UTSA Wind Ensemble - Sept. 22, 2022

THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT SAN ANTONIO COLLEGE OF LIBERAL AND FINE ARTS SCHOOL OF MUSIC

PRESENTSThe

University of Texas at San Antonio WindRonEnsembleEllis

Conductor

Hector Garcia Graduate Student Conductor

P R O G R A M :

“Small Packages, Big Things”

Firefly (2008)

Paris Sketches (1994)

Ryan George (b. 1978)

Martin Ellerby (b. 1957) Saint Germain de Pres

LPerePigalleLachaiseesHalles

Cloudburst (1991/tr 2001)

Eric Whitacre (b. 1970)

Goodnight, Dear Heart (2015) Dan Forrest (b. 1978)

Sinfonia Nobilissima (1965)

Thursday, September 22nd, 2022 7:30 pm UTSA Music Recital Hall

Robert Jager (b. 1939)

University of at San Antonio Wind Ensemble

Flute / MairaLisetteEsmeraldaPiccoloAcostaAguilarCorreladeSouza

Zackery Cuellar

Bryana Ramirez

Jordan Rodriguez

DanielOboe Aguilar

Julian ClarisaDSikanderClarinetJaimeJaredJamesBassoonRiveraKingWormanViejoAhmedarionCampbellDelaGarza (G)

Jadee Dovalina

Joel

Viana (G)

Personnel roster is listed alphabetically to emphasize the important contribution made each

RonConductorsEllisserves

as Director of Bands and Associate Professor of Music at The University of Texas at San Antonio. Prof Ellis conducts the UTSA Wind Ensemble, the UTSA Symphonic Band, The UTSA University Band, and the UTSA Athletic Bands. His responsibilities also include teaching graduate and undergraduate courses in conducting, wind literature, and music education. A nationally recognized guest conductor, adjudicator, and composer/arranger, his works for concert band, orchestra and choir are performed by university, community, high school and professional wind bands as well as in Carnegie Hall. He also currently serves as a music director for Walt Disney Attractions Entertainment in Orlando where he has directed the Toy Soldiers and the Student Musician Program since 1993.

He is a member of the College Band Directors National Association, Texas Music Educators Association, Texas Bandmasters Association, Florida Music Educators Association, Florida Bandmasters Association, and Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia Music Fraternity. He is also an honorary member of Kappa Kappa Psi, Tau Beta Sigma, and Pi Kappa Lambda. Prof. Ellis received his Bachelor of Arts in Trombone Performance from the University of Central Florida and a Master of Music in Wind and Orchestral Conducting from the University of South Florida where he was a conducting student of William Wiedrich.

Hector Garcia

Hector Garcia is a native of San Antonio, TX, currently pursuing a master's degree in instrumental conducting at UTSA under the mentorship of Dr. John Zarco and Professor Ron Ellis. For three years, Hector taught high school and middle school band prior to attending UTSA. As a band director, he taught brass and woodwind beginning band classes, marching band, concert band, and jazz band. In 2019, Hector led the Memorial High School Band to the National Memorial Day Parade in Washington D.C. He has a bachelor's degree in music education from Texas State University in San Marcos, TX and his primary instrument is trumpet. A hobby of his is photography and his favorite food is sushi.

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to the following for their ongoing support and dedication to the UTSA Bands:

Dr. Tracy Cowden, Director, School of Music

Dr. Stacey Davis, Acting Director, School of Music

Dr. Kasandra Keeling, Associate Director, School of Music Naomy Ybarra, Administrative Services Officer 1 Steven Hill, Administrative Associate Wesley Penix, Senior Events Manager

Rolando Ramon, Marketing Coordinator

Dr. John Zarco, Director of Instrumental Ensembles

Mr. Donald Marchand, Music Program Specialist, UTSA Bands

Hector Garcia, Jayland Brown and Meaghan Trevino, UTSA Bands Graduate Assistants

Prof. Sherry Rubins and Prof. Paul Millette, Percussion Area Faculty

Dr. Rachel Woolf and Dr. Oswaldo Zapata, Woodwind and Brass Area Coordinators

Dr. Kasandra Keeling and Prof. Christine Debus, Keyboard Area Coordinators

Prof. Troy Peters, Director of Orchestras

Dr. Yoojin Muhn, Director of Choral Activities

UTSA School of Music Faculty Jadee Dovalina and Jaime Viejo, School of Music Librarians

UTSA Bands Managers

Mu Tau Chapter of Kappa Kappa Psi Iota Tau Chapter of Tau Beta Sigma

Upcoming Events

All events are in the UTSA Recital Hall and are free unless otherwise indicated

Sun. Sept 25, 3:00 pm

Mon Sep 26, 7:30 pm

UTSA University Band

Guest Recital: Claire Salli, Saxophone

Tue Sep 27, 7:30 pm UTSA Orchestra

Thu. Oct. 13, 7:30 pm Composition Studio Recital

Fri. Oct. 14, 7:30 pm String Area Recital

For More Information: Visit our Website

UTSA School of Music http://music.utsa.edu

Bands at the University of Texas at San Antonio

ALL UTSA STUDENTS can make music with us!

UTSA “Spirit of San Antonio” Marching Band

The 300 member “Spirit of San Antonio” Marching Band is open to all UTSA students, regardless of major. Like all college bands, the group is comprised of students of various performance backgrounds. The “Spirit of San Antonio” will perform a standard pre game show, 4 5 different halftime shows, stand tunes, and maintain UTSA traditions, while at the same time promoting a positive learning and social environment for its members. College bands strive towards being fun and spirited organizations while still achieving a quality of performance representative of the image of the

UTSAuniversity.Wind Ensemble

The UTSA Wind Ensemble is comprised of UTSA Students who have achieved an extreme high level of musicianship and who perform some of the most challenging music composed for wind band. Membership in this ensemble is open to all UTSA Students, regardless of major, who audition at the beginning of each semester. The UTSA Wind Ensemble maintains a vigorous performance schedule of three demanding concerts each semester as well as an ensemble tour when schedule and budget permits.

UTSA Symphonic Band

The UTSA Symphonic Band is made up of 45 55 outstanding wind players who perform a repertoire chosen from a variety of historical periods and for ensembles of various sizes. While the group occasionally presents pieces composed for smaller groups, much of its time is spent in the study and performance of works from the standard symphonic band repertoire. Membership is open to all students at the university who audition at the beginning of each

UTSAsemester.University Band

The UTSA University Band performs a wide variety of works from different composers and arrangers, in addition to maintaining an active three concert schedule each semester. There is no formal audition required to participate; students must be able to read music and play a concert band instrument. Membership in the ensemble includes students from almost every discipline on campus. We invite all students interested in performing in this ensemble to come out and join us at the beginning of each semester!

Program Notes

Compiled and Edited by Ron Ellis

Firefly Ryan George

Ryan George is an American composer. Ryan graduated from the University of Kentucky with a degree in music education. While a student he sat principal horn for four semesters in the wind ensemble, was a drum major for the Wildcat Marching Band, and also performed with various other ensembles including the UK

Georgeorchestra.completed

his first concert commission in 2007, and since then his works have received performances at the American Bandmasters Association Convention, the Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic in Chicago, the Music For All (Bands of America) Concert Band Festival, the MidEurope Festival in Schladming Austria, Carnegie Hall, the National CBDNA Conference, the CBDNA/NBA Southern Division Conference, and multiple state music educator conferences. Ryan's music is also regularly programmed by All State, Region, Inter Collegiate, and Honor ensembles. His first work for advanced wind ensemble, Firefly, was recorded by the University of North Texas Wind Symphony under the direction of Eugene M. Corporon and is featured in the Teaching Music Through Performance in Band series, volume 8.

As a specialist in music design for marching ensembles, Mr. George's work has been performed by some of the nation's elite ensembles at state, region, and national venues. His roster of clients hail from 14 states and include perennial Bands of America (Music for All) regional champions, regional finalist, and Grand National finalist. Within the realm of drum corps, Ryan serves as the brass arranger/composer for the Boston Crusaders from Boston Mass., and the Academy Drum & Bugle Corps from Tempe, Ariz. He was also a visual staff member for the Phantom Regiment and Carolina Crown. As a marching member Ryan performed with the 1998 DCI World Champion Cadets of Bergen County and the 1999 DCI World Champion Concord Blue Devils.

Ryan's professional affiliations include ASCAP, the American Composer's Forum, and TMEA, and he resides in Austin, Texas.

On Firefly, “I'm amazed at how children use their imaginations to transform the ordinary and normal into the extraordinary and fantastic. Just about anything they come across can be used to spark their fantasies and usher their minds into unseen worlds. A stick on the ground becomes a wand with magical powers or a sword to fight off bad guys. A collection of rocks turns into buried treasure, and a blanket stretched over two chairs becomes a cave to hide in. And things found in nature birds, waterfalls, flowers, and even insects can take on mythic identities when viewed through the eyes of a child.

The idea for Firefly was born one night as I watched my four year old become mesmerized by a firefly that had wandered into our front yard. When I asked her what she thought of the "firefly" she looked at me with a puzzled look and said with a corrective tone, "Dad, that is not a firefly... that's Tinkerbell, and she's come to take me with her on an adventure!"

Firefly is dedicated to my daughters Sophia and Nyla, who ignite my imagination and bring awe and wonder into my life every day.”

Program Note by composer

Paris Sketches Martin Ellerby

Martin Ellerby is a British composer.

He was educated at the Royal College of Music, London, where he was taught by Joseph Horovitz. Ellerby is a composer of international standing, whose works have been performed, broadcast and recorded to critical acclaim across Europe, Asia and the USA. His catalogue comprises compositions spanning a diverse range of media, including orchestral, choral, concert band, brass band, ballet, instrumental and chamber, together with a substantial number of commercial orchestrations and arrangements. Ellerby’s works are published extensively and recorded on over 75 commercial CDs to date. Key performances include the BBC Promenade Concerts, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Barbican Centre, Royal Albert Hall, South Bank Centre and many major international festivals, including Edinburgh, Harrogate, Zurich and Kuhmo Chamber Music (Finland).

In his previous post as head of Composition and Contemporary Music at the London College of Music and Media, Martin was responsible for the co ordination and development of a high profile department of over 50 composition students at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. He instigated and designed four composition programs at master’s level, while also preparing a range of detailed undergraduate syllabuses. Martin contributed to the artistic focus of the school by being proactive in overseeing the inclusion of a substantial number of student works in concert programs, hosting a range of composers’ festivals, and organizing frequent workshops and composers’ concerts.

Martin combines a busy schedule as a professional composer with work in education, where he is currently Visiting Professor (with responsibility for curriculum design) at the Royal Air Force: Headquarters Music Services. He is also artistic Director for Studio Music Company, London and Senior Producer for Polyphonic Recordings.

Specially commissioned by the BASBWE Consortium to meet the requirements of bands of mixed ability and uncertain attendance, but making no artistic compromises. Poetic, humorous, wistful and thrilling, its four movements vividly evoke the spirit and some of the composers associated with the great city.

The composer provides the following program note about this composition:

This is my personal tribute to a city I love, and each movement pays homage to some part of the French capital and to other composers who lived, worked or passed through it rather as did Maurice Ravel in his own tribute to the work of an earlier master in Le Tombeau de Couperin. Running like a unifying thread through the whole score is the idea of bells a prominent feature of Paris life.

Saint Germain des Prés: The Latin Quarter famous for artistic associations and bohemian lifestyle. This is a dawn tableau haunted by the shade of Ravel: the city awakens with the ever present sense of morning bells.

Pigalle: The Soho of Paris, this is a burlesque with scenes cast in the mold of a balletic scherzo humorous in a kind of “Stravinsky meets Prokofiev” way. It’s episodic, but everything is based on the harmonic figuration of the opening. The bells here are car horns and police sirens!

Père Lachaise: This is the city’s largest cemetery, the final resting place of many a celebrity who had once walked its streets. The spirit of Satie’s Gymnopédies themselves a tribute to a still more distant past is affectionately evoked before what is in effect the work’s slow movement concludes with a quotation of the Dies Irae. The mood is one of softness and delicacy, which I have attempted to match with more transparent orchestrations. The bells are gentle, nostalgic, wistful.

Les Halles: A fast, bustling finale; the bells triumphant and celebratory. Les Halles is the old market area, a Parisian Covent Garden, and like Pigalle, this is a series of related but contrasting episodes. Its climax quotes from Hector Berlioz’s Te Deum, which was first performed in 1855 at the church of St. Eustache actually in the district of Les Halles. A gradual crescendo, initiated by the percussion, prefaces the opening material proper, and the work ends with a backward glance at the first movement before closing with the final bars of the Berlioz Te Deum.

Program Note from Baylor University Symphonic Band concert program, 28 February 2017

Goodnight, Dear Heart Dan Forrest

Dan Forrest is an American composer and pianist. Dan holds a doctoral degree in composition from the University of Kansas and a master’s degree in piano performance.

Dan has been described as “a composer of substance” (Columbus Dispatch), whose works have been hailed as “…magnificent, very cleverly constructed sound sculpture” (Classical Voice), and “superb choral writing…full of spine tingling moments” (Salt Lake Tribune). In the last decade, Dan’s music has become well established in the repertoire of choirs in the U.S. and abroad.

Dan’s choral works have received dozens of awards and distinctions, including the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer’s Award and the ACDA Raymond Brock Award. His music has been premiered in major venues around the world, and has been broadcast multiple times on American Public Media’s “Performance Today”. His critically acclaimed Requiem for the Living (2013) has quickly become his best known work, with performances across the United States (including multiple performances in Carnegie Hall) and in South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia.

Dan keeps a full schedule of commissions, workshops, recordings, adjunct professorships, and residencies with universities, churches, and community choirs, collaborating as accompanist, presenting his music, and teaching composition. More information about Dan and his music can be found at www.danforrest.com.

Goodnight, Dear Heart –

In early October 2008, my brother and his wife found out that the four month old girl that they were soon to adopt from Ethiopia was in the hospital. They had been making plans for her, staring endlessly at her picture, and loving her from across the ocean, so the news was devastating. Unable to help her in any physical way, they prayed ceaselessly and made appeals to speed up the legal process in Ethiopia. Initially, she made a turn for the better, but a few days later, they received the news that she had died. God’s plans were not for her to ever see the people who had loved her from halfway around the world, but for her to be taken instead to His loving arms.

For me, life circumstances (whether euphoric or tragic) have never translated into musical inspiration; the two have always been separate. As a result of this tragedy, though, I found myself longing to pour out a musical elegy. My search for a suitable text led me all over the Internet that night, but, amazingly, it ended with a picture from a cemetery in my hometown (Elmira, NY), where the great American author Mark Twain and his family are buried. My brother and I, from our youth, have known the poem that Twain placed on the tombstone of his beloved daughter Susy, when she died unexpectedly at age 24 and left him heartbroken. I was stunned by the bittersweet irony of this text being from our hometown, and in honor of a beloved daughter who died unexpectedly. I wrote this setting within a day, and gave it to the Bob Jones University Chorale (where I was currently teaching) for a reading. They learned it in only a few rehearsals, and premiered it in a concert only one week later, as an elegy and a reminder of the orphans of

WarmEthiopia.summer

sun

Shine kindly here, Warm southern wind blow softly here, Green sod above lie light, lie light Good night, dear heart, Good night, good night.

In the years since its initial publication as a choral piece in 2009, Good Night, Dear Heart has been widely performed in the choral community, but I've wanted to elaborate on its ideas in a medium with more opportunities for varied color, texture, and counterpoint than a cappella choir hence, my arrangement for band.

Program Note by composer

Cloudburst Eric Whitacre

Eric Whitacre is an American composer, conductor and lecturer

Mr. Whitacre's first musical experience was singing were in his college choir. Though he was unable to read music at the time, Whitacre began his full musical education at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, eventually taking a bachelor's degree in music composition. He wrote his first concert work, Go, Lovely, Rose, at the age of 21. Eric went on to the Juilliard School, earning his Master of Music degree and studying with John Corigliano and David Diamond. At the age of 23 he completed his first piece for wind orchestra, Ghost Train, and his popular wind piece Godzilla Eats Las Vegas stems from this period. He graduated in 1997 and moved to Los Angeles to become a full time professional composer.

Whitacre's first album as both composer and conductor, Light & Gold, won a Grammy Award in 2012, and became the No. 1 classical album in the U.S. and UK charts. His second album, Water Night, featured performances from his professional choir, the Eric Whitacre Singers, the London Symphony Orchestra, Julian Lloyd Webber, and Hila Plitmann.

Many of Whitacre's works have entered the standard choral and symphonic repertories. His works Water Night, Cloudburst, Sleep, Lux Aurumque and A Boy and a Girl are among the most popular choral works of the last decade, and his Ghost Train, Godzilla Eats Las Vegas, and October have achieved success in the symphonic wind community. As a conductor, Whitacre has appeared with hundreds of professional and educational ensembles throughout the world. He has conducted concerts of his choral and symphonic

music in Japan, Australia, China, Singapore, South America and much of Europe, as well as dozens of American universities and colleges. Online, Whitacre's massed choral music has reached a worldwide audience. Whitacre's 2007 musical Paradise Lost: Shadows and Wings, combining trance, ambient and techno electronica with choral, cinematic, and operatic traditions, won the ASCAP Harold Arlen award and the Richard Rodgers Award for most promising musical theater composer.

Whitacre's virtual choir projects began in 2009 with Sleep and Lux Aurumque. In virtual choirs, singers record and upload their individual videos from all over the world. The videos are then synchronized and combined into one single performance to create the virtual choir. Though 2020, six virtual choirs have been formed, the last featuring more than 17,000 singers.

Deep Field: The Impossible Magnitude of the Universe is a 2018 audiovisual collaboration between Whitacre, NASA, the Space Telescope Science Institute, Music Productions and 59 Productions. The soundtrack for the film, inspired by the Hubble Space Telescope and its pioneering deep field image, features the Virtual Choir 5, representing 120 countries: more than 8,000 voices aged four to 87, alongside the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Eric Whitacre Singers.

Whitacre has won awards from the Barlow international composition competition, American Choral Directors Association, American Composers Forum and in 2001 became the recipient of The Raymond W. Brock Commission given by the American Choral Directors Association. The album Cloudburst and Other Choral Works received a Grammy nomination in 2007 for Best Choral Performance. Later, his album Light & Gold won a Grammy for Best Choral Performance in 2012.

Whitacre is a founding member of BCM International, a quartet of composers consisting of himself, Steven Bryant, Jonathan Newman and James Bonney, which aspires to "enrich the wind ensemble repertoire with music unbound by traditional thought or idiomatic cliché." He is married to the soprano Hila

AfterPlitmann.aperformance

of Go, Lovely Rose in 1991, Dr. Jocelyn K. Jensen approached me about writing a piece for her high school choir. She is an amazing conductor, legendary for doing crazy things on stage (choralography, lighting, costumes, you name it), and I wanted to write something for her that would really knock the audience out. I had recently been given an exquisite book of poems by Octavio Paz, and around the same time I witnessed an actual (breathtaking) desert cloudburst, and I guess it just all lined

Theup.

finger snapping thing (all of the singers snap their fingers to simulate rain) is an old campfire game that I modified for the work, and the thunder sheets were giant pieces of tin we took from the side of the

Theschool.piece

was originally about ten minutes long, but Dr. Jo Michael Scheibe sagely convinced me to “tighten it up”. I did, and the piece (now a lean eight and a half minutes) was finally published in 1995.

Sinfonia Nobilissima Robert Jager

Robert Jager is an American composer, conductor, arranger and educator.

He studied at the University of Michigan with William Revelli and Elizabeth Green before joining the U.S. Navy, where for four years he served as the Staff Arranger at the Armed Forces School of Music. Jager taught at Old Dominion University and Tennessee Tech University, where he was Professor of Music and Director of Theory and Composition. He retired from Tennessee Tech in May 2001 as professor emeritus.

Jager has over 150 published compositions for band, orchestra and various chamber groupings, with more than 35 commissions including the United States Marine Band and the Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra. He has won a number of awards for his music, being the only three time winner of the American Bandmasters Association's Ostwald Award. In addition, he has won the Roth Award twice (National School Orchestra Association); received Kappa Kappa Psi's Distinguished Service to Music Medal in the area of composition in 1973; and won the 1975 Friends of Harvey Gaul bicentennial competition. He is a member of Phi Mu Alpha, Kappa Kappa Psi, the American Bandmasters Association, and ASCAP. He is an active composer, conductor, and lecturer throughout the United States, as well as in Canada, Europe, and

ThisJapan.overture

is a work in the neo romantic style and is in three sections. After a short introduction, a dramatic and syncopated fast section begins. After several false climaxes, as well as a brief fugue, the slow, more emotional middle section begins. In the final section of the work, a fast, syncopated style abruptly returns and the overture ends with several deceptive, then complete chords.

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