Ithaca College Wind Ensemble

Peterson, Stephen G.

Turner, Cynthia Johnston

English

Ithaca College

Ithaca College Digital Commons @ IC All Concert & Recital Programs Concert & Recital Programs 2-24-2008 Concert: Ithaca College Wind Ensemble, "American Visionaries" Ithaca College Wind Ensemble Stephen G. Peterson Cynthia Johnston Turner Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.ithaca.edu/music_programs  Part of the Music Commons Recommended Citation Ithaca College Wind Ensemble; Peterson, Stephen G.; and Turner, Cynthia Johnston, "Concert: Ithaca College Wind Ensemble, "American Visionaries"" (2008). All Concert & Recital Programs. 6712. https://digitalcommons.ithaca.edu/music_programs/6712 This Program is brought to you for free and open access by the Concert & Recital Programs at Digital Commons @ IC. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Concert & Recital Programs by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ IC. ITHACA CHOOL OF MLJSIC "AMERICAN VISIONARIES" ITHACA COLLEGE WIND ENSEMBLE Stephen Peterson, conductor Cynthia Johnston Turner, guest conductor Bailey Hall, Cornell University Sunday, February 24, 2008 3:00 p.m. ITHL\CA PROGRAM Emblems The Alcotts Lollapalooza .' Aaron Copland :. (1900-1990) -~ -~.< . , . . . , Charles Ives (1874-1954) Arr. Richard Thurston John Adams '. (b. 1947) ' . Trans. James Spinazzola ~· ,r . :.. , Cynthia Johnston Turner, guest conductor Circus Maximus I. .Jntroitus II. Screen/Siren III. Channel Surfing IV. Night Music I V. Night Music II · VI. . Circus Maximus VJt Prayer VIII. Coda: Veritus INTERMISSION • ' ' John Corigliano • (b. 1938) -... ,, !" :Please note.that a sn0tgun will be lliseharged at the end of the ©ircus ~a:ximus piece. PROGRAM NOTES Aaron Copland has been called the "dean of American music ... a giant of American culture." He wrote memorable scores, encouraged younger composers, and helped to create and maintain approving audiences. In addition, according to Richard Franko Goldman, Copland was regarded by all with "admiration, respect, and above all, true affection." Aaron Copland was an excellent pianist, conductor, writer, teacher, and composer. He was originally thought of as a kind of American Stravinsky during the 1920's. His music was tonal but boldly so; emphasizing complex and often harsh sonorities, and influenced in rhythmic language by jazz and Stravinsky's works. In the late 1930's, however, he gradually switched to almost exclusively diatonic melodic writing and simpler counterpoint. The rhythmic vitality, widely spaced textures, and hints of bitonality of his earlier style remained, but his music became more accessible. Copland wrote theater scores, operas, ballet scores, orchestral symphonies, eight film scores, and considerable choral and instrumental concert literature. Copland's original and transcribed band scores, which he conducted at times, are an important part of his contributions. About Emblems, the composer writes: "In May, 1963, I received a letter from Keith Wilson, President of the COLLEGE BAND DIRECTOR'S NATIONAL ASSOCIATION, asking me to accept a commission from that organization to compose a work for band. He wrote: 'The purpose of this commission is to enrich the band repertory with music that is representative of the composer's best work, and not one written with all sorts of technical or practical limitations.' That was the origin of Emblems. Keeping Mr. Wilson's injunction in mind, I wanted to .write a work that was challenging to young players without overstraining their technical abilities. The work is t~ipartite in form: slow-fast-slow, with the return of the first part varied. Embedded in the quiet, slow music the listener may hear a·brief quotation of a well-known hymn tune, 'Amazing Grace,' published by William Walker in The Southern Hannony in 1835. Curiously enough, the accompanying harmonies had been conceived first, without reference to any tune. It was only a chance perusal of a recent anthology of old 'Music in America' that made me realize a connection existed between my harmonies and the old hymn tune. An emblem stands for something - it is a symbol. I called the work Emblems because it seemed to me to suggest musical states of being: noble or aspiring feelings, playful or spirited feelings. The exact nature of these emblematic r sounds must be determined for himself by each listener." · Shortly before his death in Los Angles in 195 l, the Austrian-American composer Arnold Schoenberg wrote of Charles Ives, "There is a great man living in this country - a composer. He has solved the problem of how to preserve one's self and to learn. He responds 'to negligence by contempt. He is not forced to accept praise or blame. His name is Ives." Ives wrote in Essays that "beauty in music is too often confused with something that lets the ears lie back in an easy chair." During convalescence from his coronary in 1918, he had the Concord Sonata and 114 of his songs printed and made available , . . at no cost. By-1926, Ives stopped composing new works; in 1930, he retired \· .f, from the insurance business. He lived long enough to know that his music was beginning to be performed, but he rarely attended concerts or heard recordings. Since his death in 1954, his music has achieved a popularity that would have amazed the gifted composer. Many of Ives's works were lost, partially completed, or changed from one medium into another. The Piano Sonata No. 2: Concord, Mass., commonly known as the Concord Sonat.a, was completed about 1915. It consists of four movements, each A~ bearing the name of a famous mid-19'h-century resident of Concord: (1) W' Emerson, (2) Hawthorne, (3) The Alcotts, and (4) Thoreau. Each movement is a musical impression of the personality and philosophical attitudes of its subject . . While movements I, II, and IV are lengthy, musically complex, and pianistically difficult, The Alcotts, is a section of simple and serene beauty - a touching and lovingly etched remembrance of the Alcott's Orchard House "under the elms." · John Adams is one of America's most admired and respected composers. A musician of enormous range and technical command, he has produced works, both operatic and symphonic, that stand out among all contemporary classical music for the depth of their expression, the brilliance ·of their sound and the profoundly humanist nature of their themes. His music has played a decisive role in turning the tide of musical aesthetics away from the theoretical principles of European modernism toward a more expansive and expressive language, so characteristic of his New World surroundings. .. Born and raised in New England, Adams learned the clarinet from his fathe~ and played in marching bands and community orchestras during his W .., formative years. He began composing at the age of ten and heard his first orchestral pieces performed while still a teenager. The intellectual and artistic traditions of New England, especially the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Harvard University, helped shape him as an artist and thinker. After earning two degrees from Harvard University, he moved to Northern California in 1971 and has ever since lived in the San Francisco Bay area. John Adams maintains an active life as a conductor, appearing with the world's greatest orchestras and with programs combining his own works with composers as diverse as Debussy, Strauss, Stravinsky and Ravel to Zappa, Ives, Reich, Glass and Ellington. As a guest conductor and as a director of music festivals in the United States and Europe he has appeared with orchestras that include the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony, the Concertgebouw Orchestra and the London Symphony. In 2006 Adams curated the hugely popular "Minimalist Jukebox" for the Los Angeles Philharmonic. As Artist in Association with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, he regularly appears with that orchestra as conductor in concerts in London's Barbican and at the annual Albert Hall Proms concerts. About Lollapalooza, the composer writes: Lollapalooza was written as a fortieth birthday present for Simon Rattle who has been a friend and collaborator for many years. The term "lollapalooza" has an uncertain etymology, and just that vagueness may account for its popularity as an archetypical American word. It suggests something large, outlandish, oversized, not unduly refined. H.L. Mencken suggests it may have originally meant a knockout punch in a boxing match. I was attracted to it because of its internal rhytl!m: da-da-da-DAAH-da. Hence, in my piece, the word is spelled out in the trombones and tubas, C-C-C-Eb-C(emphasis on the Eb) as a kind of idee fixe. The "lollapalooza" motive is only one of a profusion of other motives, all appearing and evolving in a repetitive chain of events that moves this dancing behemoth along until it ends in a final shout by the horns and trombones and a terminal thwack on timpani and bass drum. John Corigliano grew up in a musical environment, where his mother was a gifted pianist, and his father, the late John Corigliano Sr., was concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic for 23 years. According to Harold Schonberg of The New York Times, Corigliano has become "one of America's most important composers." He is considered a communicator with a fine grasp of melody and rhythm. Eleanor Caldwell describes his music as "accessible, unstrained, and with few of the pseudo-romantic agonies associated with self-conscious avant-gardism ... He makes no hard and fast. distinctions between serious and popular music . .. "His earliest published works (for voice and piano) were composed while he was a student at Columbia. Corigliano has _written instrument/orchestral features for flute, oboe, clarinet, piano, voice, narrator, dancers, and chorus; various pieces for smaller instrumental and vocal combinations; a cappella and accompanied choral works; Gazebo Dances and Circus Maximus for band; and scores for films. About Circus Maximus, the composer writes: "For the past three·decades, I have started the compositional process by building a shape, or architecture, before coming up with any musical material. In this case, the shape was influenced by a desire to Write a pi{!Ce in which the entire work is Conceived spatially. But I -started simply wondering what dramatic premise would justify the encircleme.nt of the audience by musicians, so that they were in the center of the arena. This started my imagination going, and quite suddenly a title appeared in my mind: Circus Maximus. The Latin words, understandable in English, convey an energy and power by themselves. But the Circus Maximus of ancient Rome was a real place - the largest arena in the world. 300,000 spectators were entertained by chariot races, hunts, and battles. The Roman need for grander and wilder amusement grew as its empire declined. The parallels between the high decadence of Rome and our present time are obvious. Entertainment dominates our reality, and ever-more-extreme 'reality' shows dominate our entertainment. Many of us have become as bemused by the violence and humiliation that flood the 500-plus channels of our television screens as the mobs of imperial Rome, who considered the devouring of human beings by starving lions just another Sunday show. The shape of my Circus Maximus was built both to embody and to comment on this massive and glamorous barbarity. It utilizes a large concert band, and lasts approximately 35 minutes. The work is in eight sections that are played without pause. I. Introitus: Trumpets and percussion surrounding the audience play'fanfares, signaling the opening of the work. The full band enters with a primitive call from the clarinets. A short central section features the lowest winds and brass followed by the joining of the offstage and onstage ensemble playing together this time, and reaching the first climax of the work. II. Screen/Siren: A saxophone quartet and string bass call from the znd tier boxes in seductive inflections. Other instruments scattered around the hall (clarinet, piccolo, horns, trumpets) echo the calls, which are suddenly interrupted by: III. Channel Surfing: Sensory overload and infinite variety dilute concentration. Our need for constant change echoes the desires of the ancient mob, only now we can access it all by pressing a button. Music ill this section is constantly interrupted by other music and comes from all sections of the hall. IV. Night Music I: Tranquility in nature. Away from cities, forest sounds suspend time. Animals call to each other. · V. Night Music II: The hyper night-music of the cities pulse with hidden energy and sudden.flashes. Sirens and distant battles onstage build the tension to: VI. Circus Maximus: The peak of the work incorporates all the other movements and is a carnival of sonoric activity. A band marching down the aisles counterpoints the onstage performers and the surrounding fanfares. Exuberant voices merge into chaos and a frenzy of overstatement .. VII. Prayer: In answer to this, a long-lined serene melody is set against a set of plagal (IV-I) cadences that circle through all the keys. The rising line grows in intensity against the constantly changing harmonies as the chords overlap from stage to surround trumpets and back. . VIII. Coda: Veritas: Music from the Introitus enters almost inaudibly, but grows in intensity until it dominates the 'prayer' music, and the surrounding trumpet calls reach an even higher peak. A gunshot ends the work. Guest Conductor, Cynthia Johnston Turner is an active conductor, festival adjudicator, and clinician, in both the United States and Canada. Before joining the Cornell faculty in the fall of 2004, she taught at the University of Rochester, where she directed the Wind Symphony and served as Director of Music at Parkside High School, Dundas, Canada. Earlier in her career Cynthia taught middle school beginning instrumental music in Toronto and choral music in Switzerland. She currently serves as a faculty member with the summer Performing Arts Institute at Pennsylvannia's Wyoming Seminary and as a guest conductor with the Syracuse Society of New Music. A Canadian, Cynthia completed her Bachelor of Music and Bachelor of Education degrees at Queens University and her Master of Music in music education and conducting at the University of Victoria. She was nominated for the Canadian Prime Minister's Leader.ship in Teaching Award and . received the National Leadership in Education Award (Readers Digest Foundation), the Excellence in Education Award (Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation), and the Marion Drysdale Leadership Among Women Teachers Award (also from OSSTF). At Cornell, Cynthia is the Director of Wind Ensembles, overseeing the Wind Ensemble, Symphonic Band, Chamber Winds, and other chamber ensembles. She also serves as faculty " advisor to CU Winds, a student-governed organization devoted to tqe promotion and performance of wind music. She has commissioned numerous new works for wind band, many of which incorporate other artistic media, and continues to actively promote commissions by today's leading composers . . A Word Of Thanks We wish to express our special thanks to many people who made the C~rigliano performance possible. First and foremost, thanks to all of the extra players who gave so freely of their time. Special thanks goes to Cornell University for allowing us to use this beautiful hall. Otherwise, this performance would not have been possible. Special thanks to Cynthia Johnston Turner, Bill Esty, t;,oralyn Light, Dan Maas, and Jeff Montesano .. ·, ITHACA COLLEGE WIND ENSEMBLE ... , Stephen Peterson, conductor Flute/Piccolo Trombone Hom Jacqueline Christen* Francis Cook Rachel Haselbauer Siobhan Correnty Hank Currey* Lori Roy Emily James Rick McGrath Lisa Meyerhofer Percussion Aimee Shorten Bass Trombone Daniel Cathey E.J. Swider Alan Dust Oboe/English Hom . Edith Resnik COrinne Landrey Euphonium Alicia Rockenhauser* Justin Falvo String Bass Rachei Seiden Mike Vecchio* Kevin Gobetz Bassoon Tuba Marching Band Josh Malison* Alfred Hadinger Jeff Ward Kevin Madden* Flute/Piccolo Noah Wolfinger Emily James Percussion Eb Clarinet Benjamin Berry Eb Clarinet Sarah Koop Nathaniel Dominy Sarah Koop Christopher Qaney Bb Clarinet Lauretta Noller Trumpet Spencer Blumenfeld Evan Peltier* Janelle Varin Adam Butalewicz Omar Williams Erik Johnson Timpani Allegra, Smith Kaye Sevier Trombone Colleen White Francis Cook Robert Yaple String Bass Phillip Truex Kevin Gobetz Alto Clarinet Percussion Laura Caruthers Piano Alan Dust Robert Keiser Bass Clarinet Additional Stage Marcus Christian Rarp Band Members Myra Kovary** Alto Saxophone Oboe Robin Jackson* Surround Band Justine Popik Andrew Lawrence Bb Clarinet Bb Clarinet Tenor Saxophone Allegra· Smith Laura Caruthers Hart Linker · AmandaJenne Saxophone Brianne Remaley Baritone Saxophone Robin Jackson Mark Wolocki Ryan ·salisbuff Andrew Lawrence Hart Linker Bass Clarinet Trumpet Ryan Salisbury Michael Colletti Cyril Bodnar Jpe Brown* Trumpet Contrabass Clarinet Michael DeWeaver Michael Conerty Alicia McMahon Gr.egory Harris James Covington Ethan Urtz Sean Elligers Bassoon Janelle Varin Jason Graf Jessica Tortorici Kevin Guest Hom Gregory Harris _ Graduate Assistants Mike Drennan* Carol Jumper Susan DeVore Rachel Haselbauer Beverly Stokes · Christopher Dresko Tom Peters Janelle Varin Andrea Silvestrini Emily Waltz den9tes section leader Rose Valby Omar Williams guest artist 

Concert: Ithaca College Wind Ensemble,  American Visionaries

https://digitalcommons.ithaca.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7772&amp;context=music_programs

Concert: Ithaca College Wind Ensemble, American Visionaries

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Ithaca College