Program notes by Richard M. Kesner
Brian Balmages (1975 - ), Open Space
Brian Balmages is an active trumpet player, composer, conductor, and music producer. His work spans the range of instrumental ensembles, with performances by groups ranging from elementary schools to professional ensembles.
Open Space, in the composer’s own words, is: “easily one of the most intriguing pieces I have written in my career as a composer.” The work was inspired by the composer’s friend, G. Reid Wiseman, a NASA astronaut. Wiseman spent two years preparing to launch and spent six months on the International Space Station, where he actually served when Open Space was premiered. The three movements of the piece each deal with a specific aspect of his mission – Launch, Floating, Yet Falling, and Spacewalk. As for Spacewalk, the astronaut remarked: “If I get to do a spacewalk, that will certainly be the absolute highlight of the mission — the scariest, most intense, and probably the most rewarding. And the view when outside in a spacesuit ... the only thing between you and Earth is a two-mm thick piece of glass. Wow.”
Chandler Wilson (1984 - ), Zenith
Chandler L. Wilson is the Assistant Director of Athletic Bands and Assistant Professor of Music Education at Florida State University. Many of Dr. Wilson's compositions have been premiered and performed by All-County/District Honor Bands and All-State Bands.
Zenith is full of rhythmic excitement and finely tuned transitions with the intent of capturing some of the classic flare and compositional style of the composer’s mentor and friend Dr, Julian E. White, Distinguished Professor of Music (retired), Florida A&M University, to whom the work is dedicated. There are several quotes within the body of the music that highlight Dr. White’s thoughts and teachings, such as Part Two, No. 2, from his Unisonal Scales and Chords method book. The lyrical portion of Zenith is based on Dr. White's favorite hymn How Great Thou Art. With an energetic and heroic structure, this work engages both the audience and the performer.
John Williams (1932 - ) / trans. Paul Lavender (1952 - ), Adventures on Earth from E.T.
John Williams is one of America’s most renown composers and conductors. In a career that has spanned seven decades, he has composed some of the most popular, recognizable, and critically acclaimed film scores in cinema history. He seems to be able to create any sound or mood by mixing romanticism, impressionism, melody, and atonal music with complex orchestration. He is perhaps best known for his collaborations with Steven Spielberg and George Lucas and has received numerous accolades, including: 26 Grammy Awards, five Academy Awards, seven BAFTA Awards, three Emmy Awards, and four Golden Globe Awards. With 54 Academy Award nominations, he is the second-most nominated person, after Walt Disney, and is the oldest Oscar nominee in any category, at 92 years old.
Paul Lavender is an active American composer, music entrepreneur, and arranger. He studied music theory and composition at Central Michigan University in Mount Pleasant, where he obtained both his Bachelor of Music, 1973, and Master of Music degrees. He is currently Hal Leonard’s vice president of instrumental publications. In addition to numerous adaptations of classical music for wind orchestras, he has also written his own compositions for orchestras, and chamber music, as well as pedagogical materials.
The 1982 film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial offered another seismic success in the relationship between John Williams and Steven Spielberg, and a decision the latter made during the recording process demonstrates the respect each man had for the contributions of the other. Williams was recording the lengthy and complex music for the finale of the film, but he was having difficulty synchronizing the orchestra’s performance to the many precise cuts and beats of the picture edit. After several takes, Spielberg offered to turn off the film and allow Williams to record the music on its own, with exactly the tempi and phrasing he felt the music required. When it was recorded to Williams’ satisfaction, Spielberg then re-cut the end of the film to match this musical performance. The result was one of the most iconic sequences in movie history. Adventures on Earth — Williams’ concert adaptation of this music — derived from this remarkable artistic partnership. The work draws upon many of the most popular musical themes from the movie. The premiere performance of Adventures On Earth for concert band was conducted by John Williams as part of the 205th anniversary concert of the United States Marine Band, July 12, 2003, at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Arts in Washington, D.C.
Augusta Read Thomas (1964 – ), Dancing Galaxy
Augusta Read Thomas is University Professor of Composition in Music at The University of Chicago. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Not only is Thomas one of the most active composers in the world, but she is a long-standing exemplary citizen with an extensive history of being deeply committed to her community. She is the former Chairperson for the American Music Center; Vice President for Music, The American Academy of Arts and Letters; and Member of the Conseil Musical de la Foundation Prince Pierre de Monaco.
The composer describes Dancing Galaxy as a set of three dances. The first starts in the lowest register of the wind ensemble in a timeless, floating, and gradually rising tune, which for a brief moment creates an impression of the massive, enduring universe. The music reaches upward and gains momentum, pushing through majestic, fanfare-like music, until it arrives at a driving, relentless dance. Punchy repeated rhythms propel the dance while a counter tune hammers with hard accents against the forceful rhythm; all the while, brass fanfares challenge the flow. This "drama" is briefly interrupted by a florid and fiery passage led by a clarinet, before it returns and surges to its final climax, ending Galaxy Dance #1.
Immediately a second dance begins with a unison rhythm between the piano and the horns, with accents thrown in by the lower instruments, in intense, pointed strikes. The earlier clarinet line (from Galaxy Dance #1) now reappears in transformed guise played by the saxophones and oboes above the energized, lower, rhythmic pulse. The motor rhythms are never the same twice, imparting a restless energy.
Galaxy Dance #3 follows and is characterized by a long trumpet solo, against which the winds spin a web of counterpoints. It is worth stating here that the core of this entire composition is not primarily found in its rhythm or harmony, but in its counterpoint — that is, in the ways the composer knits together the various fragments of sound. We hear a brief rise from the lowest registers of the ensemble before Galaxy Dance #4 begins. This final dance features the lower instruments and the timpani in a funky, insistent, asymmetrical groove. A coda in the lowest register of the wind ensemble returns to where the composition began, in an ageless, suspended galaxy.
This work is a version of the composer’s Galaxy Dances for Orchestra and is dedicated to the conductor Frank Battisti.
John Williams (1932 - ) / trans. Paul Lavender (1952 - ), Suite from “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”
When the American Film Institute released their listing of the top twenty-five film scores of all time in 2005, it included the titles: Out of Africa, Sunset Boulevard, Ben-Hur, Psycho, The Godfather, and Gone with the Wind. John Williams was responsible for three of those twenty-five selections, and at the very top was his unforgettable score to the original Star Wars movie. On the heels of his work in the 1970s with Steven Spielberg that produced the blockbusters Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Williams signed on in 1977 to score a new “space western” written and directed by George Lucas. At that time, no one could have predicted the global popularity of this film and its successive chapters, nor could Williams have imagined the impact that his music for the movies would have both in the world of film and well beyond. Williams has scored dozens of themes for the nine films in the series, many of which have achieved world-wide recognition on a scale equal to some of the most popular classical music in history.
The latest installment in the series, The Force Awakens, was released in December 2015 and the story takes place some thirty years after the conclusion of The Return of the Jedi. As old and new characters come together in the film, Williams’ score artfully weaves together familiar music from the original films with brand new themes and brilliantly highlights pivotal actions and relationships. After the familiar music for the opening credits is sounded, the suite continues with the March of the Resistance, followed by the main theme of the mysterious new lead character, Rey. Scherzo for X-Wings accompanies a furious battle scene featuring the iconic aerial fighters of both the Resistance and the First Order. The closing movement of the suite begins with the music of the Jedi and moves into a final montage of all of the main themes in Williams’ incredible symphonic tapestry. The Suite includes five movements four of which are performed in this afternoon’s concert:
I. March of the Resistance
II. Rey’s Theme
III. Scherzo for X-Wings
IV. The Jedi Steps (not performed this afternoon)
V. The Jedi Steps and Finale
This arrangement of the new suite from the score for Star Wars: The Force Awakens was prepared by Paul Lavender especially for the Marine Band in 2015.
Program notes by Richard M. Kesner
Kimberly Archer, Fanfare Politeia
Kimberly K. Archer (1973 - ) currently serves as Professor of Composition at Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville, Illinois. She teaches composition, orchestration, analysis, counterpoint, and music theory. Dr. Archer holds a Bachelor of Music Education from The Florida State University, a Master of Music in Composition from Syracuse University, and a Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition from The University of Texas at Austin. Her teachers have included David Maslanka, David Gillingham, Andrew Waggoner, Donald Grantham, and Charlie Carter. A specialist in music for winds and percussion, Dr. Archer has been commissioned by organizations such as “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band and The United States Air Force Band of Mid-America. Her music has been performed widely throughout the United States and has been recognized by numerous national and regional musical and educational organizations.
Written in 2021, Fanfare Politeia is an homage to the origins of our democracy, and to the ancient sources that Madison, Hamilton, Jefferson, and Adams drew upon in their conceiving and writing of our Constitution. Politeia is a Greek word derived from polis (city). Aristotle used the term to represent concepts such as citizens’ rights and constitutional government, while Plato’s examination of justice – a book which we now call The Republic, in English – was actually entitled Politeia in the original Greek. Commissioned by “The President's Own” United States Marine Band for the 59th Presidential Inauguration (Joseph R. Biden’s inauguration), Fanfare Politeia celebrates our traditions of a free and fair election, and of a peaceful transfer of power.
Percy Aldridge Grainger, Marching Song for Democracy
Percy Aldridge Grainger (1882-1961) was an Australian-born composer, arranger and pianist. In the course of a long and innovative career, he wrote works of great originality and vitality, drawing on folk and popular idioms. In the early years of the 20th century, he played a prominent role in the revival of interest in British folk music. Grainger left Australia at the age of 13 to attend the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt. Between 1901 and 1914, he was based in London, where he established himself first as a society pianist and later as a concert performer, composer, and collector of original folk melodies. In 1914, Grainger moved to the United States, where he lived for the rest of his life, though he travelled widely in Europe and in Australia
The origins of Grainger’s composition, Marching Song for Democracy, are best captured in his own words from his journals:
“When in Paris during the Exhibition of 1900, I happened unexpectedly upon the public statue of George Washington while trolling about the streets one day, and somehow or other this random occurrence galvanized in me a definite desire to typify the buoyant on-march of optimistic humanitarian democracy in a musical composition in which a forward-striding host of comradely affectionate humanity might be heard, ‘chanting the great pride of man in himself.’ My original plan was to write my Marching Song of Democracy for voices and whistlers only (no instruments) and have it performed by a chorus of men, women and children, singing and whistling to the rhythmic accompani-ment of their tramping feet as they marched along in the open air; but a later realization of the need for instrumental color inherent in the character of the music from the first ultimately led me to score it for the concert hall.”
The musical material dates from the summer of 1901 (when Grainger was working in Germany), December, 1908 (when Grainger was in Australia) and the summer of 1915 (when Grainger was back in New York City, U.S.A.). The final scoring of the original version for chorus, orchestra and organ was made in the summer of 1915, the spring and summer of 1916, and the spring of 1917 (New York City). The work was also inspired by In a Backward Glance O’er Travel’d Roads (prose epilogue to Leaves of Grass) by Walt Whitman which speaks of democratic values. Grainger’s work carries the following dedication: “For my darling mother, united with her in loving adoration of Walt Whitman.” The band version of Marching Song of Democracy, created for the Goldman Band in 1948, was not published until 1991. Grainger integrated the vocal lines into the texture of the wind band in this version, marking the work purely instrumental.
Aaron Copland / trans. Walter Beeler, Lincoln Portrait
Speaker: Joy Arcolano
Often referred to as the “Dean of American composers,” Aaron Copland (1900-1990) was a composer, critic, writer, music educator, pianist, and later a conductor of his own and other American music. The open, slowly changing harmonies in much of his music are typical of what many people consider to be the sound of American music, evoking the vast American landscape and pioneer spirit. He is best known for the works he wrote in the 1930s and 1940s in a deliberately accessible style often referred to as “populist,” including the ballets Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid, and Rodeo, his Fanfare for the Common Man and Third Symphony. In addition to his ballets and orchestral works, he produced music in many other genres, including chamber music, vocal works, opera and film scores.
After some initial studies with composer Rubin Goldmark, Copland traveled to Paris, where he first studied with Isidor Philipp and Paul Vidal, then with noted pedagogue Nadia Boulanger. He studied three years with Boulanger, whose eclectic approach to music inspired his own broad but nonetheless academic/modernistic musical taste. It is noteworthy that in the mid-1930s Copland shifted to a less abstract/more accessible musical style which mirrored the German idea of Gebrauchsmusik (“music for use”), music that could serve utilitarian and artistic purposes. During the Depression years, he traveled extensively to Europe, Africa, and Mexico, formed an important friendship with Mexican composer Carlos Chávez and began composing his signature works. From the 1960s onward, Copland's activities turned more from composing to conducting. He became a frequent guest conductor of orchestras in the U.S. and the UK and made a series of recordings of his music, primarily for Columbia Records.
Conductor Andre Kostelanetz commissioned Copland to write a musical portrait of an “eminent American” for the New York Philharmonic. Copland chose President Abraham Lincoln, and used material from speeches and letters of Lincoln, as well as original folk songs of the period, including: Camptown Races and On Springfield Mountain. Copland finished Lincoln Portrait in April 1942, providing a rich musical palette for the framing of Lincoln’s own words and a few independent observations about this U.S. president. The first performance was by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra on 14 May 1942, with William Adams as the narrator. Because of his leftist views, Copland was blacklisted and Lincoln Portrait withdrawn from the 1953 inaugural concert for Dwight D. Eisenhower.
The work opens with music that sounds familiar to our ears and reminiscent of Copland’s most popular works. Together with some descriptive comments on Lincoln (e.g. “Abe Lincoln was a quiet and a melancholy man”), the work contains the following excerpts from Lincoln’s speeches:
“Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this congress and this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation. We, even we here, hold the power and bear the responsibility.” (Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862)
“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country.” (Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862)
“It is the eternal struggle between two principles, right and wrong, throughout the world. It is the same spirit that says ‘you toil and work and earn bread, and I'll eat it.’ No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation, and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.” (Lincoln–Douglas debates, October 15, 1858)
“As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.” (Definition of Democracy, August 1, 1858)
“That from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion. That we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain. That this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.” (Gettysburg Address)
Our narrator for the Lincoln Portrait, Joy Lamberton Arcolano, joined the Boston Conservatory in 2015 and is an assistant professor of theater, specializing in voice and speech. In 2014, Arcolano was profiled in American Theatre Magazine for her work as chief creative arts officer and founder of Playhouse Education, a teaching and consulting company. Since 2004, Playhouse Education has served over 15,000 Massachusetts students through more than 60 collaborations with public, private, and independent schools, as well as nonprofit organizations and theaters. As a voice actor, she has recorded over 100 children’s books for Scholastic, many regional and national commercials for radio and television, industrials and documentaries, and new media animation. Arcolano holds a Master of Education in arts in education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she worked with Augusto Boal, Howard Gardner, Jessica Hoffmann Davis, and Steve Seidel. Additionally, she trained and worked at Shakespeare & Company (Massachusetts) and studied Shakespeare at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. She graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in theater and history from Russell Sage College.
Adam Schoenberg, Symphony No. 2: “Migration”
Emmy Award-winning and Grammy®-nominated Adam Schoenberg (1980 - ) has twice been named among the top 10 most performed living composers by orchestras in the United States. His works have received performances and premieres at the Library of Congress, the Kennedy Center, the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, and the Hollywood Bowl. Schoenberg has received commissions from several major American orchestras, including: the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the Kansas City Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Aspen Music Festival and School. A graduate of Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Schoenberg earned his Master’s and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees from The Juilliard School, where he studied with John Corigliano. He is currently a professor at Occidental College, where he runs the composition and film scoring programs. He makes his home in Los Angeles with his wife, screenwriter Janine Salinas Schoenberg, and their two sons.
Completed by Schoenberg in 2022, Symphony No. 2: Migration was commissioned by the Wind Ensemble at the Sarah and Ernest Butler School of Music and Performing Arts at The University of Texas in Austin and is dedicated to Jerry Junkin. The origins and nature of this work are best described by the composer himself:
“In the weeks following the November 8th [2016] election, I have been thinking a lot about immigration. It’s a controversial and divisive issue. It is also one of the foundations of our great country. I myself am a fourth-generation American. My ancestors immigrated from Latvia, Lithuania, and Romania. I grew up in a town of 750 people in rural Massachusetts. It was a pretty typical American childhood. Carefree and idyllic. I never really thought about how my family had gotten here, or what it had taken to make that journey.
“The narrative behind Migration is inspired by my wife, and her family’s journey to America. As she likes to say, ‘No one leaves where they’re from unless they believe that something better awaits them.’ While writing this piece she and I talked at length about the emotional journey that many immigrants experience. If you don’t push yourself to dream about what awaits you, then how do you have the courage to leave behind all that you know? If you don’t envision a new home where all of your hopes and dreams can be achieved, then how do you survive in a completely unfamiliar place?”
Migration is in five movements:
I. March is the catalyst for change. Whether personal or political, it represents the conflict that is taking place within the country of origin.
II. Dreaming is the vision of what awaits. It is the inspiration that allows one to take the leap and begin the journey.
III. Escape represents the uprooting. Whether crossing illegally, going through Ellis Island, etc. It embodies the anxiety, hope, and fear of leaving everything behind.
IV. Crossing captures the feelings associated with leaving your homeland and entering a completely unfamiliar place.
V. Beginning represents the culmination of the journey. It is the start of a new life where anything is possible.
The composer instructs us to perform movements I-II, and then IV-V without a pause. Taken together the visions of Schoenberg’s Symphony No. 2 are on one hand riveting and disturbing and on the other hopeful. Enjoy the concert!