PROGRAM

Festival for Winds (1951) Gordon Jacob

(1895-1948)

II. Overture

One Life Beautiful(2010) Julie Giroux

(b. 1961)

Epinicion(1975) John Paulson

(b. 1948)

St. Louis Blues(1914) W.C. Handy

(1873-1958)

Arr. Luther Henderson

Adapted by Michael Brown

INTERMISSION

Galop(1958) Dmitri Shostakovich

(1906-1975)

Transcribed by Donald Hunsberger

Of Sailors and Whales(1968) W. Francis McBeth

(1933-2012)

  1. Ishmael
  2. Queequeg
  3. Father Mapple
  4. Ahab
  5. The White Whale

PROGRAM NOTES

Festival for Winds

The overture is the second movement within this eleven-movement work. The piece was commissioned by the Arts Council of Great Britain to celebrate the Festival of Britain in 1951. The suite is set for a full band, but contains several movements scored for brass choir. As a London native, Gordon Jacob was a musical ambassador for England and a compositional advocate for the burgeoning concert band revolution of the early twentieth century. Jacob was a student and eventually a teacher of counterpoint, orchestration and composition at the Royal College of Music. Although he passed away in 1984, his music and legacy are still a vibrant part of the band and orchestral canon.

One Life Beautiful

This lovely piece was written by Julie Giroux upon commission by Ray Cramer (and his wife, Molly), former director of bands at Indiana University. It is a tribute to his daughter Heather Cramer Reu, whose life was cut short by a tragic car accident in the summer of 2009. The title has a double meaning. One meaning is a reference to the beautiful life lived by Ms. Reu, and how she touched the lives of those around her. The othermeaning is to remind us all that having just one life is what makes our existence so sacred. Giroux’s skill as a longtime composer of evocative music for film and television is on full display in this poignant work.

Epinicion

An epinicion is an ancient song of victory sung at the conclusion of a triumphant battle. The Greek’s would sing is as they walked through the battlefield sorting the wounded from the dead. This setting of such a theme features several utterances of that melody being deliberately stated in different voices, while other instruments are performing non-metered, intensifying and often aleatoric motives beneath it. Due to the less concrete nature of John Paulson’s scoring, the sounds produced are both unconventional and somewhat different for each and every performance.

St. Louis Blues

This composition was one of the very first blues works to succeed as a popular song when it was first published in 1914. It was conceived by W.C. Handy after overhearing a woman on the streets of St. Louis who was lamenting the absence of her husband. From those humble beginnings, St. Louis Blues had several reincarnations set and performed by major artists, was utilized in several films, generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalty revenue and resulted in the naming of a professional hockey team. The music is still frequently performed in many settings (nearly sixty years after the composer’s death), including this lively adaptation for concert band.

Galop

This light-hearted romp comes from a larger work by Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich. Moscow, Cheryomushki is a satirical three-part operetta set in a housing project in southwest Moscow. It premiered on January 24, 1959. The libretto was written by notable Russian humorists Vladimir Mass and Mikhail Chervinsky and centers around the chronic housing shortages of urban Russians. Although he wrote over one hundred minutes of fascinating music to this libretto, Shostakovich was a critic of the operetta. In writing to his acquaintance Isaak Glikman, just days days before the premiere, the composer said this:

I am behaving very properly and attending rehearsals of my operetta. I am burning with shame. If you have any thoughts of coming to the first night, I advise you to think again. It is not worth spending time to feast your eyes and ears on my disgrace. Boring, unimaginative, stupid. This is, in confidence, all I have to tell you.

Of Sailors and Whales

W. Francis McBeth was born in Lubbock, Texas in 1933. He won a number of awards for his compositions and also enjoyed a long, successful career as a conductor and clinician. Of Sailors and Whales, written in 1990, is a five-movement work based on five scenes from the Herman Melville novel, Moby Dick. The five scenes are as follows:

  1. Ishmael – Call me Ishmael. I go to sea as a simple sailor, right before the mast, plumb down in the forecastle, aloft there to the royal masthead. I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas and land on barbarous coasts.

For these reasons, the whaling voyage was welcome; the great floodgates of the wonder-world swung open. There floated in my inmost soul endless processions of the whale, and one grand, hooded phantom – like a snow hill in the sky.

  1. Queequeg – Queequeg’s father was a High Chief, a King; his uncle, a High Priest. There was excellent blood in his veins – royal stuff. It was quite plain that he must be some abominable savage, but Queequeg was a creature in the transitory state – neither caterpillar nor butterfly.

Savage though he was, and hideously marred about the face, his countenance yet had something in it; through all his unearthly tatooings, and in his large, deep eyes, fiery black and bold, there seemed tokens of a spirit that would dare a thousand devils.

  1. Father Mapple – There was a low rumbling of heavy sea-boots among the benches, and all was quiet again, and every eye was on the preacher.

Father Mapple rose, and in prolonged solemn tones, like the continued tolling of a bell in a ship that is foundering at sea in a fog – in such tones he commenced reading the following hymn.

  1. Ahab – As I leveled by glance towards the taffrail, foreboding shivers ran over me; Captain Ahab stood on his quarterdeck.

So powerfully did the whole grim aspect of Ahab affect me that for the first few moments I hardly noted the barbaric white leg upon which he partly stood.

  1. The White Whale – Bedraggled with trailing ropes, and harpoons, and lances, Moby Dick seemed possessed by all the angels that fell from heaven. Retribution, swift vengeance, eternal malice were in his whole aspect.

The birds!, the birds!, they mark the spot.

The whale, the whale! Up helm, up helm! Oh, all ye sweet powers of air, he turns to meet us. My God, stand by me now!

.