Wind Ensemble and Symphonic Band with Carrie Shaw, soprano: Cityscapes

The UW Wind Ensemble (Timothy Salzman, director) and Symphonic Band (Shaun Day, director) present their end-of-year concert, performing music by Marie A. Douglas, Jennifer Higdon, Nigel Hess, Paul Dukas, Augusta Read Thomas, and Michael Colgrass. With Carrie Shaw, soprano soloist on Augusta Read Thomas' Of Being is a Bird.

Program

Symphonic Band
Shaun Day, director

Marie A. Douglas (b. 1987): Big City Lights (2021)  

Jennifer Higdon (b. 1962): Mysterium
Brandon Cain, conductor

David Maslanka (1943-2017): Give Us This Day (2005)
Short Symphony for Wind Ensemble
I. Moderately Slow
II. Very fast

Wind Ensemble
Timothy Salzman, director

Augusta Read Thomas (b. 1964) : Of Being Is a Bird (Emily Dickinson settings) (2015)
II. Interlude “Flock of Birds”
I. Of Being is a Bird
Carrie Shaw, soprano       

Henry Fillmore (1872-1958): Circus Bee (1908)
Corey Jahlas, conductor

Michael Colgrass (1932-2019): Urban Requiem (1995)
Nicholas Franks, soprano saxophone
Ashley Grinstead, alto saxophone
Alexander Yuan, tenor saxophone
Katie Zundel, So., baritone saxophone

Program Notes

Big City Lights is a piece for wind band, inspired by the Hip-Hop sub-genre “Trap Music” which finds its roots in the composer’s hometown, Atlanta, Georgia. The atonal piece has an electronic accompaniment aspect as well. There are musical elements that are meant to imitate techniques which are commonly utilized during the production of music within the genre. For example, in general the timpani performs what are intended to be “808’s”, while the tuba is often performing lines that would be reserved for synthesized bass; the combination creates an often-utilized distortion technique. Other production tactics travel through the ensemble as well. Certain aspects of the orchestration are imitating automation, which places the sound exclusively in different spots of the ensemble (specifically on the left or right of the conductor). Sudden and gradual ensemble crescendos and dovetailing of melodies imitate low and high pass filters and volume knobs. Additionally, the piece aims to give the performers and audience a peek into a day in the life of an Atlanta resident.

This piece begins with the high-paced “It’s Lit!” section which includes fortissimo exclamations occurring throughout the ensemble demonstrating the hustle and bustle of the famed Atlanta traffic. The traffic sounds perform a trio with the clarinets and marimba, who depict a sense of “hurry and wait”, as they endure the Atlanta traffic scene. The “Issa Vibe” section is much slower and intends to depict a night out on the town with friends, enjoying the city light and the slightly slower paced environment. For a short period, we return to “It’s Lit!” followed by “Chopped and Screwed,” which is a halftime recapitulation of the main themes. “Chopped and Screwed” is a famous DJ stule where a song is slowed down tremendously. The piece closes out with on final return to the original marking of “It’s Lit”. Enjoy a day in the life of an “AtLien” with “Big City Lights”!
–Program note by the composer

Mysterium is Jennifer Higdon’s own arrangement of her sacred choral work O Magnum Mysterium for wind ensemble. It was commissioned by Scott Stewart, Emory University Wind Ensemble, and Scott Weiss, University of South Carolina Band. Higdon writes of Mysterium “…is a tribute to the wonderful mystery of how music moves us. Perhaps it is the unexplainable that creates such magic, for both the performer and the listener, but there is no denying the incredible power of a shared musical experience.”

The flute descants and chimes play an important role, creating an antiphonal setting one would traditionally hear in a large cathedral. Higdon’s compositional style utilizes a combination of melody and rhythmic complexity that resemble the text of the original choral setting, which is first heard in Latin and shifts into English. The music is harmonically original, and the colors from every instrument is represented in a very compelling way.

Give Us This Day was commissioned by Eric Weirather, Director of Bands at Rancho Buena Vista High School in Oceanside, Calif., which is in the greater San Diego area. Eric put together a consortium to support the commission. The score was finished in October of 2005, and the premiere performance was done at Eric’s school in the spring of 2006. Since then, with publication of the piece, and a lot of word of mouth, Give Us This Day has literally taken off. It continues to be performed all over the U.S. and many places around the world.

The words “give us this day” are, of course, from the Lord’s Prayer, but the inspiration for this music is Buddhist. I have recently read a book by the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh (pronounced “Tick Not Hahn”) entitled For a Future to be Possible. His premise is that a future for the planet is only possible if individuals become deeply mindful of themselves, deeply connected to who they really are. While this is not a new idea, and something that is an ongoing struggle for everyone, in my estimation it is *the* issue for world peace. For me, writing music, and working with people to perform music, are two of those points of deep mindfulness. Music allows us to be immediately present, awake, and aware. “Give Us This Day”…Give us this very moment of aware aliveness so that we can build a future in the face of a most dangerous and difficult time.

I chose the subtitle “Short Symphony for Wind Ensemble” because the music really isn’t programmatic in nature. It has a full-blown symphonic character, even though there are only two movements. The music of the slower first movement is deeply searching, while that of the highly energized second movement is at times both joyful and sternly sober. The piece ends with a modal setting of the chorale melody Vater Unser in Himmelreich (“Our Father in Heaven”), #110 from the 371 Four-Part Chorales by J.S. Bach.
–Program note by the composer

Augusta Read Thomas studied composition with Oliver Knussen at Tanglewood, Jacob Druckman at Yale University, with Alan Stout and Bill Karlins at Northwestern University, and at the Royal Academy of Music in London. She was a Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows at Harvard University and a Bunting Fellow at Radcliffe College — which is now The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University — and taught composition at Tanglewood during the summers of 2003, 2004, 2005, 2007, and 2008. Seven years after graduating from the Royal Academy of Music, she was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music (ARAM, honorary degree). In 1998 she received the Distinguished Alumni Association Award from St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire. In 1999, she received the Award of Merit from the President of Northwestern University. At the age of 33, she received tenure from the Eastman School. Ms. Thomas was Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (1997-2006) and, until 2008, Chair of the Board of the American Music Center, on which she has served for the past five years. Starting September 2006, Thomas resigned from her position as the Wyatt Professor of Music at Northwestern University to devote her time exclusively to composition. Critic Paul Griffith describes Of Being is a Bird:

Augusta Read Thomas has walked a path – or flown – with Emily Dickinson before, in Sunlight Echoes for youth choir and youth orchestra (2002) and Gathering Paradise, a song cycle for soprano and symphony orchestra (2004). This new piece is a pair of bird songs – bird songs that indeed have to do with bird songs, with the songs that birds themselves make, but more, as the title poem indicates, with bird being, with how birds are and also with how birdlike – in flight – being is. After all, the singing here is done by a human being, and by a specific human being, for, the composer tells us, she ‘listened to every recording of Claire Booth I could find and took note of the colour of every pitch in her vocal range.’

Those colours wind through constantly changing textures of instrumental hue in the opening song, where voice and instruments are forever echoing one another, though only the voice, for the most part, has the long line. If any of the instruments is to the fore, it is perhaps the harp, which, to quote the composer, ‘provides a kind of golden thread throughout the piece in counterpoint with the solo soprano’. The harmonies, too, are constantly on the move, adjusting to the vocal line while keeping the music afloat and luminous. We might be hearing the clouds of which the poem speaks, or the easy breeze, or the ‘Wake of Music’, all with a snatch of bird song.

Of Being is a Bird
The likest to the Down
An Easy Breeze do put afloat
The General Heavens — upon —
It soars — and shifts — and whirls —
And measures with the Clouds
In easy — even — dazzling pace —
No different the Birds —
Except a Wake of Music
Accompany their feet —
As did the Down emit a Tune —
For Ecstasy — of it

The Circus Bee March was a celebration of sorts for the fact that Henry Fillmore and his father (who managed their publishing business) finally agreed that the young composer could publish his music “at home” even though it did not meet the elder Fillmore’s standard of being religious music. The title came from an imaginary circus newspaper; if John N. Klohr could name his famous march after a show business paper called The Billboard why not name his new march after a circus paper, real or not? The Circus Bee March reflects Fillmore’s lifelong interest in circuses and his varied experiences while touring with five different big top shows.
— Program Note from Program Notes for Band  

Michael Colgrass began his musical career as a percussionist and jazz drummer in Chicago and then New York. In 1978, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Music for Deja vu (the orchestral version) and in 1982 received an Emmy Award for the documentary Soundings: The Music of Michael Colgrass. He also won the Barlow and Sudler Awards for Winds of Nagual, a major work for wind ensemble. Colgrass lived in Toronto, Canada with his wife Ulla, a journalist, and worked as a composer, also doing workshops internationally in performance technique and psychology. He was commissioned by groups including the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Philharmonic, the Toronto Symphony, the National Arts Centre Orchestra, the Canadian Broadcast Corporation, the Lincoln Centre Chamber Music Society and the Brighton Festival in England. Of this evening’s work he wrote:

A requiem is a dedication to the souls of the dead. Urban Requiem might be described as an urban tale, inspired by a diversity of random impressions. I thought of our urban areas, where the saxophone was spawned, and of the tragedies and struggles that occur in this environment daily. But I was also inspired by the energy and power of our cities, and the humor inherent in their conflicts. I feel that the saxophone is particularly well suited to express the variety of emotions required for this idea, because it can be not only highly personal and poignant in character but also powerful and commanding. It can howl like a banshee or purr like a kitten. In short, the saxophone is perhaps more like the human voice than any other instrument. In my mind I heard four saxophones singing like a vocal quartet, a music that was liturgical in nature but with a bluesy overtone, a kind of “after hours” requiem.  

Biographies

Student Saxophone Quartet

Nicholas Franks, soprano saxophone, is a senior studying music education at the University of Washington School of Music and a Drum Major of the 250-member Husky Marching Band. He is currently completing his student teaching at Islander Middle School and Mercer Island High School. Nick studies the saxophone with Michael Brockman and has been involved with various campus organizations such as Kappa Kappa Psi, Society for Music Educators, UW Stage Notes, and the saxophone studio quartet.

Ashley Grinstead, alto saxophone, is completing her final year at the University of Washington and will graduate with her bachelor’s and departmental honors in Chemical Engineering as well as a minor in mathematics. Her last year has included playing alto saxophone in the UW wind ensemble, working at the boba shop “Don’t Yell at Me”, and doing undergraduate research to engineer fungi’s abilities to break down plastics.  

Alexander Yuan, tenor saxophone, is a first-year at the University of Washington from New Jersey and is pursuing a degree in computer science. He originally played alto saxophone and was first chair in both his regional and all state band. He also participated in his high school's jazz and marching bands. He has since transitioned to playing the tenor saxophone after joining the wind ensemble.

Katie Zundel, baritone saxophone, is a second-year honors student at the University of Washington from Whidbey Island. She is pursuing dual degrees in saxophone performance and mathematics. Her accomplishments include winning first prize at the University of Washington Concerto competition in 2023, being awarded the Interdisciplinary Honors Undergraduate Scholar Award in 2021, and being awarded several music scholarships.