Sonoran Desert Holiday (Ron Nelson, 1929 – ). Ron Nelson is a native of Joliet, Illinois. He studied composition at the Eastman School of Music, earning multiple degrees: bachelor’s in 1952, master’s in 1953, and doctorate in composition in 1957. Nelson’s Passacaglia (Homage on B-A-C-H) was the first piece to win all three major wind band composition prizes during one award season — the National Band Association Prize, the American Bandmasters Association Ostwald Award, and the Sudler International Prize. Nelson was awarded the Medal of Honor by the John Philip Sousa Foundation in 1994. In 2006, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Oklahoma City University. Nelson has received numerous commissions, including from the National Symphony Orchestra, the Rochester Philharmonic, the United States Air Force Band and Chorus, Musashino Wind Ensemble, Aspen Music Festival, and numerous colleges and universities. He has also received grants and awards from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Howard Foundation, ASCAP, and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1996, conductor Leonard Slatkin said, “Nelson is the quintessential American composer. He has the ability to move between conservative and newer styles with ease. The fact that he’s a little hard to categorize is what makes him interesting.” Nelson’s Sonoran Desert Holiday was commissioned by the U.S. Air Force Band Of Flight, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, Lt. Col. Richard A. Shelton Commander & Conductor. The piece was composed in 1995, concluding a series of exciting overtures that the composer called “musical travelogues” which started in 1953. Sonoran Desert Holiday evokes pleasant images and textures of midnight vistas, sunrises, native American and Hispanic cultural influences, and wide-open southwestern spaces. (Note adapted from Wikipedia.org)
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A Northern Legend (Alfred Reed, 1921-2005). Reed was born in New York City. He started learning trumpet at age 10. In his teens he played in hotel combos in the Catskills. At the onset of World War II, he joined the 529th Army Air Corps Band, where during 3½ years of service he produced nearly 100 compositions and arrangements for band. After military discharge, he studied composition with Vittorio Giannini at Juilliard. In 1953, he enrolled at Baylor University, serving as symphony orchestra conductor while earning bachelor’s (1955) and master’s degrees (1956) in music. He was executive editor of Hansen Publishing (1955-1966), then become professor of music at the University of Miami, where he served until retirement in 1993. He continued composing and guest-conducting as a post-retirement career. A Northern Legend was composed in 1971, when Dr. Reed was a new faculty member and clinician that year for the Bemidji State College Music Clinic & Conference summer camp held in Bemidji Minnesota. Reed brought with him to the camp a new work for band whose title, at the time, was Star of the North (An Indian Legend). Based on Chippewa Indian themes that Reed had obtained from the archives of the Library of Congress, the work was premiered at the final camp concert by the Beaver Band with the composer conducting. The work contrasts between lush warm and rich melodies and harmonies that weave and interplay with each other, and a fiery intense middle section that is reminiscent of a war or battle song. There are wonderful moments of solo work between the flute, clarinet, oboe, alto sax, and French horn throughout the opening and closing sections. The dramatic middle movement is dominated by the brass with trombone and euphonium in particular leading the charge with usual support from a driving percussion section. This beautifully dramatic work was performed only months before Reed completed arguably one of his greatest contributions to the wind band genre, Armenian Dances. Throughout A Northern Legend, Reed can be heard combining colors, rhythms, and styles that would ultimately lay the groundwork for his major compositional achievement that followed. (Note adapted in part from Sydney University Wind Orchestra, Sydney, Australia.)
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Shenandoah (Frank Ticheli, 1958 – ). Frank Ticheli, a native of Monroe, Louisiana, received a Bachelor of Music degree in composition from Southern Methodist University and both a Masters Degree in composition and the degree Doctorate of Musical Arts from the University of Michigan. He is Associate Professor of Music at the University of Southern California and was Composer-in-Residence of the Pacific Symphony Orchestra 1991-1998. He writes music for band, wind ensemble, orchestra, chamber ensembles, and theatre. His musical awards include the Goddard Lieberson fellowship and the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy and Institute of Arts & Letters; the 1989 Walter Beeler Memorial Composition Prize; the Ross Lee Finney Award; and 1st prize in the 11th annual Virginia Symposium for New Band Music. Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley and Shenandoah River and Shenandoah Mountain – a ridge 65 miles long inside George Washington National Forest that forms part of the western margin of the Shenandoah Valley – all share a name whose origin is obscure. The origins of the folk song Shenandoah are likewise obscure, but all date to the 19thcentury. Frank Ticheli said,“In my setting of Shenandoah I was inspired by the freedom and beauty of the folk melody and by the natural images evoked by the words, especially the image of a river. I was less concerned with the sound of a rolling river than with its life-affirming energy – its timelessness. Sometimes the accompaniment flows quietly under the melody; other times it breathes alongside it. The work’s mood ranges from quiet reflection, through growing optimism, to profound exaltation.”
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Joy Of Life (Brian Balmages, 1975 – ). Brian Balmages is an award-winning composer, conductor, producer, and performer. He holds a bachelor’s degree in music from James Madison University and a master’s degree from the University of Miami in Florida. His compositions have been performed worldwide. His commissions and premieres have encompassed groups ranging from elementary schools to professional ensembles, including the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Miami Symphony Orchestra, University of Miami Wind Ensemble, Boston Brass, and the Dominion Brass Ensemble. In 2012, Balmages received the prestigious Albert Austin Harding Award from the American School Band Directors Association. He is also 2010 winner of the Harvey G. Phillips Award for Compositional Excellence, presented by the International Tuba-Euphonium Association. As conductor, Balmages leads numerous all-state and regional honor bands and orchestras along with university and professional ensembles. His notable guest conducting appearances have included the Midwest Clinic, Western International Band Clinic, National Association for Music Educators, American School Band Directors Association, CBDNA, the Kennedy Center, and Meyerhoff Symphony Hall. He has also served as an adjunct professor of instrumental conducting and Acting Symphonic Band Director at Towson University in Maryland. Commissioned by the concert band of Lafayette, Louisiana, (Gerald Guilbeaux, conductor), Joy Of Life was inspired by the vibrant joie de vivre of Cajun culture. The rich, colorful traditions of Cajun music drive the piece forward with exciting melodies, rhythms, and countermelodies, with elements of blues and jazz sparkling through like bayou sunlight shimmering on Spanish moss. The contrasting somber but lyrical middle section (Adagio, molto espressivo) is based on the Navy hymn, Eternal Father, Strong To Save, and features solos for euphonium, bassoon, horn, and oboe. As the original tempo returns, a final fugal section builds to a heroic chorale. Three emphatic ending chords bring the work to a close in a powerful Amen. (Note adapted from Wikipedia.org)
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Quiet City (Aaron Copland, 1900-1990). When Copland came back to the United States after spending the 1920s in Paris with other American literary and musical expatriates, he took on a leading role in American music as a composer, promoter, and educator for the next 50 years. Nobody else wrote so many or such wide-ranging staples of the American concert repertory. Some of his music even leapt from the concert hall straight into the popular consciousness, sounding forth for stately occasions (Fanfare for the Common Man) and spicing up the TV commercial, “Beef – it’s what’s for dinner!” (Rodeo). Quiet City derives from incidental music Copland wrote in 1939 for an Irwin Shaw play that was canceled before it ever premiered because it was considered “too experimental.” Copland reworked his simple duet for trumpet and English horn into a concert piece which begins and ends with the stillness of night and the solitude of a lone trumpeter. Decades later, in conversation with oral historian Vivian Perlis, Copland recalled: “Quiet City was billed as a ‘realistic fantasy,’ a contradiction in terms that only meant the stylistic difference made for difficulties in production. The script was about a young trumpet player who imagined the night thoughts of many different people in a great city and played trumpet to express his emotions and to arouse the consciences of the other characters and of the audience. After reading the play, I composed music that I hoped would evoke the inner distress of the central character. . . . [The director and cast] struggled valiantly to make the play convincing, but after two try-out performances in April, Quiet City was dropped. (Adapted in part from Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra website.)
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Tableaux de Provence (Paule Maurice, 1910-1967). Paule Maurice’s most famous composition is her suite titled Tableaux de Provence pour saxophone et orchestre, written between 1948 and 1955 and dedicated to saxophone virtuoso Marcel Mule. Her other compositions include Suite pour quatuor de flûtes, Volio, Cosmorama, Concerto pour piano et orchestre, Mémoires d’un chat, Trois pièces pour violon, and many more, all catalogued in the library of the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, where Maurice studied and spent her professional life. Tableaux de Provence portrays the culture and scenery of Provence, in southeast France. Its first performance was in 1958. The symphonic band transcription is by Maarten Jense (1959 – ).
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Highlights From Pocahontas (music by Alan Menken, 1949 – ). Disney’s movie magic comes not only from the studio’s engaging stories and brilliant cartoon animation, but also from music and lyrics that fit the characters and the action just right. The animated feature Pocahontas (1995) is no exception. The film won Academy Awards in two musical categories – Best Original Score and Best Original Song (“Colors Of The Wind”). Musical highlights include the Oscar-winning song plus “The Virginia Company,” “Mine, Mine, Mine,” “Savages,” “Just Around The Riverbend,” “John Smith Sneaks Out,” “Execution,” and “Farewell.” The concert band arrangement is by John Moss (1948- ).
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