IN CONCERT

Thomas Stone, Conductor

Friday, June 28, 2024

7:30PM

Parkway High School

Bossier City, Louisiana

PROGRAM

Festivo (1985)                                                                          Edward Gregson

Born in England in 1945, Edward Gregson studied composition and piano at the Royal Academy of Music.  He served as leader of the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester from 1996-2008.  He is known best for his works for band, orchestra, and brass band.

Festivo was commissioned in 1985 for the tenth anniversary of the Bolton Youth Concert Band with funds provided by the Trustee Savings Bank.  It was first performed by the Bolton Youth Concert Band conducted by Nigel Taylor at the 1985 WASBE convention in Kortrijk, Belgium.

The Alcotts (1915)                                                                                Charles Ives

                                                                                                           transcribed by Richard E. Thurston

Charles Ives (1874-1954) was a native of Danbury, Connecticut. The Ives family was prominent in business and civic life in Danbury, where his Father was a US Army bandmaster during the Civil War.  Ives developed polytonal harmony and other advanced compositional techniques while in his teens, far in advance of other more well-known composers who explored these devices in ensuing decades. His career as an insurance salesman allowed him to support his family while composing, but the great bulk of his work was undertaken during his early years.  Ives' genius remained undiscovered until the 1940's, when he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music for his Symphony No. 3.

The Alcotts is the subject of one of Ives' "Essays Before a Sonata," which he published concurrent to the Concord Sonata for Piano from which it comes.  The composer describes the scene in the Alcott's home "where sits the old spinet piano Sophia Thoreau gave to the Alcott children, on which Beth played the old Scotch airs, and played at Beethoven's Fifth Symphony."

The Alcotts, though monumental in character, captures simple, serene beauty in a touching and lovingly-etched remembrance of the Alcotts' orchard house under the elms, delivered in the spirit of a human-faith expression which, for Ives, maintained the essence of a special time and place.

Divertimento for Band  (1970)                                                              Karl Kroeger

          Allegro

          Andante molto moderato

          Allegretto vivace

          Adagio  

          Allegro

Karl Kroeger (b. 1932) is a native of Louisville.  He studied composition with Gordon Binkerd at the University of Illinois and served as head of the American Music Collection at the New York Public Library from 1962-64.  He finished his career as Professior of Composition at the University of Colorado.

Divertimento for Band was composed in 1970.  Cast in five movement form, movement two features woodwinds only and movement four, only brass.  The work was awarded the 1971 ABA-Ostwald Award for best composition for symphonic band.

Liturgical Music for Band (1972)                                                     Martin Mailman

          Introit

          Kyrie eleison

          Gloria

          Alleluia

Carlos Garcia, Guest Conductor

Martin Mailman (1932-2000) was a native of New York City.  He studied composition at the Eastman School of Music under the tutelage of Bernard Rogers and Howard Hanson.  He served as Professor of Composition first at Eastern Carolina University and later at the University of North Texas.

Liturgical Music for Band was completed in 1963 and has become a staple in the wind band repertoire.  The work is based on four parts of the Mass "Proper" and "Ordinary."  

- INTERMISSION -

Aegean Festival Overture (1967)                                                       Andreas Makris

                                                                                                                       transcribed by Albert Bader

Mark Minton, Associate Conductor

Andreas Makris (1930-2005) was a Greek-American composer and violinist.  He served as composer-in-residence with the National Symphony Orchestra and performed with that ensemble as a violinist for twenty-eight years.

Aegean Festival Overture was composed in 1967 for the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D. C. The current transcription was undertaken by Albert Bader of the U. S. Air Force Band under the supervision of the composer.  Makris writes:

          Concerning the melodies, they are all original, but my memories

          from Greece, the climate, sky, beautiful sea, the gaiety and sorrow

          of the Greek people undoubtedly have contributed to the general

          character of these melodies.  The elaborate clarinet cadenza is

          a shepherd's inspiration but obviously is too sophisticated to

          actually be played by the lonely shepherd.

Were You There? (2006)                                                                   Thomas Stone

Were You There? was commissoned by the New Trier High School Wind Ensemble of Winnetka, Illinois, and conductor John Thomsen.  Spirituals, of African-American origin, enjoyed their greatest popularity during the two or three decades just prior to the dawn of the Twentieth Century, when troupes of traveling singers performed them for post-Civil War audiences in a burgeoning Nation in the misdst of reconstruction.  Thomas Stone writes:

Battle Hymn (1951)                                                                              Morton Gould

"The Battle Hymn of the Republic" was a lyric composed by Julia Ward Howe at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D. C. in 1861 to be sung to an existing Civil War song entitled, "John Brown's Body."  Howe heard the song at a public review of the troops outside the Capitol city, and the creation of a new lyric was suggested to her by the Rev. James Freeman Clarke.  Howe remembered:

          I went to bed that night as usual, and slept, according to  my wont,

          quite soundly.  I awoke in the gray of the morning twilight; and as

          I lay waiting for the dawn, the long lines of the desired poem began

          to twine themselves in my mind.  Having thought out all the stanzas,

          I said to myself, "I must get up and write these verses down, lest I fall

           asleep again and forget them."  So, with a sudden effort, I sprang out

          of bed and found in the dimness an old stump of a pencil which I

           remembered to have used the day before.  I scrawled the verses

          almost without looking  at the paper.

Morton Gould (1913 -1996) was a native of Richmond Hill, New York.  As a pianist, he was a child prodigy and toured widely as a concert performer.  In 1932 he was hired as the first staff pianist at Radio City Music Hall.  Known as one of America's finest composers and arrangers, his works have been performed by the greatest orchestras and bands in the world.  He was recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors and the 1994 Pulitzer Prize in music.  

Battle Hymn dates from 1951 and is representative of the many patriotic tunes set by Gould during the years surrounding World War II.  Perhaps his most often performed work, American Salute, is based upon the Civil War song "When Johnny Comes Marching Home."

Polka and Fugue from Schwanda (1944)                                          Jaromir Weinberger

                                                                                          transcribed by Glenn Cliffe Bainum

Jaromir Weinberger (1896 - 1967) was a Bohemian born subject of the Austrian Empire.  In 1939 he left Czechoslovakia to escape the Nazis and settled in New York, teaching there and also in Ohio.  He became an American citizen in 1948.  In 1949, Weinberger moved to St. Petersburg, Florida.  Later in life he developed brain cancer and suffered from financial strife that led to the taking

of his own life by an overdose of sedatives.

Weinberger began serious work on the opera Schwanda the Bagpiper in 1924.  The opera was premiered in Prague in 1927, but the Polka and Fugue became an instant favorite as a stand-alone concert work.  The current arrangement by Glenn Cliffe Bainum was completed in 1928.

THE MUSICIANS

PICCOLO

Sarah Hill

FLUTE

Darick Harris

Sarah Hill

Sally Horak

Shelby Lauter

Michael Waller

OBOE

Slater Simpson

Joy Yang

CLARINET

Victoria Carrell

Bill Clark

Julia Mack

Martha Maxey

Carter Mitchell

Jessica Shuler

Tim Wright

BASS CLARINET

Cheryl Corkran

Carla Swilley

BASSOON

Bill Allen

ALTO SAXOPHONE

Bob Maynard

Ethan Maynard

TENOR SAXOPHONE

Daniel Scott

BARITONE SAXOPHONE

Cory Craig

TRUMPET

Kaelis Ash

Sean Flair

Carlos Garcia

Josh Green

Victoria Lacey

Carol Lupton

Miguel Rodriguez

Mike Scarlato

HORN

Chad Causey

Jackson Dillard

Tom Hundemer

Ned James

Colin McRae

Kathy Phillips

TROMBONE

Cody Ford

Colby Grayson

Jamie Neeley

Ryan Pirkey

Todd Warren

EUPHONIUM

Daniel Coleman

Bill Conrad

TUBA

Beau Creech

Matthew Pirkey

PERCUSSION

Corey Bradford

Nathan Causey

Catherine Conrad

Chandler Teague

Macy Washngton

SPECIAL THANKS TO:

Steven Vrbka, Pricipal, Parkway High School

Becky Gray, Assistant Principal, Parkway High School

Emmitt Beggs, Assistant Principal, Parkway High School

Mike Martindale, KEEL 710AM

Mark Minton, Director of Bands, Parkway High School

Bob Maynard, Assistant Director of Bands, Parkway High School

I've always been fascinated by Sprituals. Good ones have a way of stirring the deepest emotions in all who are receptive to their raw expressive force.  And Were You There? is perhaps the most compelling of all Spirituals. Often I've wondered why there aren't dozens of band arrangements of this hymntune.  When I set out to work out my own setting, its difficulty became abundantly clear.  The imposing one-and-one-half octave range presents technical challenges not only to singers but also to instrumentalists.  Each iteration of the theme in my setting is rendered in a key different from the last, offering not only freshness to the ear but also tailoring the most gracious range of each instrument to the contour of the tune.

IN MEMORIAM

Dr. Samuel Hall

Tonight's performance of the Red River Wind Orchestra is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Samuel Hall, who passed away unexpectedly last October at the age of 30.  Dr. Sam was a valued member of our trombone section and had just returned home from a successful residency at Case Western Reserve University to establish his practice at the Sleep and Neurology Clinic in Shreveport.  His quiet kindness and warm heart were known to all who crossed his path.  In addition to his excellence on the trombone, Sam was also an accomplished cellist and performed in both band and orchestra at Caddo Magnet High School and Centenary College.  We are grateful to have known Sam and to have been enriched by his genuine spirit and passion for music.