Yale Concert Band Thomas C. Duffy, Music Director
A Good Old-Fashioned Band Concert Sunday, November 13, 2016, at 2:00 pm
Woolsey Hall, Yale University
IGOR STRAVINSKY Circus Polka (1942) JULIAN WORK Autumn Walk (1958) CHARLES ROMANO Compass (2016) TIMOTHY MAHR Endurance (1991) ~ INTERMISSION ~
MAURICE WHITNEY Introduction and Samba (1951) feat. Carrie Koffman, saxophone GEORGE GERSHWIN Porgy and Bess Medley (1922) arr. Ralph Hermann feat. Carrie Koffman, saxophone DONALD GRANTHAM Southern Harmony (1998) I. The Midnight Cry II. Wondrous Love III. Exhilaration IV. The Soldier’s Return
About Tonight’s Music Circus Polka (1942) IGOR STRAVINSKY Igor Stravinsky wrote this work soon after he arrived in the United States. Composed in 1942 for the Ringling Brothers Circus at the request of the choreographer, George Balanchine, the Circus Polka was to accompany a ballet of elephants and was so first performed by a circus band. The piece is brief, light, and charming, but at the same time full of the kind of harmonic language (simple chord progressions with “one note too many” added) that gives it a piquancy identifying it unmistakably with its composer. During the simple polka tune in the woodwinds, horns, and cornets, the trombones and tubas occasionally interject a few notes. Every so often an inexplicable rhythmic dislocation occurs from which, somehow, the regular 2/4 meter flow emerges. The piece culminates with an extended quotation from Schubert’s Marche Militaire–“an absolutely natural thing,” according to Stravinsky. The difficulty of the writing and the need to make the piece sound lyrical and effortless represent the graceful and the grotesque: the dancing of elephants. While Stravinsky never saw the actual ballet, he once met Bessie, the young elephant for whom the polka was written, and he shook her foot. Autumn Walk (1958) JULIAN WORK In Autumn Walk, Julian Work evokes a leisurely stroll on a brisk autumn day. Work, a composer of sophisticated concert band music, treats the subtle timbres of the band’s reeds and muted brasses delicately. An Impressionist influenced by the music of Ravel and Debussy, Work used extensive chromaticism that pushed the boundaries of traditional 1950s wind music. Compass (2016) CHARLES ROMANO “This piece, descriptively entitled Compass, reflects much of my compositional journey over the last couple years. Coming from a high school with little musical resources to Yale University was quite the step, and with it came the many circumstances that helped make up this piece. Starting as a random musical idea that came to me at the piano one day, a year later it evolved into a semester project and then into a programed piece. “The themes that surface throughout the work reflect my experience with the many different ways of thinking about music that I’ve been exposed to throughout my time here at Yale and how those have continued to shape me as a musician and inform my compositional pallet. Everything from music history and theory classes, to playing with the Concert Band, to performing musical-comedy improv has had a lasting impact on the way I personally approach music and composition. In Compass, I experiment with complex rhythms, different sound worlds, and these many new ways of thinking about music, all in effort to find my compositional ‘voice.’ “I’d like to give a special thanks to Mr. Duffy for granting me this unique opportunity and being so supportive ever since I first approached him with the idea for Compass. I’d also like to thank the members of the band who have worked so hard on this piece for a while now and have been generously collaborative in the process as well. “I’d also like to extend a very special thanks to my composition teacher, Natalie Dietterich, as well
YALE CONCERT BAND as my composition professors Dr. Kathryn Alexander and Dr. Konrad Kaczmarek, for their guidance.” – Charlie Romano Charlie is an undergraduate American composer and double major in Music and Biomedical Engineering in Yale College. He is the pianist and music director of musical-comedy improve troupe Just Add Water, as well as a member of the Yale Glee Club, and the recording studio manager for Hear Your Song, an undergraduate musical-service group. Charlie was recently an active member of the Concert Band and is currently active in musical theatre at Yale as an orchestra pit director and player. His music has been performed by members of the EAMA program in Paris, members of the New Music Cooperative here at Yale as well as the members of Hear Your Song. Endurance (1991) TIMOTHY MAHR Timothy Mahr composed Endurance as a musical reflection upon the infinite endurance of the human spirit, the religious spirit, and the spirit of the earth. Initial inspiration for the piece came from a book of the same title by Alfred Lansing documenting the amazing story of the ill-fated expedition of the Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton in 1914-16. His ship, the “Endurance,” became ice-bound and eventually sank, stranding Shackleton and his crew of 27. They experienced over 15 months of life exposed to the unrelenting, dangerous Antarctic weather and miraculously survived to tell the tale. The strength of character exhibited by these men in enduring incredible hardships is truly awe-inspiring. Mahr writes that since reading Shackleton’s account, “the story has been in the back of my mind whenever I find myself challenged by what seem to be insurmountable problems. It helps me put things into a proper perspective. I have also been moved by recent expressions of religious spirit around the world, finding solace in the realization that this spirit has and forever will endure in many forms. Finally, as we continue to pollute our planet, I can’t help but get the sense that it, too, will endure, going through some sort of forced evolution in spite of our maltreatment. All three spirits – human, religious, earth – also seem intertwined to me. In pondering them, I find hope and peace.” Introduction and Samba (1951) MAURICE WHITNEY Maurice Whitney wrote Introduction and Samba for the iconic classical saxophonist Sigurd Rascher. The piece, which has become a standard of the saxophone repertoire, highlights the expressive and technical possibilities of the instrument. As the title suggests, the work is divided into a lyrical introduction and a brisk dance. While Whitney’s conception of the samba is distinctly North American, the hemiola figures – in which three groups of two beats replace two groups of three – throughout are derived from the more complex South American and Caribbean musical genre. This afternoon’s soloist is Carrie Koffman. Porgy and Bess Medley (1922) GEORGE GERSHWIN (arr. Ralph Hermann) Gershwin’s folk opera Porgy and Bess was the climax of his brief but spectacular career as both a popular and serious composer. Gershwin read DuBose Heyward’s Porgy in 1926 and was immediately interested in transforming the novel into an opera. The work was first performed in 1935 by an all-black cast, with Todd Duncan as Porgy and Anne Brown as Bess. The opera ran 124 performances in New York, a flop by
Broadway standards. However, it was revived in 1942, almost five years after Gershwin’s death, and had the longest run of any revival in Broadway musical history. Between 1952 and 1956, Porgy and Bess toured in major cities around the globe, including those behind the Iron Curtain, and in 1959 it was made into a lavish movie starring Sidney Poitier, Dorothy Dandridge, and Sammy Davis, Jr. Porgy and Bess has been criticized as hovering between serious opera and musical comedy, but its beauty and expressive content create an immediate rapport between the composer and the audience. This arrangement for saxophone and band by Ralph Hermann includes “Summertime,” “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” and “Bess, You is My Woman Now.” Southern Harmony (1998) DONALD GRANTHAM In 1835, William “Singin’ Bill” Walker’s songbook Southern Harmony was first published. This remarkable collection contains, according to its title page, “a choice collection of tunes, hymns, psalms, odes, and anthems; selected from the most eminent authors in the United States.” In fact, few of the numbers in the book are identified as the work of a particular composer. Many are folksongs (provided with religious texts), some are traditional sacred tunes, and others are revival songs that were widely known and sung throughout the South. The book was immensely popular, selling an amazing 600,000 copies before the Civil War, and was commonly stocked “along with groceries and tobacco” in general stores across the American frontier. From 1884 until World War II, an annual all-day mass performance of selections from Southern Harmony called the “Benton Big Singing” was held on the Benton, Kentucky, courthouse lawn. The event drew participants from Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, and Illinois. The music of Southern Harmony has a somewhat exotic sound to modern audiences. The tunes often use modal or pentatonic rather than major or minor scales. The harmony is even more out of the ordinary, employing chord positions, voice leading, and progressions that are far removed from the European music that dominated concert halls at the time. These harmonizations were dismissed as crude and primitive when they first appeared, but now they are regarded as inventive, unique, and powerfully representative of the American character. In his use of several tunes from Southern Harmony, Donald Grantham has attempted to preserve the flavor of the original vocal works in a setting that fully realizes the potential of the wind ensemble and the individual characteristics of each song.
YALE CONCERT BAND
About Tonight’s Guest Artist Carrie Koffman teaches on the faculty at The Hartt School of Music, Dance and Theater at the University of Hartford and at the Yale School of Music. Prior to this, she held positions as Assistant Professor of Saxophone at Penn State University, at the University of New Mexico, and taught at Boston University. She has performed as a soloist and chamber musician throughout the United States, Europe, New Zealand, and in Scotland, Thailand, China and Argentina. Her recording projects include the CD’s Carillon Sky, Dialogues and Dragon Rhyme. One review in Fanfare Magazine calls her playing “suave, subtly nuanced, and technically secure in its every gesture,” while another refers to her “melting tone and touching sensitivity.” She also has an ongoing recording and performing series entitled Pink Ink that is dedicated to promoting the music of living women composers. Committed to new music, commissions and premieres include 47 compositions. Her saxophone students have placed in over 90 different performance competitions including winning 18 university concerto competitions at four different universities. Koffman holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan and a master’s degree from the University of North Texas. She is a certified Kripalu Yoga Teacher and teaches Yoga for Performers. She is also a Conn-Selmer artist/clinician, and performs exclusively on Selmer Paris saxophones. Upcoming Yale Bands Performances • Friday, December 2, 2016: “Rhythm and Romance” feat. Steve Ross and the Yale Jazz Ensemble “All-Stars.” Thomas C. Duffy, Music Director. New York cabaret artist Steve Ross performs the songs of Fred Astaire and Cole Porter, accompanied by a nine-piece Yale jazz ensemble. A reprise of the May 2016 hit show in New York’s Birdland Jazz Club. 7:30 pm. Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall. Free. • Sunday, December 4, 2016: Yale Concert Band: An Old Fashioned Holiday Concert. Program TBA. 2:00 pm. Woolsey Hall. Free. • Friday, February 19, 2017: Yale Concert Band Winter Concert. Hiraizumi: Cyberpunk for Wind Ensemble (Simon Hutchinson), Festive Overture (Dmitri Shostakovich), Cartoon (Paul Hart), Les Couleurs Fauves (K. Husa). 7:30 pm, Woolsey Hall. Free. • Monday March 6, 2017: Yale Jazz Ensemble Spring Concert. Thomas C. Duffy, Music Director. 7:30 pm. Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall. Free. • Friday, April 7, 2017: Yale Concert Band Spring Concert. Symphony from Ivy Green (Mark Camphouse), based on writings by Helen Keller, Janna Baty, soprano; Roma (Valerie Coleman); Postcard (Frank Ticheli). 7:30 pm, Woolsey Hall. Free. • Sunday, April 9, 2017: Stan Wheeler Memorial Jazz Concert. Yale Jazz Ensemble, Thomas C. Duffy, Music Director, and the Reunion Jazz Ensemble. 2:00 pm, Levinson Auditorium, Yale Law School, 127 Wall Street. Free. • Sunday, May 21, 2017: Yale Concert Band Annual Twilight Concert. Ceremonial music on the eve of Yale’s Commencement. 7:00 pm, outside on the Old Campus. Free.
About the Music Director Thomas C. Duffy (b. 1955) is Professor (Adjunct) of Music and Director of University Bands at Yale University, where he has worked since 1982. He has established himself 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 NYC’s Village Vanguard and Iridium, Ronnie Scotts’s (London), and the Belmont (Bermuda); performed as part of the inaugural ceremonies for President George H.W. Bush; and concertized in nineteen countries in the course of sixteen 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. From 1996 to 2006, he 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, and 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. For nine years, he represented music education in Yale’s Teacher Preparation Program. 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 and most recently was selected to conduct the 2011 NAFME National Honor Band in the Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C. Yale University Bands P.O. Box 209048, New Haven, CT 06520–9048 ph: (203) 432–4111; fax: (203) 432–7213 stephanie.hubbard@yale.edu; www.yale.edu/yaleband
YALE CONCERT BAND 2016-2017 THOMAS C. DUFFY, Music Director STEPHANIE HUBBARD, Business Manager
Piccolo Rona Ji MC 18 Flute Beatrice Brown PC 19 Principal Neyén Romano BK 18 Monica Barbosa DC 19 Catherine Lacy BR 18 Julia Cai BR 20 Hayley Kolding SY 17 Matthew Le JE 20 Joan Gomez-Aguilar BK 20 Seungjung Sohn ES 19 Oboe Jake Houston CC 19 Principal Michelle Nguyen MUS 17
Bass Clarinet Libby Dimenstein MC 17 Principal
Trombone Luke Benz SM 19 Principal William Burns MC 20 Matthew Kegley PC 19
Bassoon Bradford Case SM 20 Principal Jorge Nunez MC 20
Euphonium Kevin Truong SM 20
Soprano Saxophone Antonio Medina SM 19
Tuba Josef Lawrence TC 20 Principal Alison Ross CC 20
Alto Saxophone Antonio Medina SM 19 Principal Onyx Brunner MC 20
String Bass Kaden Henderson MUS 17
Tenor Saxophone Karina Franke TD 20
Piano Julia Weiner BK 19
English Horn Michelle Nguyen MUS 17
Baritone Saxophone Sara Harris SY 19
Celeste Karina Franke TD 20
Eb Clarinet Andrew Brod BK 17
Cornet/Trumpet (rotating) Eli Baum JE 19 Principal Christoph Funke ES 19 Noah Montgomery CC 19 Holt Sakai BR 18 William Thompson GSAS 21 Jacob Zavatone-Veth SM 19
Timpani Rebecca Leibowitz TC 18
French Horn (rotating) John McNamara CC 17 Principal Derek Boyer BR 18 Allison Hammer DC 20 Michael McNamara TD 20 Nishwant Swami SM 17 Brandon Wanke MC 17
Music Librarian Derek Boyer BR 18
Clarinet Christopher Zhou PC 19 Keith L. Wilson Principal Clarinet Chair* Alexander Ringlein BR 18 Alison Ho CC 20 Jessica Oki TC 20 Anson Wang DC 17 Christian Fernandez TC 20 Jacob Neis SY 17 Alex Brod BK 19 Madeline Bender TD 20 Heather McClure ES 20 Ellie Handler ES 18 Betsy Li SY 18
Percussion Melina Delgado TD 19 Nasser Odetallah BR 20 Jonathan Roig ES 18 David Zuckerman DC 20
* Friends of Keith 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.
YALE CONCERT BAND OFFICERS
President: Catherine Lacy Personnel Manager: Rona Ji General Managers: Melina Delgado, Christopher Zhou Publicity Chair: Beatrice Brown Social Chairs: Hayley Kolding, Antonio Medina
THE
YALE JAZZ ENSEMBLE THOMAS C. DUFFY MUSIC DIRECTOR FEATURING
STEVE ROSS
“THE CROWN PRINCE OF NEW YORK CABARET” — THE NEW YORK TIMES
Rhythm and Romance THE SONGS OF FRED ASTAIRE AND COLE PORTER
Cabaret legend Steve Ross and the nine-piece Yale Jazz Ensemble “All-Stars” reunite for a repeat performance of the nostalgic show they performed in May 2016 in New York’s famed Birdland Jazz Club. Singer/pianist Ross brings his unique style in a swinging show featuring such classic hits as Steppin’ Out With My Baby, Anything Goes, I Get a Kick Out of You, Putting on the Ritz, and I Happen to Like New York.
FRIDAY, DEC. 2, 2016 | 7:30 PM | FREE ADMISSION MORSE RECITAL HALL IN SPRAGUE MEMORIAL HALL