Yale Concert Band Thomas C. Duffy, Music Director
Fall Concert Friday, October 8, 2021, at 7:30 pm, Woolsey Hall, Yale University
LEONARD BERNSTEIN arr. Walter Beeler FLORENCE B. PRICE arr. Eric W. G. Leidzén
GUSTAV HOLST
WILLIAM GRANT STILL
MIKALOJUS K. ČIURLIONIS arr. Ugnius Vaiginis
Overture to “Candide” (1950)
Three Negro Dances (1931) I. Rabbit Foot II. Hoe Cake III. Ticklin’ Toes Second Suite for Military Band in F Major (1911) I. March II. Song Without Words – “I’ll Love My Love” III. Song of the Blacksmith IV. Fantasia on the “Dargason” Folk Suite for Band (1963) I. Get on Board, Little Children II. Deep River III. Medley: The Old Ark’s Amoverin’/Sinner, Don’t Let This Harvest Pass MiŠke (In the Forest) (1901)
ARTURO MÁRQUEZ trans. Oliver Nickel
Danzón No. 2 (1998)
JOHN PHILIP SOUSA ed. Keith Brion
Keeping Step With the Union March (1921)
About Tonight’s Music Overture to “Candide” (1950) LEONARD BERNSTEIN (1918-1990) (arr. Walter Beeler) Candide, the comic operetta based on Voltaire’s novel, had an unfortunately short life on Broadway in 1956. Too much operatic complexity for the music theater buffs, too much vaudeville silliness for the art-music avant-garde, and too much post-modern weirdness for honestly just about anyone; the show was ahead of its time when it premiered – and in many ways it still is. However, the lively overture had its premiere by the New York Philharmonic under the direction of the composer in 1957 and has been a favorite in the concert repertoire of both orchestras and bands ever since. The rhythmic and forceful work combines classical and popular elements into a style which is clever, modern, and quintessentially Bernstein.
Three Negro Dances (1931) FLORENCE B. PRICE (1887-1953) (arr. Erik W. G. Leidzén) Florence Beatrice Price was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, and was taught music by her mother from a young age after she was denied music education from the city. She then attended New England Conservatory in 1903 to study piano, organ, and composition with Frederick Converse and George Chadwick. She returned to Arkansas with a teaching certificate to bring music education back to her hometown. In Atlanta, Georgia, Price served at the head of the Department of Music at Clark Atlanta University. She married and returned to Arkansas. After a series of violent, racially charged events occurred in Little Rock, Price relocated to Chicago in 1927, where her music career greatly accelerated: she published her first four pieces in 1928; she worked as an organist for silent films and composed music for radio advertisements; through her friendship with Margaret Bonds, she connected with Langston Hughes and Marian Anderson. In 1932, Price won first prize for her Symphony in E minor. As the result of the patronage of Maude Roberts George, music critic for the Chicago Defender and president of the Chicago Music Association, the Symphony in E minor was performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Frederick Stock, making Florence Price the first African-American woman to have music played by a major U. S. orchestra. She went on to have a prolific career, writing dozens of orchestral, vocal, instrumental, and chamber works, with a musical style influenced by composers such as Dvořák and Coleridge-Taylor, as well as Negro spirituals and vernacular dances. Florence Price wrote Three Negro Dances in 1931 for piano – Rabbit Foot, Hoe Cake, and Ticklin’ Toes. In her program notes, Price associates the rhythms of this music with those of the songs of children at play. The three piano miniatures were arranged for the wind band in 1939 by Eric Leidzén.
YALE CONCERT BAND Second Suite for Military Band in F Major (1911) GUSTAV HOLST (1874-1934) Second Suite in F for Military Band in F Major was written at a time when the composer “needed rest from the strain of original composition,” and embraced the use of English folk songs and folk tunes throughout. The March movement’s three tunes are derived from the music of lively Morris dances (a type of dance popular in the Renaissance and commonly danced in England as part of the May games). In Holst’s setting, the tune’s opening five-note motive is heard twice as an introduction to the first tune. The second tune, Swansee Town, is broad and lyrical, played by the euphonium. The third tune, Claudy Banks, is distinctly different from the other two, having a lilting, swinging feeling derived from its compound duple meter. The second movement is a slow, tender English love song, I’ll Love My Love. The sad tune, heard first in the oboe, is a setting of the folk song lyrics, which tell of two lovers separated by their parents and of the deep love that they will always have for each other. The Song of the Blacksmith is rhythmically complex, much of it being in septuple meter. One actually hears the stroke of the hammer on the anvil. The Dargason is an English country-dance dating from the 16th century. Its peculiar property is that it does not really have an end, but keeps repeating endlessly. Holst combines the Dargason with the well-known haunting chant-like “Greensleeves,” a love song that later acquired different words and became a Christmas carol. Folk Suite for Band (1963) William Grant Still (1895-1978) The life and career of the African American composer William Grant Still qualifies as the quintessential American “success story.” Often referred to as the “dean of African American composers,” Still was born in Woodville, Mississippi, to a family of Black, Indian, Spanish, Irish, and Scotch blood. Still’s father, the town bandmaster, died when William was three, precipitating a move to Little Rock, Arkansas, where Still’s mother was a teacher. There Still had his first musical experience, studying the violin. At his mother’s urging he began medical studies but dropped out as music exerted a stronger pull. Music study at Oberlin was interrupted by naval service in World War I. After the war, Still moved to New York, where he worked as an arranger for several popular performers including W.C. Handy (composer of the immortal St. Louis Blues March) and Artie Shaw, whose hit, Frenesi, he orchestrated. Still gained immeasurable experience playing the oboe in Broadway pit orchestras while studying composition with the conservative George Chadwick and the ultra-modernist Edgar Varèse. Still arrived in New York at the perfect time, actively participating in the cultural awakening of African Americans in the 1920s known as the “Harlem Renaissance.” His attention turned to classical composition for good in the late 1920s. A move to Los Angeles in 1930 to arrange for Paul Whiteman expanded his horizons into film and radio, initiating his compositional maturity and most prolific period. That same year saw the creation of his Symphony No. 1 (Afro-American), which established and sustained his reputation, remaining his most popular and frequently recorded work. The major part of William Grant Still's creative work has been in the field of original compositions, yet in his Folk Suite for Band, he has made one of his rare excursions into the realm of traditional American melodies, this time in building four of the most widely loved and often sung spirituals into a larger work: Get On Board, Little Children, Deep River, The Old Ark’s a Moverin’, and Sinner, Please Don’t Let This Harvest Pass. The Suite was first performed in Los Angeles on August 18, 1963, by one of the Bureau of Music’s symphonic bands, Dale Eymann conducting.
Miške (In the Forest) (1901) MIKALOJUS KONSTANTINAS ČIURLIONIS (1875-1911) (arr. Ugnius Vaiginis) Artist and composer Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1875-1911) is an exceptional figure not only in the Lithuanian, but also in the European cultural tradition. Čiurlionis wrote around three hundred musical compositions, among them two large-scale symphonic poems, a cantata for choir and orchestra, works for choir, string quartet, organ and piano, in his decade-long musical career. His late compositions were considered ground-breaking and radical for his period. At the same time, Čiurlionis earned even more recognition as an artist. In 1903, he devoted himself to painting, creating over three hundred painting. In his later paintings, Čiurlionis created a unique blend of musical compositional principles and free treatment of elements of visual representation. In 1900, while living in Warsaw, Čiurlionis entered a composition competition announced by Count M. Zamoisky and composed a full sketch of the symphonic poem, “In the Forest,” in eleven days. He orchestrated the work and submitted it to the judges in early spring of 190!1. Even though the work received high praise from the judges, no prize was awarded. The first performance of “In the Forest” took place in 1912 in Saint Petersburg, one year after the composer’s untimely death. Composed in the tradition of late Romanticism, the work reveals one of the composer’s major sources of inspiration – his love for the old pine forest around Druskininkai, his childhood town. In a letter he wrote from Leipzig to his childhood friend, Petras Markievicz, Čiurlionis describes the opening lines of the poem: “I wonder if you remember anything from that composition? If I remember it correctly, I played for you excerpts, do you remember? It begins with soft, wide chords, reminding of the soft and wide rustling of our Lithuanian pines.” In May 2013, the Yale Concert Band toured Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. While in Lithuania, the group had the opportunity to perform with Trimitas, the Lithuanian State Wind Instrument Orchestra, and its conductor Ugnius Vaiginis (pictured with Tom Duffy and the Yale Concert Band after a performance in Vilnius). In 2015, Mr. Duffy invited Mr. Vaiginis to Yale to guest conduct Vaiginis' arrangement of Miške – the first-even adaptation of the piece for wind orchestra – in Woolsey Hall. Arranged for modern performing forces, this symphonic poem blossoms with new nuances and colors, and today the piece reaches wider audiences and allows more musicians to delve into the magical world of Čiurlionis’ music. The projections that accompany the music are paintings by the composer. Danzón No. 2 (1998) ARTURO MÁRQUEZ (b. 1950) (trans. Oliver Nickel) Danzón No. 2 is an orchestral composition by Mexican composer Arturo Márquez. It is, along with José Pablo Moncayo’s Huapango, CarlWos Chávez’s Sinfonia India, and Silvestre Revueltas’ Sensemayá, one of the most frequently performed orchestral Mexican contemporary classical music compositions. Danzón No. 2 gained great popularity worldwide when the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela under Gustavo Dudamel included it on its program for its 2007 European and American tour. Written for full orchestra, the piece features solos for clarinet, oboe, piano, violin, trumpet, and piccolo. The piece has also gained an important spot in the modern concert band literature through Oliver Nickel’s arrangement. The rhythmic interest in the piece is maintained through the useS of varying accents and tempi. This staple of the
YALE CONCERT BAND contemporary Mexican music literature expresses and reflects on the dance style named danzón, which has its origins in Cuba but is a very important part of the folklore of the Mexican state of Veracruz. The music was inspired by a visit to a ballroom in Veracruz. A short film was made in 2009 using the piece as the main narrative device, in a Fantasia-like manner. It is set in Mexico City in the 1940s, the golden age of danzón, and the style is an homage to the Mexican cinema of the period. The film features Arturo Márquez in a cameo as the pianist of the dance-hall. It was premiered at the 8th Morelia Film Festival as part of its official lineup.
Keeping Step With the Union March (1921) JOHN PHILIP SOUSA (1854-1932) (ed. Keith Brion) Known as the March King, Sousa is one of the most widely respected figures in the American band movement. His many compositions for military and concert band remain staples of the band repertoire. The inspiration for Keeping Step With the Union March, which was composed 100 years ago, probably came from an 1855 address by the American congressman and raconteur Rufus Choate. This excerpt from the address is printed on the sheet music: “We join ourselves to no party that does not carry the flag and keep step to the music of the Union.” The composition was dedicated to Mrs. Warren G. Harding, wife of the President, and Sousa added his own patriotic verses.
Upcoming Yale Bands Performances • Wednesday, November 3, 2021: Yale Jazz Ensemble, Wayne Escoffery, Music Director. The Music of Duke Ellington and Thelonius Monk. Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall, 7:30 p.m. Free. • Friday, November 12, 2021: Yale Concert Band, Thomas C. Duffy, Music Director. High Water Rising (Sally Lamb McCune), Of a New Day Begun (Omar Thomas), Fireflies (Ryan George), Resonances I (Ron Nelson), Roma (Valerie Coleman). Woolsey Hall, 7:30 p.m. Free. • Saturday, February 26, 2022: Yale Concert Band, Thomas C. Duffy, Music Director. Premiere: Gustav Holst’s (The) Planets with graphic projections by Yale School of Drama students Camilla Tassi ’22 and John Horzen ’24; (5523) Luminet 1991 PH8 (Thérèse Brenet). Wooley Hall, 7:30 p.m. Free. • Monday, March 7, 2022: Yale Jazz Ensemble, Wayne Escoffery, Music Director. Celebrating the Centennial of bassist and composer Charles Mingus. Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall, 7:30 p.m. Free. • Thursday, April 14, 2022: Yale Concert Band, Thomas C. Duffy, Music Director. Program TBA. Woolsey Hall, 7:30 p.m. Free. • Sunday, April 24, 2022: Yale Concert Band, Thomas C. Duffy, Music Director. Special Tribute Concert. Details TBA. Woolsey Hall, 2:00 p.m. Free. Fall 2021 Audience Policy - Yale Concert Band. Per Yale University COVID-19 policies, in-person concert attendance at Yale Concert Band performances is currently limited to vaccinated, asymptomatic Yale community members (faculty, staff, and enrolled students) with valid Yale ID. All other individuals are invited to view the live stream at https://bands.yalecollege.yale.edu/listen-yale-bands-0. Audience permissions are subject to change.
About the Music Director Thomas C. Duffy is Professor (Adjunct) of Music, Director of University Bands, and Clinical Professor of Nursing at Yale University, where he has worked since 1982. He is known as a composer, a conductor, a teacher, an administrator, and a leader. His interests and research range from non-tonal analysis to jazz, from wind band history to creativity and the brain. Under his direction, the Yale Bands have performed at conferences of the College Band Directors National Association and New England College Band Association; for club audiences at New York City’s Village Vanguard, Birdland, Dizzy’s Club, and Iridium; Ronnie Scott’s (London); the Belmont (Bermuda); as part of the inaugural ceremonies for President George H.W. Bush; and concertized in twenty-one countries in the course of eighteen international tours. Duffy produced a two-year lecture/performance series, Music and the Brain, with the Yale School of Medicine; and, with the Yale School of Nursing, developed a musical intervention to train nursing students to better hear and identify body sounds with the stethoscope. He combined his interests in music and science to create a genre of music for the bilateral conductor – in which a “split-brained conductor” must conduct a different meter in each hand, sharing downbeats. His compositions have introduced a generation of school musicians to aleatory, the integration of spoken/sung words and “body rhythms” with instrumental performance, and the pairing of music with political, social, historical and scientific themes. He has been awarded the Yale Tercentennial Medal for Composition, the Elm/ Ivy Award, the Yale School of Music Cultural Leadership Citation and certificates of appreciation by the United States Attorney’s Office for his Yale 4/Peace: Rap for Justice concerts – music programs designed for social impact by using the power of music to deliver a message of peace and justice to impressionable middle and high school students. Duffy has served as associate, deputy and acting dean of the Yale School of Music. He has served as a member of the Fulbright National Selection Committee, the Tanglewood II Symposium planning committee, the Grammy Foundation Music Educators Award Screening Committee, and completed the MLE program at the Harvard University Institute for Management and Leadership in Education. He has served as: president of the Connecticut Composers Inc., the New England College Band Directors Association and the College Band Directors National Association (CBDNA); editor of the CBDNA Journal, publicity chair for the World Association of Symphonic Bands and Ensembles; and chair of the Connecticut Music Educators Association’s Professional Affairs and Government Relations committees. He is a member of American Bandmasters Association, American Composers Alliance, the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, Connecticut Composers Incorporated, the Social Science Club, and BMI. Duffy has conducted ensembles all over the world, including the National Association for Music Education’s National Honor Band in the Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C. (More extensive data is available at www.duffymusic.com, including a high resolution downloadable photo.)
YALE CONCERT BAND 2021-2022 THOMAS C. DUFFY, Music Director STEPHANIE HUBBARD, Business Manager
Piccolo Salena Huang GSAS 26 Flutes Rosa Kleinman BF 23 principal Veronica Brooks MC 24 Emily He DC 24 Seb Seager SM 23 Yaa Owusu JE 22 Katie Handler TC 22 Elijah Bakaleynik DC 24 Denise Peng ES 25 Oboes Miranda Margulis-Ohnuma BR 23 principal Ana Rodrigues BR 25 Ryan Tie-Shue SM 22 Zara Ashford SY 25 English Horn Ryan Tie-Shue SM 22 Bb Clarinets Jalen Li PC Keith L. Wilson Principal Clarinet Chair* Benjamin Swinchoski BF 24 Daphne Zhu ES 22 Joshua Rothbaum TD 23 Jessica Liu GH 25 Daniel Denney ES 24 Kayleigh Hackett SY 25 Bb Bass Clarinet Margalit Patry-Martin GH 25
Bassoons Pax Ryan BK 25 Katia Osorio YSM 22 Soprano Saxophone Tony Ruan BF 25 Alto Saxophones Tony Ruan BF 25 principal Sahil Mane TC 24 Matthew Fan BF 24 Dennis Lee DC 24 Alina Martel TC 23 Bb Tenor Saxophones Aaron Yu MC 25 principal Esteban Figueroa MC 25 Eb Baritone Saxophone Michael Chen GH 23 Cornets/Trumpets James Brandfonbrener MC 22 principal Ethan Olim MY 25 Jordan Romano TC 25 Izzy Lopez MC 23 French Horns Ava Conway YSM 22 Stephanie Fritz YSM 23 Keenan Miller DC 24 Franco Ortiz YSM 23 Kate Warren YSM 23
Trombones Theo Haaks BR 24 Aaron Smith BF 25 Cody Uman MC 25 Euphonium John Liu TD 25 Tubas Bridget Conley YSM 23 Vivian Kung YSM 22 Piano Elijah Bakaleynik DC 24 Percussion Jacob Gutierrez YSM 22 Yukiko Nakamura YSM 23 Etai Smotrich-Barr DC 25 Max Su SY 25 Michael Yeung YSM 22 Russell Fisher YSM 26 **
Music Librarian Veronica BrookWs MC 24
* Friends of Keith L. Wilson (Director of Yale Bands from 1946-1973) honored him by endowing the principal clarinet chair in the Yale Concert Band in his name. If you would like information about naming a Yale Concert Band chair, please contact the Yale Bands Office. ** playing on Danzón only
YALE CONCERT BAND OFFICERS
President: Alina Martel General Managers: Matthew Fan, Jalen Li
Personnel Manager: Veronica Brooks Publicity Chair: Seb Seager
YALE UNIVERSITY BANDS P.O. Box 209048, New Haven, CT 06520-9048 ph: 203-432-4111 stephanie.hubbard@yale.edu www.yale.edu/yaleband