Fall Band Concert 10/06/21

Fall Band Concert “Retrospective” Wednesday I October 6, 2021 Faye Spanos Concert Hall

I 7:30 pm

University Concert Band and Symphonic Wind Ensemble Vu Nguyen, conductor

6th Performance I 2021–22 Academic Year I Conservatory of Music I University of the Pacific

CONCERT PROGRAM I OCTOBER 6, 2021 I 7:30 PM University Concert Band A Festival Prelude (1956)

Alfred Reed (1921 - 2005)

Stillwater (2019)

Prelude, Siciliano, and Rondo (1963/1979)

Kelijah Dunton (b. 1999)

Malcolm Arnold (1921 - 2005) arr. John Paynter

Prelude Siciliano Rondo The Black Horse Troop (1924)

John Philip Sousa (1854 - 1932) arr. Frederick Fennell

Intermission

CONCERT PROGRAM I OCTOBER 6, 2021 I 7:30 PM Symphonic Wind Ensemble Smetana Fanfare (1984)

Karel Husa (1921 - 2016)

Come, Sweet Death (1736/1976)

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 - 1750) arr. Alfred Reed

The Hounds of Spring (1981)

Give Us This Day (2007) Moderately slow Very fast

Alfred Reed

David Maslanka (1943 - 2017)

University Concert Band Flute Ashley Bonfoey Grace Coon Logan Feece Autumn Hill Lauren Kashiwabara Victoria Wang Clarinet Glenna Boggs Kyle Chang Rachel Dolan Rosie Fox Gerado Lopez Emily McGann Sungeun Park Julia Spowart Bassoon Krys Checo Justin Silva Simon Vasquez Saxophone Marc Anderson Tristan McMichael Ryan Porter Mason Weillie Kiko Yago Trumpet Ryan Abdelmalek Ainsley Berryhill Kevin Hee Julia Alejandra Murillo Emily Padilla Jonathan Velez

Horn Mary Denney Emily Fjelstrom Robert Huntington Trombone Victor Alcaraz, Jr. Aparna Balaji Marco Galvan Paxton O’Bryan Euphonium Noah Antonio Keon MacKay Tuba Stephen Lambert Percussion Robert Douglas Brown, Jr. Huey Chan Ethan Chow Mallory Norman Samantha Sanchez

Symphonic Wind Ensemble

Flute Kalea Bringas Phoenix Farris Jessica Jenkins Natalie Kowalski Marcus Loya

Trumpet Jack Chivers Noah Granard Andrew Marcopulos Cristina O’Brien Kylie Ward

Oboe Glenn Michael Adcock Jenna Bosnick Alelih Galvadores

Trombone Rebecca Growcott Matthew Miramontes Seth Neves

Clarinet Byron Ayala Edgard Gonzales Maggie Juarez Abigail Miller Marcus Romero Molly Westlake

Euphonium Brooke Farrar

Bassoon Ella Hebrard Dorian Jones Ealaph Tabbaa Jordan Wier Saxophone Arturo Garcia Theresa Nhu Nhien Huyhn Michael De Lashmutt James Scott Horn Olivia Gideon Jada Ramos Reese Romero Skylar Warren

Tuba Domenic Jimenez Percussion Robin Bisho Leonard Cox Jon Herbers Mallory Norman Rayvn Stanford Emily Winsatt Double Bass Noah Gonzalez Piano Leo Chang

VU NGUYEN is an Associate Professor of Music and the Director of Bands at University of the Pacific. He conducts the Symphonic Wind Ensemble, Concert Band, and teaches courses in conducting and music education.

Dr. Nguyen maintains an active schedule as a clinician and has served as guest conductor with the United States Air Force Bands of the Golden West and Mid-America, as well as regional and all-state honor bands throughout the country. Ensembles under his direction have been invited to perform at state and national conferences, most recently at the 2020 College Band Directors National Association Eastern Division Conference.

A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, Dr. Nguyen holds degrees in conducting from the University of Washington and the University of Oregon, and a BM in music education from the University of the Pacific. Prior to his appointment at Pacific, he served as Director of Wind Ensembles and Conducting at the University of Connecticut.

He began his career teaching in the public schools of San Ramon, CA. In addition to his academic career, Dr. Nguyen continues to serve as an officer in the Air National Guard (ANG) where he is the commander/conductor of the ANG Band of the West Coast, one of five such bands in the United States covering an eight-state area of responsibility.

Program Notes A Festival Prelude Alfred Reed was a composer, conductor, and educator of international renown in the wind band world. He served in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II, and wrote more than 150 compositions and arrangements during his three and a half years with the 529th Army Air Forces Band. Upon completion of his service, he studied composition at the Juilliard School, and then went on to a position as an arranger for NBC and for ABC in the 1950s. Reed later joined the faculty at the University of Miami until 1993. His music is particularly popular in Japan where he developed a close relationship with the Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra. A Festival Prelude was written in commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the Tri-State Music Festival, located in Enid, Oklahoma in 1956. Reed said, “The work was conceived specifically in terms of its title as an opening kind of piece…the music was to establish a bright and brilliant mood throughout, with no other connotation in mind.”

Stillwater Kelijah Dunton, a native of Brooklyn, New York, has called the neighborhoods of Williamsburg, Bushwick, and Crown Heights home. Moving from place to place has helped him learn what it means to be around people of all backgrounds, ages, and walks of life, as well as exposed him to many genres of music in different communities. Dunton studied alto saxophone through school and continues to be an active performer with New York City’s Metropolitan Music Community. Without formal composition training, Dunton has only recently embarked on his composition career, persevering as he learns from his musical peers and experiences. Of the piece, Dunton writes: Inspired by the beauty of a small town, Stillwater Minnesota. This town has a big lake in its center, and out of everyone’s backyard it could be seen. During the winter, the very top of the lake freezes and creates this tranquil effect that could not be seen, but heard. When stepping out into your backyard, you’d see this frozen mass, stuck into place and completely unmovable, but if you listened closely, you could hear that the water underneath continued to flow. Why is this important? We as people forget sometimes that we are so much more deep and vast beneath our hard surfaces. We work, we go to school, we take care of our families, we deal with the struggles of the day-to-day routine militantly. But if we just take a moment to listen within ourselves; we discover our passions, our longings, and our sense of belongings.

Program Notes Prelude, Siciliano, and Rondo Born in Northampton, England, Malcolm Arnold was attracted to jazz at a young age and took up the trumpet by age 12. He studied trumpet and composition at the Royal College of Music and later went on to perform with both the London Philharmonic and the BBC Symphony. As a composer, he is known primarily for his lighter music and film score including “The Bridge Over the River Kwai.” Prelude, Siciliano, and Rondo was originally a brass band work entitled Little Suite for Brass, with all three movements written in short five-part song forms. John Paynter, director of bands at Northwestern University for 42 years, completed this arrangement in 1979 and expanded on the original piece to include woodwinds and additional percussion while still retaining the light character of the original work.

The Black Horse Troop Famously known as America’s “March King,” John Philip Sousa composed 136 marches, 15 operettas, and 70 songs in addition to a handful of other pieces. He was the conductor of the United States Marine Band, “The President’s Own,” from 1880-1892. For thirty years after leaving the Marine Band, he toured the world with the Sousa Band, performing concerts for millions of people. The Black Horse Troop was premiered by the Sousa Band on October 17, 1925 in the Public Auditorium, Cleveland, Ohio. This march was dedicated to Cleveland’s Ohio National Guard Cavalry, known as Troop A, and as Sousa’s march was being played for the first time, Troop A rode onto the stage and stood behind the band to thunderous applause.

Program Notes Smetana Fanfare Karel Husa, winner of the 1993 Grawemeyer Award and the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for Music, was an internationally known composer and conductor.

An American citizen since 1959, Husa was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, on August 7, 1921. After completing studies at the Prague Conservatory and, later, the Academy of Music, he went to Paris where he received diplomas from the Paris National Conservatory and the École normale de musique. In 1954, Husa was appointed to the faculty of Cornell University where he was Kappa Alpha Professor until his retirement in 1992. During the period where he was actively writing for wind band, there were not many composers of his stature who devoted so much energy to writing for the medium.

Husa’s Smetana Fanfare for Wind Ensemble was commissioned by the San Diego State University for the 1984 International Musicological Conference and Festival of Czechoslovak Music. These co-sponsored a festival commemorating the centennial of the death of the Czech nationalist composer Bedrich Smetana (1824-1884). It was premiered by the SDSU Wind Ensemble on April 3, 1984 in San Diego. The work uses two thematic excerpts from Smetana’s symphonic poem Wallenstein’s Camp, completed during his exile from Prague in 1859 in Gotenberg, Sweden. The work begins with a direct quote of a four-trumpet fanfare accompanied by a timpani roll. As the composition progresses, the fanfare begins to transform into Husa’s contemporary voice.

Come, Sweet Death Come, Sweet Death (Komm’, süsser Tod) is one of 69 songs and arias contributed by J.S. Bach to Georg Christian Schemelli’s songbook Musicalisches Gesangbuch. The songbook, which was published in 1736, was intended as a practical collection for the Lutheran congregations in Leipzig. There has been some disagreement among scholars as to how many of these songs were actually penned by Bach himself, but the authenticity of Komm’, süsser Tod as an original work from Bach’s own hand seems to not have been questioned over the years. The text is as follows:

Program Notes Komm, süßer Tod, komm selge Ruh! Come, sweet death, come blessed rest!

Komm führe mich in Friede,

Come lead me to peace

Weil ich der Welt bin müde,

For I am weary of the world,

Ach komm! ich wart auf dich,

Oh come! I wait for you,

Komm bald und führe mich,

Come soon and lead me,

Drück mir die Augen zu.

Close my eyes.

Komm, selge Ruh!

Come, blessed rest!

The Hounds of Spring Reed’s inspiration for the concert overture The Hounds of Spring comes from two stanzas of Algernon Charles Swinburne’s poem, Atalanta in Calydon: When the hounds of spring are on winter’s traces, The mother of months in meadow or plain Fills the shadows and windy places With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain And soft as lips that laugh and hide The laughing leaves of the trees divide, And screen from seeing and leave in sight The god pursuing, the maiden hid.

This forms the basis for Reed’s musical setting, and it is his attempt to capture the twin elements of the poem, exuberant youthful gaiety and the sweetness of tender love. Swinburne’s poem, a recreation in English of an ancient Greek tragedy, appeared in print in 1865, and it was his first literary success.

Program Notes Give Us This Day The words, “Give us this day,” are, of course, from the Lord’s Prayer, but the inspiration for this music is Buddhist. I have recently read a book by the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hahn (pronounced “Tick Not Hahn”) entitled For a Future to be Possible. His premise is that a future for the planet is only possible if individuals become deeply mindful of themselves, deeply connected to who they really are. While this is not a new idea, and something that is an ongoing struggle for everyone, in my estimation it is the issue for world peace. For me, writing music, and working with people to perform music, are two of those points of deep mindfulness.

Music makes the connection to reality, and by reality I mean a true awakeness and awareness. Give Us This Day gives us this very moment of awakeness and awareness so that we can build a future in the face of a most dangerous and difficult time.

I chose the subtitle, “Short Symphony for Wind Ensemble,” because the music is not programmatic in nature. It has a full-blown symphonic character, even though there are only two movements. The music of the slower first movement is deeply searching, while that of the highly energized second movement is at times both joyful and sternly sober. The piece ends with a modal setting of the choral melody Vater unser im Himmelreich (Our Father in Heaven), no. 110 from the 371 Four-part chorales by Johann Sebastian Bach.

- Note by David Maslanka

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UPCOMING CONSERVATORY EVENTS Oct. 11 | 10pm Saxophone Rectial with Ricardo Martinez Recital Hall

Oct. 20 | 5pm Double Bass Master Class with Andy Butler Recital Hall

Oct. 15 | 1pm Fall Conservatory Concert Hour Faye Spanos Concert Hall

Oct. 22 | 7:30pm Pacific Jazz Festival Faye Spanos Concert Hall

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