performances given by the Fisk Jubilee Singers, one of the first all-Black choral ensembles in the United States. The Fisk Jubilee Singers toured Australia in 1886, and performed African-American Spirituals and gospel music throughout the country. One of the pieces they performed, “Turn Back Pharaoh’s Army,” left an immense impression on the Yorta Yorta people. No one knows how the song became translated into the native language, but it has been passed down for many years with the title “Bura Fera.” The story of the text derives from Miriam’s Song, recorded in Exodus 15. It tells the story of Moses’ heroic efforts to free the Israelites from the Egyptians.
Wom raka moses yenyen wala
Wala yepuny e pudge,
Mara burra ferra yumina yala.
Ngara burra ferra yumina yala yala.
Yenuk becu jesu
Barrun bucana yumina
Mara burra ferra yumina yala.
When Moses struck the waters
The waters came together
And drowned old Pharaoh's army
Alleluia
We’re going to sing to Jesus
To bring some valiant soldiers’
To drown old Pharaoh's army
Alleluia
Ov’e, Lass,’ Il Bel Viso? (from Madrigali: Six “Fire Songs” on Italian Renaissance Poems) | MORTEN LAURIDSEN
Text by Henricus Schaffen
American composer, Morten Lauridsen, is one of the most beloved and respected American composers of the 20th and 21st centuries. His works have been performed by thousands of ensembles around the world, garnering over 200 recordings and 5 Grammy award nominations. Lauridsen, born in Washington state, was the composer in residence for the LA Master Chorale from 1994-2001, and taught composition at USC Thornton School of Music for over 50 years.
The Six “Fire Songs” on Italian Madrigals are Lauridsen’s fourth multi-movement work for voice, and his second for choir. Each piece, written with references to the style of a traditional 16th and 17th century Italian Madrigals. These pieces are very text driven, meaning the music is directly trying to enhance the meaning of the text. For example, the opening dissonant chord brings the passion and intensity behind the narrator's sadness that his love is not near. This changes in the fifth line, where the text becomes more wistful and loving and the music subsequently follows. Lauridsen’s “Madrigali” represent a particularly important turning point in his composition style. He discovered his “sound” in the initial “fire” chord of the first movement and the light, fauxbourdon texture of the sixth movement. Lauridsen’s writing for chorus forever changed following his work on these beautiful pieces.
Ov'è, lass', il bel viso? ecco, ei s'asconde.
Oimè, dov'il mio sol? Lasso, che velo
S'è post'inanti Te rend'oscur'il cielo?
Oimè ch'io il chiamo et veggio; ei non risponde.
Dhe, se mai sieno a tue vele seconde
Aure, dolce mio ben, se cangi pelo
Et loco tardi, et se 'l signor di Delo
Gratia et valor nel tuo bel sen'asconde,
Ascolta i miei sospiri et dà lor loco
Di volger in amor l'ingiusto sdegno,
Et vinca tua pietade il duro sempio.
Vedi qual m'arde et mi consuma fuoco;
Qual fie scusa miglior, qual maggior segno
Ch'io son di viva fede et d'amor tempio!
Alas, where is the beautiful face? Behold, it hides.
Woe is me, where is my sun? Alas, what veil
Drapes itself and renders the heavens dark?
Woe is me, that I call and see it; it doesn’t respond.
Oh, if your sails have auspicious winds,
My dearest sweet, and if you change your hair
And features late, if the Lord of Delos
Hides grace and valor in your beautiful bosom,
Hear my sighs and give them place
To turn unjust disdain into love,
And may your pity conquer hardships.
See how I burn and how I am consumed by fire;
What better reason, what greater sign
Than I, a temple of faithful life and love!
- Translation by Erica Muhl
Zephiro torna, e ‘l bel tempo rimena | CLAUDIO MONTEVERDI
Text by Francesco Petrarca from Canzoniere CCCX
Claudio Monteverdi is one of the most well-known madrigal writers of the late 16th century. His composition, Zephiro torna has all of the hallmarks of Monteverdi’s style during this era. The text comes from Francesco Petrarch, one of the most well-known sonnet writers of the 14th century. Petrarchan sonnets follow a particular pattern, two stanzas of four lines make the octet, describing a problem and expressing some sort of desire. The last six lines are called a sestet and contain the solution to the aforementioned problem. This particular sonnet begins with a volta, a sudden change of literary tone that surprisingly flips the subject of the octave into another perspective.
Monteverdi composed madrigals fully committed to painting the meaning of the text in sound. Oftentimes, he considered text was more important than the music he composed to set it. Monteverdi considered his music as the ultimate servant to the poetic narrative. He set the octet of sonnet to a bouncing triple pattern, imitating the light wind and joy of spring. At the start of the volta, Monteverdi changed the meter to a very slow duple pattern, slowed the tempo, and created musical dissonances and passion to indicate the loss of love. Monteverdi allowed a brief return to the flitting three pattern before falling back into the slow dissonant duple of the conclusion.
Zefiro torna, e'l bel tempo rimena,
e i fiori e l'erbe, sua dolce famiglia,
e garrir Progne, e pianger Filomena,
e primavera candida e vermiglia.
Ridono i prati, e'l ciel si rasserena;
Giove s'allegra di mirar sua figlia;
l'aria, e l'acqua, e la terra è d'amor piena;
ogni animal d'amar si riconsiglia.
Ma per me, lasso!, tornano i più gravi
sospiri, che del cor profondo tragge
quella ch'al ciel se ne portò le chiavi;
e cantar augelletti, e fiorir piagge,
e'n belle donne oneste atti soavi
sono un deserto, e fere aspre e selvagge.
Zephyr returns and brings fair weather,
and the flowers and herbs, his sweet family,
and Procne singing and Philomela weeping,
and the white springtime, and the vermilion.
The meadows smile, and the skies grow clear:
Jupiter is joyful, gazing at his daughter:
the air and earth and water are filled with love:
every animal is reconciled to loving.
But to me, alas, there return the heaviest
sighs that she draws from the deepest heart,
who took the keys of it away to heaven:
and the song of little birds, and the flowering fields,
and the sweet virtuous actions of women
are a wasteland to me, of bitter and savage creatures.
Calling | PAUL FOWLER
Paul Fowler is an American composer who writes music for choirs, orchestra, and chamber ensembles. His works have been performed across the globe and in spaces such as Japan’s Suntory Hall, the Borealis Festival of Norway, and Carnegie Hall. He holds degrees from Ithaca College and University of Michigan.
Calling, as described by Fowler, is “wordless, exploring how we call to each other across distances and up close; and how the inherent overtones of our vowels and voices may also be calling us to awakenment. Overtones are an acoustical phenomenon where the voice creates more than just a singular pitch, and different vowels either enhance or filter out certain pitches. When combined with other notes, you will hear very high-pitched sounds that feel and sound sung, but are actually the byproduct of voices being in tune with each other. The work begins with two soloists, calling out to each other across the choir. More voices join in with similar melodies, each section exploring their own “voice.” As the tension grows and more voices join with their own version of the melodic figure, the cacophony climaxes with the first moment of homophonic singing across all of the singers, a moment of unity found in exploring ourselves.
Verum Corpus | SAUNDER CHOI
Text by Amir Rabiyah
Verum Corpus is a multimovement work for chorus and string quartet by Saunder Choi, a Los Angeles based Filipino composer. From the Composer: “Verum Corpus is a multi-movement work for choir and string quartet and sets the text of Amir Rabiyah on the story of transformation, completion, and attainment of the true body. The text is inspired by the story of Caeneus, a mythological hero from Ovid’s Metamorphosis. Caeneus was born as Caenis, a woman, who was abducted and raped by Poseidon. Caenis was so distraught, she demanded to be transformed into a man so that she may never be wronged again. Poseidon granted this wish and gave Caeneus impenetrable skin. He went on to become one of the fiercest warriors in this mythology. In a battle with centaurs, Caeneus was struck down and crushed by tree trunks. He then transformed into a golden-winged bird and flew away.
Many of the characters experience trauma in Ovid’s Metamorphosis. Amir wanted this to be a poem that addressed that, drawing parallels to the experience of queer and transgender survivors of abuse and marginalization. More importantly, Amir wanted this to also be about how our chosen families love us, and how love can lead us to loving ourselves, and finding freedom.
While collaborating with Amir on this piece, I had asked them if they could incorporate the text of Ave Verum Corpus into the story. Given the conflict between the Christian religion and the LGBTQ+ perspective, I felt that weaving this traditional Eucharistic text into the story would be a poignant reclamation of the trans narrative and a recontextualization of the words “Hail, true body, whose pierced side flowed with water and blood”—offering a different commentary on these seemingly parallel narratives.”
When we first met. We used no words.
Only the language of eyes.
How did you know me so quickly?
I thought you too beautiful for me,
But you cooed I see you, I want, I need
you are my world and that was everything…
You caressed the scars on my chest, the ones my father left
Soon, I told you: how he raised his sword and plunged it into me
how he screamed “You’re no son of mine, “
Hail, true body
Whose pierced side
Flowed with water and blood
I became a swan, flew into the heavens. Dropped down and found you.
May it be for us a taste of things to come
Once I was yours, I became what you willed.
You wanted a horse. I became your steed.
I shrank. I thanked. I’d plead. And thanked.
Who knew the toll this war would take?
The violence began again. An eruption. Broken plates. Bruises.
In the trial of death, you left me.
Strangers, coming home found me
Strangers sang my spirit back to me—they fed my light
Hail true body, which having truly suffered
Hail the body which returns to its truest state
In dying, I returned. In dying, I created myself whole.
Love | MICHAEL ENGELHARDT
Michael Engelhardt composed Love with only one word. The chorus repeats the word “love” throughout the entire piece, and Engelhardt’s setting reveals the many meanings the word “love” can mean. “Love” can be grounding, meditative, cathartic, hopeful, melancholic, and nostalgic. “Love” can fill us with joy and belonging. Engelhardt is able to express all of these feelings in his setting of one single word. The opening section is underscored with a bubbling exuberance, as more voices join to support the main theme. The middle section transfers this rhythmic energy into a quiet moment of reflection that builds into an exuberant finale. Engelhardt’s setting reveals the ways love can be magnified into a final explosion of joy, gratefulness, and hope.
Fullerton Pops!• Saturday, November 4, 2023
Olympic Fanfare and Theme | JOHN WILLIAMS
By 1984, John Williams’ film music was familiar to audiences the world over and it was only natural that the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee would turn to the city’s most famous composer of popular instrumental music when they decided to commission a fanfare to be used during the Games. While it was an honor to be asked to compose such a piece of music, the prospect was not without its challenges. Leo Arnaud’s “Bugler’s Dream” fanfare (from his Charge Suite) had become synonymous with the Olympics since ABC began using it for its televised coverage of the Games in 1968. Any new composition would necessarily compete with the attachment listeners had developed to Arnaud’s music. At the same time, the opening fanfare was to be played by herald trumpets at all of the medal ceremonies and official Olympic events, so it had to be based on the harmonic overtones these instruments were able to produce. Williams met these challenges with aplomb, creating a piece that is the very definition of “goose bump” music. He presented the world premiere with the Boston Pops at Symphony Hall on June 12, 1984:
The Los Angeles Philharmonic, under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas, gave the West Coast premiere on Friday, July 27 at the Hollywood Bowl to open a “Prelude to the Olympic Games” concert broadcast live on KUSC-FM and other radio stations around the country. Williams then conducted the work (leading the “New American Orchestra”) at the opening ceremonies of the 23rd Olympiad at the Los Angeles Coliseum on July 28, 1984.
“I’m not an avid sports fan and I have never been to an Olympics,” Williams told The New York Times. “But from watching Olympics competition on television, I gained a feeling that I aspired to make the theme of Fanfare. A wonderful thing about the Olympics is that young athletes strain their guts to find and produce their best efforts. The human spirit stretching to prove itself is also typical of what musicians attempt to achieve in a symphonic effort. It is difficult to describe how I feel about these athletes and their performances without sounding pretentious, but their struggle ennobles all of us. I hope I express that in this piece.”
The opening fanfare consists of two sections, a triad-based ascending motive for full brass adorned by thirty-second notes from trumpets, followed by a more vigorous response from trumpets supported by an accented low brass pedal that generates additional excitement by entering on the second half of the fourth beat of each 4/4 measure. These two sections then repeat (giving the fanfare segment an A-B-A-B form). A crescendo on the final chord leads to a quiet snare drum figure, over which strings and horns state the broad, noble “Olympic Theme” with the “B” portion of the fanfare answering quietly in trumpets and woodwinds. Low woodwinds and strings, supported by horns, then present a jauntier melody, followed by a syncopated horn bridge colored by glockenspiel, before the jaunty tune returns, developed briefly over scurrying string passages. This crescendos to a reprise of the “B” portion of the fanfare. Low brass now join with percussion on the rhythmic ostinato and the orchestra sings the noble theme in full force. In the exciting coda, pieces of the “B” fanfare get passed around between horns and trumpets.
The score of the work calls for three flutes (one doubling piccolo), three oboes, three clarinets (one doubling bass clarinet), three bassoons (one doubling contrabassoon), four horns, four trumpets, four trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (snare, field drum, cymbals, bass drum, suspended cymbal, chimes, glockenspiel, vibraphone and triangle), harp, piano and strings.
Williams told Jon Burlingame in 1992 that he intended the work to represent musically “the spirit of cooperation, of heroic achievement, all the striving and preparation that go before the events and all the applause that comes after them.”
Strings on Fire! | HENRY MANCINI
During his lifetime, Mancini was nominated for 72 GRAMMY® Awards, winning 20. He was nominated for 18 Academy Awards® winning four, honored with a Golden Globe® Award and nominated for two Emmy ®Awards.
Mancini created many memorable film scores including 'Breakfast at Tiffany’s', 'The Pink Panther', 'Days of Wine and Roses', 'Hatari!', 'Charade', 'Victor/Victoria', “10,” 'Darling Lili', 'Arabesque', and 'The Glass Menagerie'. He also wrote for a number of television films including “The Thorn Birds” and “The Shadow Box,” as well as television themes including “Peter Gunn,” “Mr. Lucky,” “NBC Election Night Theme,” “Newhart,” “Remington Steele” and “Hotel.” Mancini recorded over 90 albums with styles varying from big band to jazz to classical to pop, eight of which were certified gold by The Recording Industry Association of America®.
Born in Cleveland, Ohio on April 16, 1924, Mancini was introduced to music and the flute at the age of eight by his father, Quinto, an avid flutist. The family moved to Aliquippa, Pennsylvania where at age 12 he took up piano, and within a few years became interested in arranging. After graduating from high school in 1942 Mancini enrolled in New York’s Juilliard School of Music but his studies were interrupted the next year when he was drafted, leading to overseas service in the Air Force and later in the infantry.
In 1946 Mancini joined The Glenn Miller-Tex Beneke Orchestra as a pianist/arranger. It was there that he met the future Mrs. Henry Mancini, Ginny O’Connor, who was one of the original members of Mel Torme’s Mel-Tones. Ginny and Henry were married in Hollywood the following year.
In 1952 Mancini joined the Universal-International Studios music department. During the next six years he contributed to over 100 films, most notably The Glenn Miller Story (for which he received his first Academy Award® nomination), The Benny Goodman Story and Orson Welles' Touch of Evil. Mancini left Universal-International in 1958 to work as an independent composer/arranger. Soon after he scored the television series “Peter Gunn” for writer/producer Blake Edwards, the genesis of a close relationship that lasted over 30 years and produced 26 films.
Strings on Fire! is an original concert piece composed by Henry Mancini for the Debut album with the Philadelphia Pops Orchestra conducted by Mancini, released in 1969. (It was also recorded by the Cincinnati Pops with Erich Kunzel conducting in 1989.) Strings on Fire! was a popular orchestral piece and used often in Henry's concert performances.
Overture from Beauty and the Beast | ALAN MENKEN
When originally released in 1991, Alan Menken’s score for Beauty and the Beast was regarded as one of his best. The Oscar-winning score, with lyrics by Howard Ashman, was then recreated in the 2017 live-action version of the film. This new live-action film takes aspects of the score from both the original 1991 animated film, as well as the Broadway musical and new material written by Menken and Tim Rice.
The Overture, as one would expect, lays out some of the famous tunes from the songs that are to come in the film. The lavish overture is very Broadway in its presentation, with the opening ‘Tale as old as time’ fanfare from the trumpets pushing through the textures. A modulated version is heard before the strings jump into the melody from ‘Belle’. The sparkling strings fizz with excitement as the bombastic brass and percussion keep the tempo moving into the bouncing waltz based on the tune from ‘Gaston’.
A short interlude as the music changes key brings the music into ‘The Mob Song,’ which has a very different character. The bold horns rip through the melody here, with the impending atmosphere sinking in. The vigorous syncopation between the brass and percussion in this section is particularly poignant. The upper strings take over once more as the music moves into ‘How Does a Moment Last Forever’. The solo violin delicately plays this tune as the texture begins to thin. This delicate section sees small solo lines from the clarinet and cello.
The orchestra then moves into a rich account of ‘Beauty and the Beast’, as the main melody is played by a rich united front of strings. As Menken builds up the texture in this section, the glorious brass leads into the huge climax. The orchestra swells together and bursts with a huge wall of sound. As the overture comes to an end, the trumpets lead on the final bursts of melodies from the film. The dramatic ending is powerful and is typical of a Broadway musical. Alex Burns
Questbound | SEAN-PAUL GOUW
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Sean-Paul began his musical journey from an early age, playing upright bass in school. Or, more accurately, fell asleep playing The Chronicles of Narnia on his Gameboy, and woke up with an immense desire to begin learning the soundtrack on his instrument. That immense desire quickly grew into a burning passion for playing, performing, and creating, and soon he began composing small retro video game soundtracks for fun.
Finishing his Master’s in Film Composition at the Pacific Northwest Film Scoring Program, Sean-Paul studied with two-time Emmy award winning composer Hummie Mann (Robinhood Men in Tights, Thomas and the Magic Railroad). His music explores a variety of different genres, styles, and character, and can be heard in numerous short film and indie video game projects. In addition, Sean-Paul has been involved with many teams in orchestration and music prep, and has worked for projects such as Story Ave, Pink Floyd, and Metroboomin. Currently, Sean-Paul assists award winning film composer Nathan Wang, and is working towards a few personal projects of his own.
Originally conceived during a dream, Questbound! is an adventurous, exciting orchestral piece signifying many important musical “firsts” of my career; specifically, my first full orchestral composition, my first time writing and conducting 52 of Seattle’s finest musicians, and my first (and probably last) time successfully earning a Master’s Degree in Film Composition. This piece, meant to function as a “Main Title” or “End Credits” cue, served as the capstone composition of my graduate program (Pacific Northwest Film Scoring Program), and was recorded at the Bastyr Chapel in Seattle, Washington with a full 52-piece orchestra.
Questbound! describes the adventure of a young boy, who journeys to another world upon discovering his pet cat had been kidnapped. To save his beloved companion, the boy picks up his sword and confronts the culprit in battle, an evil dragon with a fiery gemstone embedded in its chest. Emerging victorious, the boy and cat are reunited and all is well, or at least I’m sure would have happened if not for my 9am alarm. Thematically, there are two main themes to listen for, representing both our young boy and our dragon. Listen for the changes in energy and textural elements, as well as variation in both melodic ideas. And most importantly, thank you for listening, please have fun!
Dance of the Floreadors (Waltz of the Flowers) (from The Nutcracker after Tchaikovsky) | ARRANGED BY DUKE ELLINGTON AND BILLY STRAYHORN, ORCHESTRATED BY JEFF TYZIK
Our midwinter holidays bring light into the darkest days of the year, each in their own ways—but music always casts the warmest glow. The Christmas Eve setting of Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker has helped it to become one of America’s most beloved Christmas traditions (we can thank the San Francisco Ballet of the 1940s), even though the composer had nothing of the sort in mind. By 1960, the potential appeal of updating Tchaikovsky’s score was obvious enough to a savvy musician like Duke Ellington.
Although separated by a century, the demands of the Romantic-era Russian ballet and the elaborate stage shows of New York City’s Cotton Club in the late 1920s presented similar challenges to Tchaikovsky and Ellington. The need for variety was paramount, meaning constant shifts in musical mood and style, but at the same time continuity was necessary. Exoticism was an audience favorite in both settings, and each composer had to take into account the choreography, making sure rhythms and tempos would allow the dancers to show their skills to the best effect. Tchaikovsky’s graceful, but somewhat melancholy and restrained “Waltz of the Flowers” becomes an opportunity for almost every member of the band to have a virtuosic turn in the rousing series of swing choruses that make up “Dance of the Floreadores.”
— Katherine Baber
Concerto in F | GEORGE GERSHWIN, ARRANGED FOR JAZZ QUARTET AND ORCHESTRA BY BILL CUNLIFFE
In the year 1925, in addition to continuing to satisfy a large public clamoring for more of his sweet and tender, buoyant and rambunctious songs that could be sung, whistled, and hummed, George Gershwin took another foray into the classics. This one, the Concerto in F for Piano and Orchestra, was an even more ambitious venture than the previous year’s Rhapsody in Blue: a full-fledged concerto in time-honored three-movement form and a work that was all Gershwin, down to his own orchestration, which had not been the case with Rhapsody in Blue.
Those who thought Tin Pan Alley’s super-composer had gotten the “serious” bug out of his system with Rhapsody were wrong—in a way. Although the phenomenally talented and successful songwriter turned in earnest to the serious musical forms of concerto, symphonic poem (American in Paris), and opera (Porgy and Bess), he didn’t change his musical persona for the concert hall—no split personality for Gershwin. Whereas most American composers of his era, many with a far more highly developed traditional background than he had, were writing in the fashionable European styles, Gershwin cultivated his mother tongue—the one truly original American vernacular: jazz.
It may be true that Gershwin’s jazz has a highly polished commercial veneer, and that what is considered the real—that is, improvisational—jazz burned brightly for only a relatively small audience. Still, there is no denying the strength and originality of the Gershwin product, in whatever form it appears. As for the Concerto in F, it is jazz all the way, and a remarkable achievement for a 27-year-old tunesmith.
The Paris connection was for Gershwin extremely important. His admiration for French music is certainly made tangible in the Concerto’s Adagio second movement. There, an extended (46-bar) introduction confined almost exclusively to winds and brass (no piano at all) conjures an ambiance that goes directly to the heart of Debussy and, somewhat, of Ravel. Thematically, the main tune that finally emerges in the piano is hinted at early in the introduction by a muted trumpet. The fascinating manipulations of this theme by piano and orchestra and the figurations and filigree that evolve from it show Gershwin at his most inventive and bracing. The construction of the movement is highly original, what with the reappearance of the introduction prefacing a piano cadenza that in turn leads into the “big” tune of the movement—a Gershwin song that is, well, irresistibly Gershwin. The melody is given the grand concerto treatment and holds up very well until it is cut off abruptly for a nostalgic, abbreviated return of the motif from the introduction, this time intriguingly scored for piano and flute.
The outer movements are, expectedly, fast ones that the composer, in a brief analytical note, described as follows:
“The first movement employs the Charleston rhythm. It is quick and pulsating, representing the young, enthusiastic spirit of American life. It begins with a rhythmic motif given out by the kettle drums, supported by the other percussion instruments and with a Charleston motif introduced by bassoon, horns, clarinets, and violas. The principal theme is announced by the bassoon. Later a second theme is introduced by the piano.
“The second movement has a poetic, nocturnal atmosphere which has come to be referred to as the American blues, but in a purer form than that in which they are usually treated.
“The final movement reverts to the style of the first. It is an orgy of rhythms, starting violently and keeping the same pace throughout.”
—Orrin Howard
Cunliffe’s arrangement fuses the three movements into a single 15-minute showpiece for piano, saxophone, bass, drums, and orchestra.
A Rare Connection | BILL CUNLIFFE
Bill Cunliffe: “This piece was written after I had met someone really special just by chance, and we had a lovely conversation, and our paths never crossed again. A magical and bittersweet moment for me, which generated a through-composed piano improvisation one afternoon in 1992. It became the title “cut” on my first solo album, "A Rare Connection," on Discovery Records.
I liked the tune enough to expand it into a rather expansive arrangement for the great French flutist Jean Ferrandis, who performs it today. Ferrandis, of course, is a faculty member here at CSUF.”
The Nearness of You | HOAGY CARMICHAEL, ARRANGED BY BILL CUNLIFFE
“The Nearness of You” is a popular jazz standard song written in 1937 by Hoagy Carmichael with lyrics by Ned Washington. Intended for an unproduced Paramount film titled Romance In The Rough, the studio's publishing division Famous Music reregistered and published the song in 1940. It was first recorded by Chick Bullock and his Orchestra on Vocalion. Despite numerous accounts to the contrary, the song was never scheduled for and does not appear in the 1938 Paramount film Romance in the Dark. It is also heard in the 1940 recording "In the Mood" by Glenn Miller and His Orchestra, with vocals by Ray Eberle, and has been recorded by many others.
This arrangement was first performed by the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, in July of this year.
It's not the pale moon that excites me
That thrills and delights me, oh no
It's just the nearness of you
It isn't your sweet conversation
That brings this sensation, oh no
It's just the nearness of you
When you're in my arms and I feel you so close to me
All my wildest dreams come true
I need no soft lights to enchant me
If you'll only grant me the right
To hold you ever so tight
And to feel in the night the nearness of you
Roll ‘Em Pete | PETE JOHNSON AND JOE TURNER, ARRANGED BY BILL CUNLIFFE
“Roll 'Em Pete” is a blues song, originally recorded in December 1938 by Big Joe Turner and pianist Pete Johnson. The recording is regarded as one of the most important precursors of what later became known as rock and roll. “Roll 'Em Pete” was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2018, as one of the five new entrants in the “Classic of Blues Recording (Song)” category.
Johnson was a boogie-woogie pianist in Kansas City, who in the early 1930s had developed a partnership with Turner, who was working at the time as a club bartender. Turner would shout blues rhymes to Johnson's music. In 1938, the pair were invited by music promoter and producer John Hammond to the first From Spirituals to Swing concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City.
While in New York, Turner and Johnson had a session with the Vocalion record company, recording the 12-bar blues "Roll 'Em Pete" on December 30, 1938. The song was an up-tempo boogie woogie which had become Johnson's signature tune in the Kansas City clubs. In performance, Turner often included many well-rehearsed blues verses, or improvised lyrics, to extend the performance for an hour or more.
According to Paul Oliver, the recording "features spectacular piano playing by Johnson and a forceful vocal by Turner in the style he made famous - half-shouted and with repetitive phrases building up tension at the close." Larry Birnbaum wrote that:
“….“Roll 'Em Pete” may well be regarded as the first rock'n'roll record. Although earlier songs contain elements of rock'n'roll, “Roll 'Em Pete” is a full-fledged rocker in all but instrumentation ... Johnson's bass line is a simple Chuck Berry-like chug, and his furious right hand embellishments anticipate Berry's entire guitar style. Some of Turner's verses are the stuff that rock is made of ... But others are too mature for teenage listeners. If anything, Turner's brilliant phrasing and Johnson's breathtaking keyboard technique are too sophisticated for rock'n'roll; the music has yet to be formularized for mass consumption.”
After Vocalion became a subsidiary of Columbia Records in 1938, the original recording of “Roll 'Em Pete” was released in 1941 as part of a four-record compilation album entitled Boogie Woogie. “Roll 'Em Pete” contained one of the earliest recorded examples of a back beat; the song is also notable for its use of straight rhythm—well into the 1950s, most, if not all, similar recordings were played in shuffle rhythm. Turner later recorded many other versions, with various combinations of musicians, over the ensuing years, particularly in the 1950s when he became a star of rock and roll.
The arrangement here was written for the Metropole Orchestra of Amsterdam, Vince Mendoza, music director.
Well, I got a gal, she lives up on the hill
Well, I got a gal, she lives up on the hill
Well, this woman's tryin' to quit me, Lord, but I love her still
She's got eyes like diamonds, they shine like Klondike gold
She's got eyes like diamonds, they shine like Klondike gold
Every time she loves me, she sends my mellow soul
Well, you're so beautiful, you've got to die someday
Well, you're so beautiful, you've got to die someday
All I want's a little loving, just before you pass away
Pretty baby, I'm goin' away and leave you by yourself
Pretty baby, I'm goin' away and leave you by yourself
You've mistreated me, now you can mistreat somebody else
Midnight Island (from Rainforests) | BILL CUNLIFFE
“Midnight Island” is the second movement of the piece Rainforests, commissioned by Temple University, and released digitally September 8 via BCM+D Records. “For years, I’ve been intrigued by trees,” Cunliffe says. “Not only the trees in my neighborhood of Studio City, California, but the trees that keep us safe and healthy such as the tropical mangrove. Its tangle of roots allows the trees to handle the daily rise and fall of tides and slow the movement of tidal waters, causing sediments to build up the muddy bottom.”
Mangrove forests stabilize the coastline, reducing erosion from storm surges, currents, waves and tides, and the intricate root system makes these forests attractive to fish and other organisms seeking food and shelter from predators.
“The mangroves in the rainforests are truly the heart of our planet and help keep us alive,” Cunliffe says. “I’ve been thinking about them a lot, and the music of the tropics has always been a focus of mine, with the recordings I’ve done of Brazilian and Cuban music, samba and salsa.
Instead of ruminating for periods of time over the musical material, the imposed deadline forced Cunliffe to accept the material immediately offered to him, like the strange child-like melodies that often appear to him after waking up from dreams.
“Rather than cast them aside,” Cunliffe says, “this time I wrote them down and, accepting the theory of Bill Dobbins, my former teacher at Eastman, that there is ‘no such thing as a bad idea,’ and started to work on carving these stones into sculptures of music I could be proud of.”
Cunliffe says movement two is a cross between a Mexican bolero and a Brazilian bossa, cast as a slow romantic movement. “The soloists presents the theme as a series of descending thirds, then improvises for a while.” he adds. “The movement ends with a cadenza featuring rainforest sounds as before, with the soloists adding bird calls and other exotic sounds.”
Shiny Stockings | FRANK FOSTER AND ELLA FITZGERALD, ARRANGED BY BILL CUNLIFFE
Frank Foster was saxophonist and musical director of the Count Basie orchestra. In his 11 years with the Count, Foster contributed a tall stack of marvelous charts to the Basie book (“Blues Backstage,” “Down for the Count,” “Blues in Hoss’ Flat,” “Back to the Apple,” “Discommotion,” the entire Easin’ It album), but none suited the Chief’s prerequisites better than Shiny Stockings. In an interview with Bob Bernotas he said:
I wrote Shiny Stockings in 1955 and we had a rehearsal at a place called Pep’s Bar in Philadelphia. We had just arrived in town. Everybody was sleepy, tired, hungry, and evil. Nobody felt like rehearsing. We rehearsed `Shiny Stockings’ and it sounded like a bunch of jumbled notes, just noise, and I said, `Wow, all the work I put into this, and it sounds so horrible. I know Basie will never play it.’ And then something very strange happened. He continued to play, and it came together. Finally, we recorded it and, well, it’s the very best-known piece that I have contributed to the Basie book.
It embodies all the things that were important to him. It builds-it starts soft and ends with and explosion. It leaves space for the rhythm section to do whatever it’s going to do. It has that ensemble writing which the band can sink their teeth into and really make happen-and a wonderful trumpet solo by Thad Jones.” One more thing: it swings.
Years later,” Foster remembers with pride, “Basie gave me the supreme compliment. Every now and then, he’d say about a chart, `Oh, it’s very nice, kid,’ and then leave it at that. Well, he grabbed me, he said, `Junior, you know that Shiny Stockings? You really put one down that time.’ You couldn’t receive a better compliment from Count Basie.
The current arrangement was built on a David Torres small group arrangement by Bill Cunliffe for the Poncho Sanchez Band.
Brass & Percussion Ensembles • Monday, November 6, 2023
Celestial Dance | ERIK MORALES
“Celestial Dance” is a short fanfare for five trumpets. Much attention was given to the unique articulation properties of the trumpet. The players are challenged by these techniques which are difficult to master (such as double-tonguing and complex meters). Successful performance requires members of the ensemble to be well acquainted with each other’s abilities. “Celestial Dance” was commissioned, recorded and premiered by Bach Artist Japan “Takumi” Trumpet Ensemble of Japan.
Enigma Variations No.9 “Nimrod” | EDWARD ELGAR
“Nimrod” (Variation 9), from Elgar’s ‘Enigma Variations, is popular in its own right and often performed at solemn occasions, memorial services and funerals. Commonly referred to as the ‘Enigma Variations’, this work is a theme and fourteen variations written for orchestra by Edward Elgar in 1898–1899. It is Elgar's best-known large-scale composition, for both the music itself and the enigmas behind it. Elgar dedicated the piece to "my friends pictured within", each variation being an affectionate portrayal of one of his circle of close acquaintances.
Variation 9 (Nimrod) Adagio, is dedicated to Augustus J. Jaeger, Elgar's best friend. An attempt to capture what Elgar saw as Jaeger's noble character, it is also said that this variation depicts a night-time walk the two of them had, during which they discussed the slow movements of the music of Ludwig van Beethoven.
The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba | GEORGE FRIEDRICH HANDEL
The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba, sinfonia for two oboes and strings by George Frideric Handel that premiered in London on March 17, 1749, as the first scene of Act III in the oratorio Solomon. One of the last of Handel’s many oratorios, Solomon is rarely performed in its entirety, but Handel’s bright and lively “The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba” interlude is a widely appreciated processional set piece. It often was (and it continues to be) played during wedding ceremonies. A noted public performance of the piece occurred during the opening ceremonies of the London 2012 Olympic Games.
Son de la Negra | TRADITIONAL
"El Son de la Negra" (lit. there is no direct translation) is a Mexican folk song, originally from Jalisco, Mexico. This mariachi song is a Son Jalisciense, one of the many genres in Mariachi music. Although, there is no direct translation of the title, son is short for son jalisciense. Son jalisciense of the beautiful brown women is the closest we can get to a translation of the title. The true composer of Son de la Negra is unknown. It is commonly referred to as the "second national anthem of Mexico."
The masterpiece was first presented in the USA in the city of New York. However, Mexican ethnologist Jesús Jáuregui (who researched these topics for decades) claims that throughout its history the song has undergone modifications and arrangements that can hardly be attributed to a single author or era. The song has become representative of Mariachi or relative to Mexico worldwide.
Como Quien Pierde Una Estrella | ALEJANDRO FERNÁNDEZ
“Como Quien Pierde Una Estrella” (lit. Like Someone Who Loses a Star) is a popular mariachi ballad, a heartbreak, written by composer Gilberto Parra in 1940. Sung by Alejandro Fernandez, son of Vicente Fernandez, famous mariachi singer, actor, and film producer. Its lyrics portray, in the first person, the suffering of emotions and a past love. This song allows listeners to truly capture and connect with the exposed vulnerability expressed in the song. The song emphasizes the different stages of grief in losing a loved one.
Earthscape | DAVID MARLATT
“Earthscape” is a lyrical piece inspired by the view of our planet from space. In the silent, black vacuum of space exists this bright blue planet, slowly rotating, giving astronauts a serene and breathtaking view of the only source of life in our solar system. This work features the brass ensemble in a peaceful mood and offers the opportunity for some soloistic playing by the flugelhorn player.
Suite from “West Side Story” | LEONARD BERNSTEIN
When Bernstein originally conceived his iconic update of Romeo and Juliet with choreographer Jerome Robbins, they mapped out the drama of East Side Story about a Jewish girl and an Irish Catholic boy. Six years later, they decided to update the plan for the musical, moving the action cross-town and changing the principal characters’ backgrounds to Puerto Rican and Polish. The change in focus provided rich, creative inspiration for Bernstein, who wrote, “Suddenly it all springs to life. I hear rhythms and pulses, and—most of all—I can sort of feel the form.” Even the unknown lyricist, named Stephen Sondheim, who joined the project seemed to be working out well. Shakespeare’s framework was maintained: the doomed lovers, Tony and Maria, belong to rival gangs—the Jets and the Sharks—and accidental deaths, misinformation, and basic distrust lead to tragedy. The memorable melodies, stunning choreography, and moving portrayal of the story made West Side Story an instant triumph. Within five years of its Broadway opening it had toured the country and was adapted into the popular 1961 movie.
Sid Ramin, along with Irwin Kostal, aided Bernstein in orchestrating both the original score and the later orchestral arrangements. The Prologue appears in most orchestral arrangements, including Jack’s Gale’s brass arrangement, which we hear this evening. Ramin wrote of the genesis of the precursor to the Prologue:
Lenny knew it should certainly begin with the famous signature tritone on which so much of the show’s music is based, and go directly to the Prologue (including finger snaps in the brass quintet!).The interval of the tritone is symbolic in the music, representing both the tension and violence between the two gangs, as well as the yearning that Tony has in the famous melody of “Maria.” Gale retains both the tritone figure and the musicians’ finger snaps here.
From “Prologue,” Gale’s arrangement moves through the most memorable numbers of the musical in chronological order. Brimming with enthusiasm, “Something’s Coming” expresses Tony’s premonition of significant happenings. (This is the one number Sondheim had a hand in composing.) Tony’s famous balcony declaration in “Maria” is followed by the two lovers’ soaring duet in “Tonight”. Maria’s Shark friends have the ultimate song showdown in “America”, arguing the merits of Puerto Rico (mostly trombone and horn) and Manhattan (mostly trumpets). “One Hand, One Heart” is another love duet, expressed soulfully in the mellow, lower register of the ensemble, and Maria’s “I Feel Pretty” provides lightness at a moment of growing tension between the gangs in the show. The dreamy “Somewhere” is Tony and Maria’s escapist reverie imagining a peaceful life together, a heartbreaking reprise which ends Bernstein’s Shakespearean adaptation.
Fanfare and Chorus (1690) | DIETRICH BUXTEHUDE
Deitrich Buxtehude is regarded as one of the most important organists and composers in Germany during the mid-Baroque period. Even J.S. Bach studied the music and organ technique of Buxtehude. Dieterich Buxtehude considered his birthplace to be Denmark (a point debated by some historians) but he spent most of his professional life in the north German free city of Lübeck, where he was organist of St. Mary's Church. There his work as a keyboard player and as director of the famous Abendmusik concert series made him a major influence on the German music of his day, as well as that of the next generation.
In 1703, the young Handel came from Hamburg with his colleague Mattheson to see and hear Buxtehude. They were both considered possible successors to the aging organist, but there was a catch to the offer. Following tradition, Buxtehude had married the daughter of his predecessor, and he expected his successor to marry his own eldest daughter. According to Mattheson, “It turned out that there was some marriage condition proposed in connection with the appointment, for which we neither of us felt the smallest inclination, so we said goodbye to the place after having enjoyed ourselves immensely. . .”
Two years later, in 1705, Bach walked 250 miles to Lübeck to hear Buxtehude play the organ and to attend his Abendmusik concerts, where he doubtless would have heard Buxtehude's oratorios and other choral works. He got in considerable trouble for overstaying his leave, but it was not without good cause, for Buxtehude's influence on the young Bach was enormous.
Buxtehude's vocal music in particular has survived and a fine example is his Advent Cantata BuxWV51 ‘Ihr lieben Christen, freut euch nun’ from which the “Fanfare and Chorus” movements are arranged for brass.
University Symphony Orchestra • Sunday, November 12, 2023
Finlandia | JEAN SIBELIUS
The music that is now Finlandia was first a seven-movement suite, performed in Helsinki for an 1899 “Press Celebrations” event, dedicated to Finnish journalists recently banned by Russia’s Czar Nicholas II. At its opening, Finlandia’s Andante sostenuto chorale harmonies (in brass then woodwinds) sound somewhat Orthodox Russian, reminiscent of music that could have been composed by Tchaikovsky or Rachmaninoff. Its weighty writing pushes any melodies down to the tonic of the introduction’s main key, F minor. This key is frequently used by composers seeking a serious sound, with its darkness due to the absence of most open strings. A dramatic Allegro moderato fanfare interrupts, in a section featuring rising and hopeful string triplets, and, modulating into its related A-flat major, heroic writing in the horns. From this climax, a string tremolo emerges, evoking hushed Finnish forests. A hymn-like melody emerges. Characteristic of Sibelius’s compositional style, it’s mostly a melody with a stepwise contour, and one that is long and drawn out. First, it’s in the winds (only six musicians), then the strings, with dozens of players across the orchestra joining in. This thinly veiled rallying cry for independence leads into a return of the heroic material and its grand conclusion. The message was surely understood by any in the audience.
Suite No. 1 from Peer Gynt | EDVARD GRIEG
Peer Gynt Suite No. 1 is derived from the incidental music composed for Henrik Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt. The real-life Peer Gynt was a man of legend in the Norwegian community during the mid 19th-Century, when the piece was composed. Ibsen’s take on Gynt’s travels, however, are far from the folkloric stories told by villagers in Norway. Grieg chose four of his 28 original movements to comprise the Suite No. 1.
In Morning Mood Grieg depicts a sunrise in the middle of the Moroccan desert. In the play, Gynt is making a reed pipe. The evocative flute solo in the beginning depicts not only the sunrise, but also quite literally Gynt making a woodwind instrument while admiring nature. The beginning melody is perhaps one of the most popular in the western canon, and is regularly used in popular culture to depict sunlight and morning.
Peer Gynt is torn from his travels when hearing a ghostly voice telling him to return home. He returns just in time to witness the last living moments of Åse, his mother. In Åse’s Death Grieg uses only strings and long lyrical lines to depict Gynt’s sadness and his mother’s last utterances. The piece crescendos to a dramatic climactic statement of the melody, but subsequently sinks into nothing.
Back in Morocco, Gynt dresses in Bedouin attire and is mistaken for a prophet by a local tribe. The tribe chieftain’s daughter, Anitra, tries (and succeeds) to seduce Gynt with her dancing. Scored also for strings and triangle, Anitra’s Dance, is a seductive, yet rhythmically quirky middle point for the suite.
In the Hall of the Mountain King takes us to the underground palace of the Mountain King. Trolls, goblins, and gnomes are regulars in these dark caverns. In the play, Gynt goes into the hall after hitting his head on a rock. It’s likely that all of this happens within the confines of his imagination. In this movement, Grieg gives us a repeating, pulsating primal gesture with a recurring melody that crescendos dramatically in dynamic and in tempo to an epic finale.
Suite from Carmen | GEORGES BIZET
The opera Carmen was based on a novella of the same title written in 1846 by Prosper Mérimée. Bizet began work on it in the summer of 1873, and finally finished it late in 1874. It was a time of great emotional strain for him. His marriage was beginning to break up and during the composition he was separated from his wife for two months. It was premiered on 3 March 1875, and even though it ran for 48 performances, was not initially well-received by the critics. The subject matter was considered improper, particularly the idea of a soldier deserting the army to join a criminal band of smugglers. Sadly, Bizet did not live to see Carmen’s success. He died from a heart attack at the age of 36 exactly three months after the première, on his sixth wedding anniversary. The opera did however quickly gain admirers. Praise for it came from well-known contemporaries including Saint-Saëns and Tchaikovsky. Brahms attended over twenty performances and considered it the greatest opera produced in Europe since the Franco-Prussian War. Even Wagner praised it grudgingly. Carmen has since become one of the most popular works in the entire operatic repertoire, and undoubtedly the most famous operatic portrayal of the "femme fatale".
Carmen's success is due to a number of factors. On the surface it is written in a popular style with strong melodic ideas inflected with Spanish and Latin American idioms. More significantly it has very subtle musical characterization. The fated hero, Don Jose's music is filled with intense passion, contrasting with the lighter fickle writing that characterizes Carmen. Equally strongly drawn are the deeply sincere Michaela and the arrogant toreador. The subtlety of the music is matched by Bizet's unerring sense of the stage and drama. A good example of this is the opera's unforgettable final scene. Prosper Mérimée's novel finishes with Carmen's murder in a lonely spot in the hills outside Seville, but Bizet, in a stroke of genius, brings the action to outside the bull ring, contrasting the horror of the murder with the enthusiastic outbursts of the off-stage chorus.
Two Carmen suites were published for orchestral performance after the composer's death. The sequence adopted for this performance is based on the first suite, with the addition of the Habanera from Act 1 of the opera and the Chanson Bohème (Gypsy Song) The Introduction begins with the brilliant parade of the Toreadors on their way to the bull ring in Seville followed by a short prelude presenting the threatening fate motive that occurs frequently throughout the opera, most significantly at the end. The Aragonaise describes the lively street scenes in Seville before the start of the bull fight. The Intermezzo is the central point of the opera. Coming before the opening to Act 3 it expresses Don Jose's deep love for Carmen in a short moment of calm when their relationship seems secure. It contains one of the most beautiful melodies ever written for the flute. The seguedille is a Spanish song and dance that Carmen uses to seduce Don Jose into releasing her from prison. Les Dragons d'Alcala is march in a 'toy' military style that opens the second act. The habanera, which is perhaps the most famous aria of the opera, is sung by Carmen in Act 1, and fatally attracts Don Jose. The tune was taken, with acknowledgement, from a popular contemporary Cuban dance composed by Sebastián Yradier. The Latin American idiom and the rich orchestration give it a seductive character, yet the chromatic movement in the melody make it intangible and slippery, suggesting the unattainable. The final movement is the Chanson Bohème (Gypsy Song) which begins as a song and ends in a frenetic dance.
Olympic Fanfare and Theme | JOHN WILLIAMS
By 1984, John Williams’ film music was familiar to audiences the world over and it was only natural that the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee would turn to the city’s most famous composer of popular instrumental music when they decided to commission a fanfare to be used during the Games. While it was an honor to be asked to compose such a piece of music, the prospect was not without its challenges. Leo Arnaud’s “Bugler’s Dream” fanfare (from his Charge Suite) had become synonymous with the Olympics since ABC began using it for its televised coverage of the Games in 1968. Any new composition would necessarily compete with the attachment listeners had developed to Arnaud’s music. At the same time, the opening fanfare was to be played by herald trumpets at all of the medal ceremonies and official Olympic events, so it had to be based on the harmonic overtones these instruments were able to produce.
Williams met these challenges with aplomb, creating a piece that is the very definition of “goose bump” music. He presented the world premiere with the Boston Pops at Symphony Hall on June 12, 1984:
The Los Angeles Philharmonic, under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas, gave the West Coast premiere on Friday, July 27 at the Hollywood Bowl to open a “Prelude to the Olympic Games” concert broadcast live on KUSC-FM and other radio stations around the country. Williams then conducted the work (leading the “New American Orchestra”) at the opening ceremonies of the 23rd Olympiad at the Los Angeles Coliseum on July 28, 1984.
“I’m not an avid sports fan and I have never been to an Olympics,” Williams told The New York Times. “But from watching Olympics competition on television, I gained a feeling that I aspired to make the theme of Fanfare. A wonderful thing about the Olympics is that young athletes strain their guts to find and produce their best efforts. The human spirit stretching to prove itself is also typical of what musicians attempt to achieve in a symphonic effort. It is difficult to describe how I feel about these athletes and their performances without sounding pretentious, but their struggle ennobles all of us. I hope I express that in this piece.”
The opening fanfare consists of two sections, a triad-based ascending motive for full brass adorned by thirty-second notes from trumpets, followed by a more vigorous response from trumpets supported by an accented low brass pedal that generates additional excitement by entering on the second half of the fourth beat of each 4/4 measure. These two sections then repeat (giving the fanfare segment an A-B-A-B form). A crescendo on the final chord leads to a quiet snare drum figure, over which strings and horns state the broad, noble “Olympic Theme” with the “B” portion of the fanfare answering quietly in trumpets and woodwinds. Low woodwinds and strings, supported by horns, then present a jauntier melody, followed by a syncopated horn bridge colored by glockenspiel, before the jaunty tune returns, developed briefly over scurrying string passages. This crescendos to a reprise of the “B” portion of the fanfare. Low brass now join with percussion on the rhythmic ostinato and the orchestra sings the noble theme in full force. In the exciting coda, pieces of the “B” fanfare get passed around between horns and trumpets.
The score of the work calls for three flutes (one doubling piccolo), three oboes, three clarinets (one doubling bass clarinet), three bassoons (one doubling contrabassoon), four horns, four trumpets, four trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (snare, field drum, cymbals, bass drum, suspended cymbal, chimes, glockenspiel, vibraphone and triangle), harp, piano and strings.
Williams told Jon Burlingame in 1992 that he intended the work to represent musically “the spirit of cooperation, of heroic achievement, all the striving and preparation that go before the events and all the applause that comes after them.”
Overture from Beauty and the Beast | ALAN MENKEN
When originally released in 1991, Alan Menken’s score for Beauty and the Beast was regarded as one of his best. The Oscar-winning score, with lyrics by Howard Ashman, was then recreated in the 2017 live-action version of the film. This new live-action film takes aspects of the score from both the original 1991 animated film, as well as the Broadway musical and new material written by Menken and Tim Rice.
The Overture, as one would expect, lays out some of the famous tunes from the songs that are to come in the film. The lavish overture is very Broadway in its presentation, with the opening ‘Tale as old as time’ fanfare from the trumpets pushing through the textures. A modulated version is heard before the strings jump into the melody from ‘Belle’. The sparkling strings fizz with excitement as the bombastic brass and percussion keep the tempo moving into the bouncing waltz based on the tune from ‘Gaston.’
A short interlude as the music changes key brings the music into ‘The Mob Song,’ which has a very different character. The bold horns rip through the melody here, with the impending atmosphere sinking in. The vigorous syncopation between the brass and percussion in this section is particularly poignant. The upper strings take over once more as the music moves into ‘How Does a Moment Last Forever.’ The solo violin delicately plays this tune as the texture begins to thin. This delicate section sees small solo lines from the clarinet and cello.
The orchestra then moves into a rich account of ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ as the main melody is played by a rich united front of strings. As Menken builds up the texture in this section, the glorious brass leads into the huge climax. The orchestra swells together and bursts with a huge wall of sound. As the overture comes to an end, the trumpets lead on the final bursts of melodies from the film. The dramatic ending is powerful and is typical of a Broadway musical.
-Alex Burns
Strings on Fire! | HENRY MANCINI
During his lifetime, Mancini was nominated for 72 GRAMMY® Awards, winning 20. He was nominated for 18 Academy Awards® winning four, honored with a Golden Globe® Award and nominated for two Emmy ®Awards.
Mancini created many memorable film scores including 'Breakfast at Tiffany’s', 'The Pink Panther', 'Days of Wine and Roses', 'Hatari!', 'Charade', 'Victor/Victoria', “10,” 'Darling Lili', 'Arabesque', and 'The Glass Menagerie'. He also wrote for a number of television films including “The Thorn Birds” and “The Shadow Box,” as well as television themes including “Peter Gunn,” “Mr. Lucky,” “NBC Election Night Theme,” “Newhart,” “Remington Steele” and “Hotel.” Mancini recorded over 90 albums with styles varying from big band to jazz to classical to pop, eight of which were certified gold by The Recording Industry Association of America®.
Born in Cleveland, Ohio on April 16, 1924, Mancini was introduced to music and the flute at the age of eight by his father, Quinto, an avid flutist. The family moved to Aliquippa, Pennsylvania where at age 12 he took up piano, and within a few years became interested in arranging. After graduating from high school in 1942 Mancini enrolled in New York’s Juilliard School of Music but his studies were interrupted the next year when he was drafted, leading to overseas service in the Air Force and later in the infantry.
In 1946 Mancini joined The Glenn Miller-Tex Beneke Orchestra as a pianist/arranger. It was there that he met the future Mrs. Henry Mancini, Ginny O’Connor, who was one of the original members of Mel Torme’s Mel-Tones. Ginny and Henry were married in Hollywood the following year.
In 1952 Mancini joined the Universal-International Studios music department. During the next six years he contributed to over 100 films, most notably The Glenn Miller Story (for which he received his first Academy Award® nomination), The Benny Goodman Story and Orson Welles' Touch of Evil. Mancini left Universal-International in 1958 to work as an independent composer/arranger. Soon after he scored the television series “Peter Gunn” for writer/producer Blake Edwards, the genesis of a close relationship that lasted over 30 years and produced 26 films.
Strings on Fire! is an original concert piece composed by Henry Mancini for the Debut album with the Philadelphia Pops Orchestra conducted by Mancini, released in 1969. (It was also recorded by the Cincinnati Pops with Erich Kunzel conducting in 1989.) Strings on Fire! was a popular orchestral piece and used often in Henry's concert performances.
Questbound! | SEAN-PAUL GOUW
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Sean-Paul began his musical journey from an early age, playing upright bass in school. Or, more accurately, fell asleep playing The Chronicles of Narnia on his Gameboy, and woke up with an immense desire to begin learning the soundtrack on his instrument. That immense desire quickly grew into a burning passion for playing, performing, and creating, and soon he began composing small retro video game soundtracks for fun.
Finishing his Master’s in Film Composition at the Pacific Northwest Film Scoring Program, Sean-Paul studied with two-time Emmy award winning composer Hummie Mann (Robinhood Men in Tights, Thomas and the Magic Railroad). His music explores a variety of different genres, styles, and character, and can be heard in numerous short film and indie video game projects. In addition, he has been involved with many teams in orchestration and music prep, and has worked for projects such as Story Ave, Pink Floyd, and Metroboomin. Currently, he assists award winning film composer Nathan Wang, and is working towards a few personal projects of his own.
Originally conceived during a dream, Questbound! is an adventurous, exciting orchestral piece signifying many important musical “firsts” of my career; specifically my first full orchestral composition, my first time writing and conducting 52 of Seattle’s finest musicians, and my first (and probably last) time successfully earning a Master’s Degree in Film Composition. This piece, meant to function as a “Main Title” or “End Credits” cue, served as the capstone composition of my graduate program (Pacific Northwest Film Scoring Program), and was recorded at the Bastyr Chapel in Seattle, Washington with a full 52-piece orchestra.
Questbound! describes the adventure of a young boy, who journeys to another world upon discovering his pet cat had been kidnapped. To save his beloved companion, the boy picks up his sword and confronts the culprit in battle, an evil dragon with a fiery gemstone embedded in its chest. Emerging victorious, the boy and cat are reunited and all is well, or at least I’m sure would have happened if not for my 9am alarm. Thematically, there are two main themes to listen for, representing both our young boy and our dragon. Listen for the changes in energy and textural elements, as well as variation in both melodic ideas. And most importantly, thank you for listening, please have fun!
Overture to Rienzi | RICHARD WAGNER
Paris was more hell than heaven when in 1839, at the age of 26, Richard Wagner settled in the French capital, accompanied by his first wife, Minna. He had passed several way stations, spanning the breadth of Europe, from Riga to London, escaping from his creditors and scrounging for work. His dream was to have an opera produced by one of the great Paris houses, which would assure him access to Europe's other major stages. The ambitious young composer had no money and few prospects, spoke next-to-no French, and had no friends of sufficient influence to gain him entry into the halls of power. But he had in his hands the first two acts of his opera Rienzi, der Letzte der Tribunen (Rienzi, the Last of the Tribunes), his certain ticket to the bigtime, after having had its two operatic predecessors, Die Feen and Das Liebesverbot, rejected in his native Germany.
Wagner completed Rienzi in Paris in the fall of 1840 but found no takers. Then, in less than two months, he composed Der fliegende Holländer and sold it quickly. No, not the opera, but its scenario, which was then bowdlerized and turned into a forgotten work by a forgotten French composer, one Pierre Dietsch.
After long negotiations and many revisions Rienzi was finally accepted by the Dresden Court Opera and presented in the Saxon capital, to great acclaim, in October of 1842. Although it launched Wagner on his fabulous career, his style underwent vast changes in the following years, to the point where today Rienzi is regarded as little more than a quaint remnant of the “grand opera” style of Giacomo Meyerbeer—an unlikely start to the career of one of music’s great and original creative forces.
The opera is based on the novel Cola di Rienzi, The Last of the Tribunes by the English writer-politician Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873), he of “It was a dark and stormy night...” the beginning of another of his works, Paul Clifford. Isn’t it time to acknowledge him, rather, for such valued and oft-used coinages as “the great unwashed” (likewise from Paul Clifford), “pursuit of the almighty dollar” (from his The Coming Race, also a novel) or “the pen is mightier than the sword” (from his play Richelieu) End of digression.
The historical Rienzi was a 14th-century Roman tribune, elected to improve the miserable lot of Rome’s plebeians. Rienzi and his adherents topple the government by defeating the repressive nobility in battle, only to become a demagogue himself who is finally set upon and killed by those he initially championed. The libretto, by the composer, is wordy and convoluted. The stage work itself, while enjoying a considerable run in German theaters when it was new, has dropped from sight – with the exception of the overture, a stirring potpourri of melodies from the opera – including Rienzi’s exquisite fifth-act prayer, “Almighty Father, look down on me,” which occurs in the slow introduction and again in the exposition of the jaunty main Allegro energico.
-Herbert Glass
University Symphonic Winds • November 17, 2023
Fanfares from Libuše (1875/1976) | BEDŘICH SMETANA
Bedřich Smetana (2 March 1824, Litomyšl, Czechoslovakia – 12 May 1884, Prague, Czechoslovakia) was a Czech composer who pioneered the development of a musical style which became closely identified with his country's aspirations to independent statehood. He is thus widely regarded in his homeland as the father of Czech music. Internationally he is best known for his opera The Bartered Bride; for the symphonic cycle Má vlast ("My Homeland"), which portrays the history, legends and landscape of the composer's native land; and for his First String Quartet, From My Life.
Smetana was naturally gifted as a pianist, and gave his first public performance at the age of six. After his conventional schooling, he studied music under Josef Proksch in Prague. His first nationalistic music was written during the 1848 Prague uprising, in which he briefly participated. After failing to establish his career in Prague, he left for Sweden, where he set up as a teacher and choirmaster in Gothenburg, and began to write large-scale orchestral works.
In the early 1860s, a more liberal political climate in Bohemia encouraged Smetana to return permanently to Prague. He threw himself into the musical life of the city, primarily as a champion of the new genre of Czech opera. In 1866 his first two operas, The Brandenburgers in Bohemia and The Bartered Bride, were premiered at Prague's new Provisional Theatre, the latter achieving great popularity. In that same year, Smetana became the theatre's principal conductor, but the years of his conductorship were marked by controversy. Factions within the city's musical establishment considered his identification with the progressive ideas of Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner inimical to the development of a distinctively Czech opera style. This opposition interfered with his creative work, and may have hastened the health breakdown which precipitated his resignation from the theatre in 1874.
By the end of 1874, Smetana had become completely deaf but, freed from his theatre duties and the related controversies, he began a period of sustained composition that continued for almost the rest of his life. His contributions to Czech music were increasingly recognised and honoured, but a mental collapse early in 1884 led to his incarceration in an asylum and his subsequent death.
Smetana's reputation as the founding father of Czech music has endured in his native country, where advocates have raised his status above that of his contemporaries and successors. However, relatively few of Smetana's works are in the international repertory, and most foreign commentators tend to regard Antonín Dvořák as a more significant Czech composer.
On Fanfares from Libuše:
Bedřich Smetana’s opera Libuše was written between the years 1869 and 1872. The Czech composer referred to it in a letter as “not a normal repertory opera. It is my wish to reserve it for special occasions of national celebrations.” The opera was not premiered until nine years after its completion, when it was performed to mark the 1881 opening of the National Theater in Prague, which was itself considered a Czech triumph – a much-desired victory as Czech nationalism strengthened within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Smetana’s health had been deteriorating from syphilis in the decade prior, and he was rendered totally deaf 1874. Although he was present at the premier performance, he was unable to hear a note of his opera.
This arrangement for wind ensemble was completed by Czech-American composer Václav Nelhýbel in 1974, and was one of over 400 of his pieces that were published during his lifetime. It is an abridged version of the overture from Libuše, and connects Romantic era writing to modern instrumentation and scoring.
- Program Note by Jimmy McKenzie.
Respite (2018) | DAVID REEVES
David Reeves is an American composer of modern instrumental and vocal music. He received a Bachelor of Music in percussion performance from the University of Washington. At the University, David taught the drumline for the Husky Marching Band from 2001 to 2009. Prior to his studies at Washington, David studied composition at Indiana University. His past teachers include Don Freund, Tim Salzman, Mike Crusoe and Tom Collier.
Reeves has written extensively for percussion and has also composed for orchestra, concert band, chamber ensemble, choir and solo instruments, infusing elements of jazz, funk, minimalism, the avant-garde and electronics into his compositions. He has also collaborated with contemporary choreographers as a composer and musician.
In the drum corps arena, Reeves was a performing member of the DCI World Champion Star of Indiana from 1991-1993. He has since instructed The Santa Clara Vanguard and The Cavaliers and has arranged for Seattle Cascades, and The Troopers from Casper, Wyoming. David composes and arranges music for marching bands, drumlines and concert ensembles throughout the country.
Reeves’ works for percussion are frequently performed throughout the U.S. and have also been performed in the U.K., Australia, Spain, Italy, Japan, Singapore, Thailand and Russia. Recent awards include: Aries Composer Festival (Send & Receive), Solo & Chamber Timpani Showcase (Spiritual in five verses) Great Plains International Marimba Festival and the International Percussion Institute (Slowly, Agitated)
On Respite:
Respite was completed on September 27, 2018. The seed that would become Respite was planted, by total coincidence, right around the same time that my long-time friend and colleague Kevin Welborn started talking to me about composing a piece for his wind ensemble. In the spring of 2018, after a couple of years of on-and-off discussion, the time seemed right to go forward with the project, and we decided to look into bringing a few other band programs along for the ride. The consortium was soon formed, and I am forever grateful for the trust these directors put in me and their support for the creation of new music.
The "seed" came in a most unexpected way. My sun Alden (seven at the time) was at the piano practicing one day. I don't know if he was playing from the page or just goofing around, but he played the following three chords in a nice, slow, even succession all in parallel motion: G major, then skipping up to B minor, and then stepping down to A minor. Nothing fancy. But something about the gentle way in which he delivered this short simple phrase caught my attention. Later that day, I went to the piano, played the same three chords, but re-voiced the chord members so that they now read: root, fifth, third. This opened up the interval between each chord. The harmonic openness, slow delivery, planing motion, played on the piano's lower middle range, felt very calming to me. Gentle. I had something there, a simple seed, but worthy of watering and cultivating. I stored that away for a while and let it simmer.
Respite is a pretty safe, maybe slightly generic, title. But it sums up the overall vibe, and I think it's just a nice sounding word. The subtitle, Music for a Gentler Time, came about as I was finishing the composition. It is not from a gentler time because I'm not being nostalgic for a bygone era when everything was right with the world. I doubt that time ever existed, at least not for all of us at the same exact time in history. For a gentler time is looking forward and with a somewhat hopeful and optimistic attitude, but with no real target date in mind. It may likely come to us at different times, and our personal measuring stick for what qualifies as gentle may vary. It may never actually come at all in a physical world sense, but may only exist as state of mind that if embraced may just lighten our load a bit. This is my soundtrack for that time.
- Program note by composer.
Wind in the Aspens (2022) | KEVIN POELKING
Kevin Poelking (b. 1988, Downers Grove, Ill.) is an American composer and conductor. He began his musical career as an educator, performer, and conductor. Self-taught in the craft of composition at this point, Poelking began submitting a few of his works to competitions. Many of the first performances of his works occurred outside of the United States with professional and university ensembles in Romania, Italy, France, and Spain. During this time, he also dabbled in writing music for media, working for clients including VicFirth.com, The March of Dimes, and the University of Southern Mississippi.
At the encouragement of many of his mentors, Poelking began to pursue composing music more seriously. While completing his studies in conducting at Colorado State University, Dr. Rebecca Phillips (director of bands, past president of NBA) advised Poelking to begin studying with award-winning composer Dr. James M. David. In the final year of his degree, he was named Graduate Student of the Year by the School of Music, Theatre, and Dance and won the 2018 CSU Graduate Showcase with his first piece for chamber wind ensemble.
When Poelking made the career switch to composing, he was named a winner or top finalist in several competitions including The NBA/ William D. Revelli Memorial Composition Contest (2022 finalist), The American Prize (3rd prize and two-time national semi-finalist), The Dallas Winds Fanfare Competition (2019 Winner), The Reno Pops Composer’s Showcase (2nd prize), and The Minot Symphony Orchestra Young Composer’s Competition (winner). As his music gained momentum, it caught the attention of Pulitzer-Prize Finalist Carter Pann who invited Poelking to pursue composition studies as a private student.
Poelking has received commissions from professional musicians and university ensembles around the United States. This included a new album by Dr. Stanley Curtis- U.S. Navy Band trumpet (ret.) and world premieres at major national conventions (International Trombone Festival and International Double Reed Society Conference). Poelking’s knowledge of repertoire from his experience as a conductor led to the creation of his “Chamber Winds Project”, which was cited by CBDNA (College Band Director’s National Association) as an important resource for repertoire in the genre.
In the summer of 2019, Poelking was selected from an international pool of applicants to conduct The United States Army Band “Pershing’s Own” in concert where he was awarded the band's medal "For Excellence" by leader and commander Col. Andrew Esch. He also served as the conducting fellow for the Montgomery Philharmonic for their 2016-17 season. In addition to formal studies with Rebecca Phillips, Wes Kenney, and Sandra Ragusa, he has also received instruction from H. Robert Reynolds, Michael Haithcock, Craig Kirchoff, Gary Hill, Kevin Sedatole, Emily Threinen, Pablo Saelzar, and George Etheridge.
In addition to maintaining his schedule as a regularly commissioned composer, Poelking continues teaching as a member of the Colorado State University music faculty. He also serves as composer-in-residence with the Greater Boulder Youth Orchestras. Poelking regularly visits and collaborates with ensembles, professionals, and music students. He speaks publicly, guest lectures, and writes about healthy and efficient work habits in the teaching and creative field.
On Wind in the Aspens:
Wind in the Aspens is an exciting, rhythmically vibrant work for concert band. The music is reminiscent of the ever-changing gusts of wind that send the aspens and their unique leaves dancing, fluttering, and swaying. The piece maintains a consistent pulse throughout, with surprising and unexpected moments.
This piece was commissioned and premiered by Mr. Aaron Herman and the Fossil Ridge High School Wind Ensemble in Fort Collins, Colorado.
- Program Note from Temple University Symphonic Band Concert Program.
Notezart (2017) | CINDY MCTEE
Cindy McTee (b. 1953, Tacoma, Wash.) is an American composer and educator. She holds degrees from Pacific Lutheran University, the Yale School of Music, and the University of Iowa. She also completed one year of study in Poland with Krzysztof Penderecki at the Academy of Music in Kracow.
Originally hailed by critics as a composer whose music reflects a “charging, churning celebration of the musical and cultural energy of modern-day America,” Cindy McTee “brings to the world of concert music a fresh and imaginative voice.” She has received numerous awards for her music, most significantly a “Creative Connections Award” from Meet the Composer, two awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship, and a Composers Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She was also winner of the 2001 Louisville Orchestra Composition Competition, and in 2002 was selected to participate with the National Symphony Orchestra in “Music Alive.” a residency program sponsored by Meet the Composer and the American Symphony Orchestra League.
McTee has been commissioned by the Houston, Amarillo, Dallas, and National Symphony Orchestras, Bands of America, the American Guild of Organists, the Barlow Endowment, the College Band Directors National Association, and Pi Kappa Lambda.
McTee’s music has been performed by leading orchestras, bands, and chamber ensembles in Japan, South America, Europe, Australia, and the United States in such venues as Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and the Sydney Opera House. Among the many ensembles to have performed her music are: the Pacific Symphony, the North Texas and Dallas Wind Symphonies, the Buffalo Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo's NHK Symphony Orchestra, London's Philharmonia Orchestra, the United States Army Field Band, and the symphony orchestras of Colorado, Columbus, Dallas, Detroit, Chicago, Houston, Indianapolis, Rochester, Saint Louis, San Antonio, Seattle, and Sydney.
In May of 2011, McTee retired from the University of North Texas as Regents Professor Emerita, and in November of 2011 she married conductor Leonard Slatkin. Their principal place of residence is in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.
On Notezart:
Notezart (2017) was originally commissioned by the Brass and Percussion Ensemble of the National Orchestra of Lyon. The wind symphony version is dedicated to Eugene Migliaro Corporon – friend, conductor and devoted champion of new music.
I very much enjoy finding a way to make various kinds of music live together. So in this piece, you will hear 12-tone passages along with quartal, quintal and triadic harmony. To create unity, I use a steady pulse throughout and a strong reliance on the interval of a perfect 4th that opens the third movement from Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, my inspiration for Notezart. My “stolen” music (the work’s centerpiece) is cast in a quasi-Renaissance style – except for the duet between trumpet and trombone, more in keeping with an eighteenth-century variation.
- Program Note by composer
Rising Light (2022) | KEVIN CHAROENSRI
Kevin Charoensri (b. 11 April 2003, Carlsbad, Calif.) is an American composer, conductor, producer, keyboardist, and synthesizer player. Charoensri is currently [2022] an undergraduate student in music composition at the University of Texas Austin.
With a base in classical orchestral chamber music, love for jazz piano, and skill with synths and electronics, Kevin has created a peculiar style and voice. His background includes chamber music, jazz piano, film scoring, writing and performing EDM, producing, and electronic keyboard programming.
In addition to conducting the premieres of all his original compositions, Charoensri enjoys regularly conducting the professional pit orchestras hired for his high school’s musicals, along with hired pit orchestras for his local community theatre productions. In June 2018 as part of the 32nd-annual Sydney Youth Musicale, Charoensri conducted the world premiere of his work Return, in a performance at the Sydney Opera House.
Glory of the Yankee Navy (1909) | JOHN PHILIP SOUSA
John Philip Sousa (6 November 1854, Washington, D.C. – 6 March 1932, Reading, Pennsylvania) was America's best known composer and conductor during his lifetime. He was born the third of 10 children of John Antonio Sousa (born in Spain of Portuguese parents) and Maria Elisabeth Trinkhaus (born in Bavaria). John Philip's father, Antonio, played trombone in the U.S. Marine band, so young John grew up around military band music. Sousa started his music education, playing the violin, as a pupil of John Esputa and G. F. Benkert for harmony and musical composition at the age of six. He was found to have absolute pitch. When he reached the age of 13, his father, a trombonist in the Marine Band, enlisted his son in the United States Marine Corps as an apprentice. Sousa served his apprenticeship for seven years, until 1875, and apparently learned to play all the wind instruments while also continuing with the violin.
Several years later, Sousa left his apprenticeship to join a theatrical (pit) orchestra where he learned to conduct. He returned to the U.S. Marine Band as its head in 1880, and remained as its conductor until 1892. He organized his own band the year he left the Marine Band. The Sousa Band toured 1892-1931, performing 15,623 concerts. In 1900, his band represented the United States at the Paris Exposition before touring Europe. In Paris, the Sousa Band marched through the streets including the Champs-Élysées to the Arc de Triomphe – one of only eight parades the band marched in over its forty years.
Sousa wrote 136 marches. He also wrote school songs for several American Universities, including Kansas State University, Marquette University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Minnesota. Sousa died at the age of 77 on March 6th, 1932 after conducting a rehearsal of the Ringgold Band in Reading, Pennsylvania. The last piece he conducted was The Stars and Stripes Forever
On The Glory of the Yankee Navy:
The musical comedy The Yankee Girl was in need of a spirited march, so Sousa was prevailed upon to provide one. The march, one of Sousa's most interesting musically, was dedicated to the star of the show, Blanche Ring. Lyrics were provided by Kenneth S. Clark. The title underwent a process of evolution. The earliest known manuscript was labeled "Uncle Sam's Navy." Prior to the opening, newspapers referred to the march as The Honor of the Yankee Navy.
- Program Note from John Philip Sousa: A Descriptive Catalog of His Works
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