FUSION: Music of the Modern Wind Band

The TLU Bands, comprised of The Wind Ensemble and Symphonic Winds, present FUSION: Music of the Modern Wind Band, on October 6, at 7 p.m. in Jackson Auditorium. The perfomrance will feature music from the early 20th century to today, fusing together a wide-ranging collection of moods, tonalities, and musical styles for wind band.

Under the leadership of newly appointed Director of Bands and Baenziger Professor of Music, Dr. Brett A. Richardson, the Symphonic Winds will open the concert with Kevin Day’s explosive Rocketship!, an exciting work portraying the building excitement for a rocket launch. The Symphonic Winds will also perform Nicole Piunno’s Safely Rest, a lovely ballad that combines the themes from “Amazing Grace” and “Taps”; Adrian B. Sims’ Incandescence; and the classic march His Honor by Henry Fillmore.

The second half will feature TLU’s premier wind band on campus, The Wind Ensemble. The group will open with Peter Mennin’s monumental work for band Canzona from the 1950s. Richardson describes Canzona as important work for band by a former head of the school at Juilliard. The music is angular, forceful, and features close harmonies played by alternating choirs of band instruments. The band will also perform a new transcription of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Lift Up Your Heads, John Philip Sousa’s The White Rose March (featuring the percussion section), and Gustav Holst’s band classic Second Suite in F from 1911. Richardson also says The Second Suite is a masterwork for band, written in 1911 by Gustav Holst who is famous for the orchestral piece The Planets.