A Band for John

More wind music on Composers Datebook, this time describing the events which led to Sousa leaving the Marine Band to form his own touring band. As you'll hear, the reason for this was, in part, due to the band leader's personal finances.  Enjoy! 

A Bridge for William

This week on Composers Datebook features a classic wind piece- William Schuman's George Washington Bridge. The entry describes Schuman's connection to the bridge, and how he came to write this rather monumental work.

Click here to listen to the entry. Enjoy!

The Score

In a never-ending search for new material for this blog- material that embodies the character and interests of the UMD Wind Orchestra- I have come across a feature in the New York Times Opinion section online, called "The Score". According its website,

"The Score features the writings of composers on their work and the issues involved in creating music in the 21st century, as the traditional notion of "classical" continues to be reconsidered, revised and reimagined."

Below is the most recent contribution to "The Score" from composer/conductor Rob Deemer. It outlines his view on the current system set in place for new concert music to be created. Or in other words, the system essentially disallows new composers to more readily become 'discovered'. Of course not everyone will agree with his assessments, but it is an interesting topic for discussion-one that should continue!

Click here for the article.

And here is a link to recordings of Rob Deemer's work. Enjoy!

DBR part 2

Below is bio of the modern violinist/composer phenom Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR). He will be performing a new piece commissioned by UMWO this coming spring at College Park, and its sure to be an excellent concert! The bio is from his website, http://www.dbrmusic.com/news.htm. after you're done reading, enjoy this video of DBR talking about his history and creative process. http://www.dbrmusic.com/wbb.htm

"Having carved a reputation for himself as an innovative composer, performer, violinist, and band leader, Haitian-American artist Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR) melds his classical music roots with his own cultural references and vibrant musical imagination. Proving that he’s "about as omnivorous as a contemporary artist gets" (New York Times), DBR is perhaps the only composer who has collaborated and performed with Philip Glass, Cassandra Wilson, Bill T. Jones, and Lady Gaga. He's received commissions from Carnegie Hall, the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), the Library of Congress, and the sports channel ESPN. He's appeared on American Idol (FOX), America’s Assignment (CBS Evening News), E:60 (ESPN) and been voted one of the "Top 100 New Yorkers" (New York Resident), "Top 40 Under 40 business people" (Crain’s New York Business), "Top 5 Tomorrow’s Newsmakers" (1010 WINS Radio), and spotlighted as a "New Face of Classical Music" (Esquire Magazine). Most recently DBR has created a new evening length-work, Symphony for the Dance Floor, for the 2011 BAM Next Wave Festival and ASU Gammage, and composed music for the Atlanta Ballet, Home in 7, with the choreographer Amy Seiwert and the poet Marc Bamuthi Joseph."

Wind music on Composer's Datebook

One of this week's Composers Datebook entries features Fennell conducting the Cleveland Winds performing a well known Olympic theme song.

Enjoy!

http://composersdatebook.publicradio.org/www_publicradio/tools/media_player/popup.php?name=composers_datebook/2011/07/24/datebook_20110724_128

DBR

Our March 29th concert will feature one of today's most interesting characters in classical music: Daniel Bernard Roumain (or DBR). This will surely be an interesting concert to say the least: not only will UMWO be premiering a new piece that the ensemble has commissioned from him, but the composer himself will be performing (violin) with the ensemble. This is the first of a few blog posts about this piece/concert. As we learn more about this piece (currently without a title) we will surely provide the information on this blog, so please check back often!

Here is an example of the composer's work and performance style. Enjoy!

Cuts to the Military Bands

Last week a question was raised in Washington regarding whether or not to continue the funding for our nations Military ensembles at their current levels, indeed proposing to cut by 37.5%. This is a serious matter, and would eliminate many bands around the country and abroad. One group in particular is the Air Force Band of Liberty, stationed at Hanscom AFB in Massachusetts. This is a group that was already on the chopping block before these proposed cuts, and will certainly be in danger if the bill passes.

To read more specifics, see Walter Pincus' article on the matter here.

If you value these ensembles as a representation of American music, professional wind groups, or simply a patriotic necessity, then please consider contacting your representative to tell him/her that you'd like them to support our military bands. You can use this link to find your Senator.  http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Thanks!

Stravinsky's Obituary

I've recently come across Igor Stravinsky's Obituary written by Donal Henahan, and printed in the New York Times upon the composer's death in 1971. Though it might seem a bit cryptic as material for this blog, it is actually a very interesting read. For those that are Stravinsky enthusiasts,history buffs, or are less acquainted with Stravinsky's life and works, it's a great way to step back in time and learn his story. Below is the beginning of the article, and the link brings you to its continuation. Enjoy!

OBITUARY

Igor Stravinsky, the Composer, Dead at 88

By DONAL HENAHAN

Igor Stravinsky, the composer whose "Le Sacre du Printemps" exploded in the face of the music world in 1913 and blew it into the 20th century, died of heart failure yesterday.
The Russian-born musician, 88 years old, had been in frail health for years but had been released from Lenox Hill Hospital in good condition only a week before his death, which came at 5:20 A.M. in his newly purchased apartment at 920 Fifth Avenue. Continue...

Conductor Highlight: Robert Austin Boudreau

Robert Austin Boudreau is a singular figure in the world of professional conductors. He is the founder and conductor of the American Wind Symphony Orchestra, an ensemble which travels to various cities within the US and abroad on a barge which serves as a floating stage. Typically, the barge ("Point and Counterpoint II") will float up to a suitable river bed in a city and perform its concert for that town's residents, as well as the ensemble's followers. The ensemble itself is comprised primarily of young professionals or graduate students, and is re-auditioned every summer. Having founded this unique and versatile wind ensemble is enough to secure  Boudreau's importance in the wind world, but his outstanding contribution to the repertoire through his ensemble's commissioning project, which has given birth to over 400 new works for the wind orchestra, is what sets him aside as an incredible force for this type of ensemble within the last 53 years.

The UMD Wind Orchestra has performed many of he ensembles commissions, most recently Carlos Surinach's Paeans and Dances of Heathen Iberia, and Colin McPhee's Concerto for Wind Orchestra. Some of our more seasoned members and alumni might also remember that during the SOM's search for a new director of wind activities (now Dr. Votta), Maestro Boudreau served for a time as interim director.

Here is a link to Robert Boudreau's colorful Bio, and through this page you can further explore this unique ensemble's website. Enjoy!

Le Bal de Beatrice d'Este

On our Nov. 4th Concert, UMWO will be performing Reynaldo Hahn's Le Bal de Beatrice d'Este, a chamber work scored for double flutes, oboes, Clarinets, Bassoons, horns, trumpet, percussion, two harps and piano. The piece is a suite from his Ballet of the same title. Below is an extensive program note on the composer and the piece, written by Steven Dennis Bodner for the Williams Symphonic Winds. Enjoy!

The music of Reynaldo Hahn (1875-1947) has been described as “quintessentially French,” as evoking “a Paris, indeed a way of life, forever gone and, like [Marcel] Proust’s world, retrievable only in precious moments where taste, sight, or the sound of a musical phrase provoke the memory, or even perhaps the collective unconscious.” It has by turns been both dismissed and praised for being “charming” and “nostalgic,” “sentimental” and “sensual.” Ironically, Hahn was not French by birth; although his family moved to Paris when he was only three years old; instead, he was born in Venezuela, the youngest of twelve children, to a German, Jewish father and a Venezuelan, Catholic mother. He demonstrated prodigious musical talents as a child, giving many performances in private houses, including his “professional” debut at the age of six, singing and playing the piano at the salon of the eccentric Princess Mathilde de Metternich (Napoleon’s niece). At ten he entered the Paris Conservatoire where he studied with Massenet and Gounod and was a classmate of Ravel and Charpentier, and at thirteen his first song,

Si mes vers avaient des ailes, was published. Hahn’s early (and lasting) reputation was founded primarily on his mélodies, which now hold an honored place in French vocal repertoire, alongside the songs of Gabriel Fauré. At the invitation of the writer Alphonse Daudet, Hahn composed music for the play L’Obstacle in 1890, his first stage work at the age of fifteen. He wrote several operettas and ballets, specialized in conducting Mozart operas, was a leading writer on music, and was appointed in 1945 the director of the Paris Opéra.

Known as much for his charm and exotic handsomeness as for his music and intellect, Hahn was a constant presence in the salons of Paris, capturing the love and attention of high society. He counted among his friends the poets Verlaine, who was said to have wept when he heard Hahn’s settings of his verses, and Mallarmé, who praised him with the stanza:

Le pleur qui chante au langage The tear that sings in the word

Du poè te, Reynaldo of the poet, Reynaldo

Hahn, tendrement le degage Hahn gently releases

Comme en l’allée un jet d’eau. like a fountain on a pathway.

In 1894, he met the aspiring writer Marcel Proust, who although three years older, was less well-known than Hahn. They were lovers for the first two years of an enduring friendship that lasted until Proust’s death in 1922. They shared a passion of painting and reading, and challenged each other regarding ideas of literature and music, of art and life; in fact, neither was ever to have another relationship with an intellectual equal. Proust praised Hahn’s music in a 1914 article for possessing “the irretrievable sweetness of a first promise or a first confession,” and included Hahn as an eponymous hero in his autobiographical novel Jean Santeuil. More touching, though, is Proust’s loving pen-portrait:

When he takes his place at the piano, with a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, everyone is quiet and

gathers around to listen. Every note is a word or cry. His head is slightly tilted back: his mouth is

melancholy and rather scornful. Thence emanates the saddest and warmest voice you can imagine. This

instrument of genius, by name Reynaldo Hahn, moves our hearts, moistens our eyes, cures us one after the other in a silent and solemn undulation. Never since Schumann has music painted sorrow, tenderness, the calm induced by nature, with such brush strokes of human truth and absolute beauty.

A musical conservative who delighted in the music of the past and obsessed with musical and poetic form, Hahn achieved his biggest stage successes before the First World War with two ballets, Le Bal de Béatrice d'Este and La Fête chez Thérèse. Like his contemporary Fritz Kreisler, Hahn had a deft skill in evoking or suggesting different periods in musical history, such as eighteenth-century France, England in the Regency period, Mozart’s Vienna, and so on.

In writing the ballet Le Bal de Béatrice d'Este in Paris in 1905, but setting it in fifteenth-century Milan, Hahn blurs the line between Renaissance Italy and fin-desiècle France. Although the ballet does not seek to retell an actual historical occasion, the work is firmly

based within a historical context. Béatrice (1475-1497) was of the Italian noble family Este who ruled Ferrara from 1240-1597 and was celebrated for significant patronage of the arts throughout the Renaissance. In 1490, she married Ludovico Sforza the Moor, Duke of Milan. During Ludovico’s reign, Milan was praised as the “new Athens”; he lavishly supported the humanities, many of the greatest artists of the day (including Leonardo da Vinci) resided in Milan to be near their patron. Béatrice, Duchess of Milan, was singularly noted for her tremendous beauty and charm, as well as for her love poetry and dancing; her grand balls were regarded highly throughout Italy. Within the framing processional and recessional, the interior movements of the suite consist of three Renaissance dances (although with a subtly more modern sensibility), a character sketch of Béatrice’s sister Isabella (“Ibérienne’), and an impression of da Vinci’s controversial painting Leda and the Swan.

Conductor Highlight: Keith Brion

As a tribute to the 4th of July holiday weekend, today's post will feature Keith Brion, perhaps the foremost scholar/conductor of the music of John Philip Sousa, who holds a unique and important place in the world of conductors. He built the early part of his career primarily as a director of orchestral pops concerts, and since the founding of his New Sousa Band, he has impressed audiences throughout the nation with his knowledge and acute attention to detail in his performance practice of Sousa's music as as art, not simply entertainment.  Below is Keith Brion's bio found on his band's website. Enjoy!


Keith Brion, Music Director of his own New Sousa Band, has appeared as a frequent guest conductor with nearly all of America's major symphony orchestras and professional bands. His New Sousa Band, begun in 1979, is a realization of Mr. Brion's dream to reincarnate the Sousa Band and once again tour America's towns and cities.

He has been a frequent guest conductor of professional bands among which are the Stockholm Symphonic Wind Orchestra, New York City's Goldman Band, The California Wind Orchestra, and the Allentown Band. He has also appeared with most of the major service bands, including the U.S. Marine Band, Army Field Band, Army Band, Coast Guard Band and the U.S. Army Band of Europe in Heidelberg, Germany. University and school band appearances have included Florida State, Michigan State, University of Texas, Ohio State, Kentucky and the University of Iowa, plus the National Music Camp at Interlochen.

In addition to leading the New Sousa Band, Mr. Brion maintains an active career as an orchestra conductor, presenting his popular Sousa revival concerts with almost all of America's symphony orchestras, including the Boston Pops, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the St. Louis, Dallas, Milwaukee symphonies. His overseas orchestral engagements have included the London Concert Orchestra and the Gothenburg Symphony.

Keith Brion is a former Director of Bands at Yale University, where he led the Yale Band in concerts at the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, and in an all-Ives program program at Amsterdam's Concertgebouw. Prior to coming to Yale, he was the founder and music director of the North Jersey Wind Symphony and a long-time band educator and music supervisor in the New Jersey public schools.

He has published many editions for band, including the music of Charles Ives, Percy Grainger, John Philip Sousa, and D.W. Reeves, and is the author of numerous articles. He has published a series of Sousa publications in collaboration with Loras Schissel, curator of the Sousa collection at the Library of Congress. These Sousa editions are published by Willow Blossom Music and distributed by the CL. Barnhouse Co. A new Sousa series: "New Sousa Band Editions", is being published by Southern Music Co. of San Antonio.

Mr. Brion is currently recording the complete wind music of John Philip Sousa for Naxos records with London's Royal Artillery Band. Eight volumes of a projected 16 CD series have been recorded.

Wind Music on Composers Datebook

Today's Composers Datebook entry features a well known work, from a well known composer of wind music: Percy Grainger's Country Gardens. Click on the link below to learn something new about this familiar piece. Enjoy!

Here is the link