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Bolles Symphonic Band to Perform with First Coast Wind Ensemble
The First Coast Wind Ensemble will join with The Bolles School Symphonic Band, Don Zentz, conductor, to present a concert titled Band Together on Tuesday, October 21, at 7:30 p.m. in Parker Auditorium on the Bolles Middle School Bartram Campus. The concert is free and open to the public.
The First Coast Wind Ensemble, performing selections under the title Old, New, Borrowed, Blue will include exciting works written for an array of wind and percussion instruments. The old song “Pastime With Good Company,” written by sixteenth-century English king Henry VIII, is borrowed by current British composer Philip Sparke to create a delightful and varied setting of this well-known tune.
British composer Adam Gorb’s whimsical “Eine Kleine Yiddishe Ragmusik”, is a brilliant synthesis of Scott Joplin ragtime with Jewish folk song. The effect is haunting and evocative of 1930’s Berlin. New music on the program includes Sean O’Loughlin’s brand new composition “Burst”, a fresh and energetic piece for wind band, and local composer and conductor Dr. Dale Blackwell’s “Florida Times-Union March”, written as part of a long tradition of marches that celebrate American newspapers.
American composer Frank Ticheli provides the blue element for the concert – a high-spirited work titled “Blue Shades”. This popular composition has received hundreds of performances worldwide over the past decade. It incorporates elements of jazz and blues in a concert work, including a tribute to the Big Band era, with a Benny Goodman style clarinet solo and wailing brass chords recalling train whistle effects of the period.
The 60-member First Coast Wind Ensemble, a community music organization led by conductors Dale Blackwell and Artie Clifton, is now in its 19th season. The ensemble is a member of the Cultural Council of Jacksonville. More information about the group is available at www.fcwe.org
The Bolles School Symphonic Band is a curricular-based, performing ensemble within the Department of Fine and Performing Arts. The band has entered its sixth year under the direction of Zentz, who serves in the administrative capacity of Director of Fine and Performing at Arts at Bolles. Over the past five years, the band has more than doubled in size and is now a fully instrumented ensemble. The band president is Andy O’Hare and the vice president is Alicia Bishop.
The Bolles Symphonic Band will open the Band Together concert with a set of four selections. John Moss’ “Fanfare and Evocation” is a work that came out in 2002 as a commission dedicated to the memory of a band student who passed away in Mississippi. The piece covers the full gamut of emotions associated with such a commemoration, including an extremely lyrical slow section that recurs around a spirited and triumphant allegro.
“The Liberty Bell” is one of John Philip Sousa’s most popular and famous marches, second only to the “Stars and Stripes Forever”. Written in 1893, it came between Sousa’s tenure as director of the United States Marine Band and forming his own musical organization. The piece was originally part of a commission deal that failed financially. Sousa’s son had just marched in his first parade in Philadelphia that marked the return of the liberty bell tour in the United States. So inspired, part of the music for the failed commission became known as “The Liberty Bell” march and was sold to another firm, soon becoming the first composition to bring Sousa substantial financial reward. During the famous Sousa Band tours that followed, “The Liberty Bell” was always first performed on Independence Day, July 4.
Contemporary band composer Samuel R. Hazo penned a beautiful piece this year entitled Minnesota Portraits. The opening movement of this larger work is “Hennepin County Dawn”. This highly expressive musical essay captures the essence of nature at dawn. One can sense the bare innocence and wonderment of a new day’s birth, and how God’s creatures come to life. Hazo’s piece is refreshing and magically founded on the beauty of simplicity.
“Allegro Barbaro” is an early piano piece composed by Bela Bartok in 1911. Full of fury and fun, band arranger Tom Wallace created a transcription for symphonic band in 1995 that has become a favorite of many honor bands across the land. The pace of the piece is reminiscent of Russian composer Khachaturian, but Bartok came first!