San Jose Wind Symphony

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Program Notes

Sunday, March 28, 2010, 3:00 PM

"THE BEAT GOES ON"
McAfee Center, Saratoga

Dr. Edward C. Harris, conductor
Galen Lemmon, percussion

American Salute

Morton Gould (1913–1996)

Born in New York, Gould was recognized early as a child prodigy with the ability to improvise and compose. He began to play the piano when he was four years old, and at the age of six he had his first composition published. He studied at the Institute of Musical Art (now The Juilliard School). When Radio City Music Hall opened, the young Gould was its staff pianist. By the age of 21 he was conducting and arranging a series of orchestral programs for WOR Mutual Radio, and he appealed to a wide-ranging audience with his combination of classical and popular programming. Gould composed Broadway scores, film music, music for television and ballet scores. Gould integrated jazz, blues, gospel, country-western and folk elements into his compositions. Gould said “Composing is my life blood…That is basically me, and although I have done many things in my life — conducting, playing piano, and so on — what is fundamental is my being a composer.”

Gould’s characteristic American sounds create a brilliant fantasy in American Salute, based on the familiar tune “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.”

A Hymn for the Lost and the Living:
In Memoriam, Sept. 11, 2001

Eric Ewazen (b. 1954)

Eric Ewazen was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and received degrees from the Eastman School of Music and The Juilliard School. He is a recipient of numerous composition awards and prizes. His works have been commissioned and performed by many soloists, chamber ensembles and orchestras in the United States and overseas. Dr. Ewazen has been lecturer for the New York Philharmonic’s Musical Encounters series, vice president of the League of Composers International Society of Contemporary Music and composer-in-residence with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s in New York City. He has been a faculty member at Juilliard since 1980.

A Hymn for the Lost and the Living was commissioned by and is dedicated to the U.S. Air Force Heritage of America Band, Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, Major Larry H. Lang, director. The composer writes: “On September 11, 2001, I was teaching my music theory class at The Juilliard School, when we were notified of the catastrophe that was occurring several miles south of us in Manhattan. Gathering around a radio in the school’s library, we heard the events unfold in shock and disbelief. Afterwards, walking up Broadway on the sun-filled day, the street was full of silent people, all quickly heading to their homes. During the next several days, our great city became a landscape of empty streets and impromptu, heartbreaking memorials mourning our lost citizens, friends and family. But then on Friday, a few days later, the city seemed to have been transformed. On this evening, walking up Broadway, I saw multitudes of people holding candles, singing songs, and gathering in front of those memorials, paying tribute to the lost, becoming a community of citizens of this city, of this country and of this world, leaning on each other for strength and support. A Hymn for the Lost and the Living portrays those painful days following September 11th, days of supreme sadness. It is intended to be a memorial for those lost souls, gone from this life, but who are forever treasured in our memories.”\.

Old Home Days: Suite for Band

Charles Ives (1874–1954), arranged by Jonathan Elkus

Charles Ives was born into a tradition of band music. His father, George, had been a respected bandmaster in the Union army during the Civil War and was a leader of numerous amateur musical groups. Charles learned to play the drums, cornet, piano, and violin and played in his father’s band at the age of 12. At 13 he composed simple marches and fiddle tunes, and he became the youngest salaried church organist in Connecticut at the age of 14. He studied at Yale, where he made barely passing grades in his subjects other than music. In 1898 he went to New York to work for the Mutual Life Insurance Company and formed a prosperous insurance business. A successful businessman by day, Ives did his composing in the evenings. He wrote only to please his sense of music and didn’t have to depend on it for a living. Ives’ Third Symphony, written in 1911 but not performed until 1946, earned the 1947 Pulitzer Prize. Ives died in 1954, leaving a legacy that anticipated most of the musical innovations of the 20th century, including atonality, polytonality, microtones, multiple cross-rhythms and tone clusters.

Jonathan Elkus provides the following notes on his arrangement of this work: “Waltz” begins and ends by quoting from Michael Nolan’s popular bowery waltz, “Little Annie Rooney.” Ives’ own verses to the song imagine Annie, now a bride, and her festive wedding party at “the old dance ground.”

“The Opera House” is the first part of the song “Memories,” and the text recalls a youngster’s breathless expectancy as the pit band strikes up the overture. Just as the curtain rises, a drum roll-off takes our thoughts outdoors again to “march along down Main Street, behind the village band,” amid the ringing of church and schoolhouse bells.

“Old Home Day” is the nostalgic title of the song from which this section is taken, and the obbligato line played during the repeat features bits and pieces of “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” “Garryowen,” and “Auld Land Syne.”

“The Collection” refers to a church offering. This setting of George Kingsley’s hymn-tune “Tappan” introduces first “The Organist,” then “The Soprano” and lastly a “Response by Village Choir.”

“Slow March,” the earliest surviving song by Ives, was composed for the funeral of a family pet. Inscribed “to the Children’s Faithful Friend,” it opens and closes with a quotation from the “Dead March” of Handel’s oratorio, Saul.

“London Bridge Is Fallen Down!” is a tonal and rhythmic take-off on the familiar tune, which we may imagine to be typical of young Ives’ unruly keyboard improvisations. This arrangement is based on Kenneth Singleton’s setting for brass quintet of Ives’ sketches for organ or piano, which date from about 1891.

American Hymnsong Suite

Dwayne S. Milburn (b. 1963)

American Hymnsong Suite was written for the Army Ground Forces Band in Fort McPherson, Georgia. The piece was premiered by Milburn’s band on September 11, 2003, in a concert commemorating the two-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. The movements of the piece are based on four well-known church hymns. “Prelude on ‘Wonderous Love’” opens the piece with a chant-like statement in the euphonium before developing throughout the rest of the ensemble. “Ballad on ‘Balm in Gilead’” features a rich jazz harmonization of this African-American spiritual. “Scherzo on ‘Nettleton’” incorporates a rhythmic playfulness and a dance-like manner. “March on ‘Wilson’” imitates a wild marching band..

Concerto for Percussion Solo and Wind Ensemble

Gary D. Ziek (b. 1960), solo percussion part edited by Scott Herring

Dr. Gary D. Ziek has served as the director of bands and professor of trumpet at Emporia State University in Kansas since 1995. He received his Doctor of Musical Arts degree in wind conducting from Michigan State University in May of 1994, graduating as a member of the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi. While attending Michigan State, he served as principal trumpet in the Wind Symphony. He received his Master of Arts in trumpet performance in 1986 and his Bachelor of Science in music education in 1981 from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Ziek served from 1982 to 1985 in the United States Army and was a member of the Continental Army Band at Fort Monroe, Virginia. Dr. Ziek enjoys performing and conducting a wide variety of music, from classical to jazz. He has performed and conducted in 25 states, as well as in France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Austria and Canada.

The Concerto for Percussion Solo and Wind Ensemble was composed in January 2001 as a showcase for the talents of percussionist Scott Herring. The concerto is in three connected movements and features the soloist on a variety of instruments, including marimba, vibraphone, bells and crotales. A large percussion battery with two snare drums, multiple toms, brake drums, and bass drum is also used.

March “The Southerner”

Russell Alexander (1877–1915), arranged by Glenn Cliffe Bainum

Russell Alexander was born in Missouri. By the age of 20, he had already written several marches and was playing with the Belford Carnival band. However, his big opportunity came when he joined Barnum & Bailey’s Greatest Show on Earth as the show’s euphonium soloist and composer-arranger. When the circus returned to America after a five-year tour of Europe, Alexander joined James Brady and his brothers in a musical vaudeville act that became extremely popular in the leading theaters of the time.

The Southerner is one of Alexander’s most popular works and features a strong introduction, interesting melodies and countermelodies, exciting modulations in the trio, and dynamic changes that lift the listener out of his seat. The dedication on the original cornet conductor part was short and sweet: “To my wife.”

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Program notes are edited by Karen Berry and excerpted from the composers’ notes, Band Notes by Norm Smith, The Pepper Music Catalog and the following sources:

Wikipedia

Foothill College Symphonic Band

J. W. Pepper

The Lonestar Wind Orchestra

Emporia State University

C. Alan Publications