11.16.23 Crane Symphonic Band

Evening Concert Series Helen H. Hosmer Concert Hall

2023 – 2024 Season Thursday, November 16th at 7:30 PM

The Crane Symphonic Band Brian K. Doyle, conductor

Astra (2023)

Katahj Copley (b. 1998)

Keepers of the House (2022) I. II.

Connie Ellisor (b. 1953)

Variants on a Medieval Tune (c.1723) Introduction and Theme Variation I: Allegro deciso Variation II: Lento, pesante Variation III: Allegro spumante Variation IV: Andante Variation V: Allegro Giocoso Intermission

Norman Dello Joio (1913-2008)

Cape Breton Postcard (2005) The Dawn The Mist The Thunder

Catherine McMichael (b. 1954)

Riften Wed (2013)

Julie Giroux (b. 1961)

Angels in the Architecture (2009)

Frank Ticheli (b. 1958)

Catherine Boyd, soprano

PERSONNEL Piccolo Rosalind Hoffman Flute Margo Neth * Maxwell Todack Sofia Perez Hannah Goldstein Zoey Steele Catharine Chapman Oboe Amara Leitner Mariana Morales Bassoon Melissa Mitchell Matthew Ekrich E-flat Clarinet Katie Pullaro Clarinet Ashley Colucci * Jessica Schaller Katie Pullaro Brianna Nickson Tommy Rock Matthew Lannigan Natalie Navis Charli Deixler Shannon Frank Sarah Jones Bass Clarinets Jessica LaRocca Diamond Rosario

Alto Saxophone Bethany Pursifull * Kevin Malone Megan Henry Ryan Dunia Daijah Velez

Horn Kwamell Kelly Haley Sullivan Moriah Clendenin Noah Garland Natalie Hartmann

Tenor Saxophone Emily Wehrle

Trombone Brandon Campbell * Wyatt Moore

Baritone Saxophone Tommy Castellon Trumpet Virginia Bednarski * Brian McNamara * Daniel Maldonado Lila Wieclaw Gianna Voskinarian Jacob Hathaway Jay-Era Johnson Julia Avdoulos Simon Lindmark Adam Shiefer Carter Sterner Isaac Aviles Taylor Finch Joshua Rivera

Bass Trombone Samir Ghalayini Euphonium Zachary Phipps * Aiden Timko Austin Pelissier Tuba Seth Clancey * Mason Wiedeman Skylar Wood Gia Boolukos Percussion Vatressa Teamoh * Jared Emmerson Brandon Phelps Matthew Puhlman Sasha Truax Wyatt Calcote Piano Luke Jandreau Librarians Ashley Colucci Kayla Outman * Section Principal

PROGRAM NOTES Astra

Katahj Copley

Astra is a fanfare for wind band that explores the concept of freedom and adventure through the lens of star trail photography. Star trails are created by using long exposure times to capture the apparent motion of stars in the night sky due to Earth's rotation, resulting in streaks of light that form arcs across the image. Astra captures the energy and wonder of this natural phenomenon through its vibrant melodies, driving rhythms, and colorful textures.

The piece is divided into three sections, with the middle section featuring a soaring trumpet and tenor saxophone melody that evokes the majesty of the stars. The final section is characterized by intricate percussion ostinatos that build in intensity, representing the constant motion and evolution of the universe.

Astra is a celebration of the beauty and mystery of the cosmos, and an invitation to embark on a journey of discovery and exploration. With its dynamic rhythms, soaring melodies, and intricate textures, it invites listeners to join in the adventure and explore the infinite possibilities of the night sky Program Note by Katahj Copley

Keepers of the House

Conni Ellisor

I am intrigued by the relatively new data that all trees are interconnected; that indeed they communicate, send energy to each other, and care for each other. The evidence is overwhelming that all of our forests are alive and communicating, that the “magical trees’ we dreamed about as children are real. And I wonder what that means for us. I find it unlikely that we are the exception, but more probably we’ve just lost the innate intuition that we are also part of the vast interwoven web of life.

Variants on a Medieval Tune

Norman Dello Joio

The distinguished musical career of Norman Dello Joio began for him at age fourteen when he became a church organist and choir director of the Star of the Sea Church on City Island, New York. A descendant of Italian church organists, his father was an organist, pianist, singer, and vocal coach. Dello Joio recalls his father working with singers from the Metropolitan Opera, arriving at their home in Rolls Royces. At the age of four, Dello Joio’s father began teaching him piano, and in his teens, he began studying organ with his godfather, Pietro Yon, organist at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. In 1939, he was accepted as a scholarship student at the Juilliard School and studied composition with Bernard Wagenaar.

As a graduate student at Juilliard and while he was organist at St. Anne’s Church in New York, he arrived at the conclusion that he did not want to spend his life in a church choir loft, as composition began enveloping all his interest. In 1941, he commenced studies with Paul Hindemith, the man who profoundly influenced his compositional style. It was Hindemith who told Dello Joio, "your music is lyrical by nature, don’t ever forget that."

By the late forties, Dello Joio commanded significant acclaim as one of America’s leading composers, and by the fifties had garnered international stature. Awards and grants received include the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Award, the Town Hall Composition Award, two Guggenheim Fellowships, and a grant from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He won the New York Music Critics’ Circle Award in 1948, and again in 1962. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1957 for Meditations on Ecclesiastes for string orchestra, and an Emmy Award for his music in the television special Scenes from the Louvre. In 1958, CBS featured him in a one-hour television special, Profile of a Composer.

The Mary Duke Biddle Foundation commissioned Dello Joio’s first wind band piece, Variants on a Medieval Tune, for the Duke University Wind Ensemble and Paul Bryan, its conductor. The work received its premiere performance on 10 April 1963. The medieval tune is “In dulci jubilo,” an early 14 th century work attributed to Heinrich Seuse – a German mystic who, according to legend, heard Angels singing this tune and joined them in a dance of worship. Dello Joio’s set of variations begins with a brief introduction, the theme, and then five variants contrasting in tempo and character. These metamorphoses utilize the sonic possibilities of the wind band to the highest degree.

Cape Breton Postcard

Catherine McMichael

What is it about Cape Breton? What makes the people so strong and their music so keen? In 1497 the first Europeans led by the famed explorer John Cabot arrived on Cape Breton, which is now part of Nova Scotia, Canada. Cabot's discovery of the island led to its gradual settlement by Scots, Irish, French and English. The mid-1700s brought major changes to Scotland with the end of the Highland Clan System. Contemplating a grim future in their homeland, many Scots left for new opportunity in Cape Breton. Cape Breton has since become a stronghold of Gaelic culture, some say more deeply Scottish than Scotland. This fierce blend of daring, edgy courage, pathos and energy has become distilled to a fine, strong spirit in the music played by Bretonians from then until now.

Music from Cape Breton is Celtic times twenty!

The three movements of Cape Breton Postcard are meant to portray the integral bond between the land and the soul: The Dawn, The Mist and The Thunder are all intrinsic to the Cape Breton environment. The Mist is derived from a melody for solo fiddle called Arisaig Mist by Wilfred Gillis, a Canadian composer, and used by permission of Cranford Publications of Cape Breton Island. That haunting melody was the starting point for the concept of the entire piece. All other melodies are original to this work but inspired by much listening to music from Cape Breton.

Cape Breton Postcard was commissioned by the Hill Country Middle School Bands in Austin, Texas, Cheryl Floyd and Chuck Fisher, directors. The commission was funded by the Baylor University School of Music, Dr. Kevin Sedatole, conductor, and the Stevenson family. The piece was premiered by the Hill Country Middle School Band on May 24, 2005, at the Westlake High School Auditorium with the composer present.

Program Note by Catherine McMichael

Riften Wed

Julie Giroux

Riften is a city in Skyrim located in the expansive world of Elder Scrolls, the fifth installment of an action roleplaying video game saga developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks. Skyrim is an open world game that by any video game standard is geographically massive and more closely related to an online mmorpg (massive multiplayer online role-playing game) then to its console and pc competition.

Skyrim is a beautiful world from mountainous snowy regions to open tundra plains, sea coasts, beaches, thick woods, lakes and hot spring fed swamps. Large cities, villages, forts, ancient ruins, caves, lone houses, sawmills and abandoned shacks dot the atlas. One can spend hours just walking or riding horseback from one side of the continent to the other doing nothing but experiencing its wondrous environment and lore. It is truly a game worthy of total immersion. Oh, and I should mention that it is also a deadly world, torn apart by civil war and dragons who have resurfaced after thousands of years, not to mention the cult of vampires that are also threatening to take over the world.

Riften is a seedy, crime filled and nearly lawless city. Located on a waterfront with skooma addicted dock workers and corrupt guards, it also boasts the headquarters of the Thieve's Guild. Sadly enough, it is also the location for the worlds orphanage and the Temple of Mara, the place where the good citizens of Skyrim have to go to get married, yourself included.

Weddings in Skyrim are about survival as much as fondness or imagined love. Courtship can be as simple a dialogue as "Are you interested in me? Why yes, are you interested in me? Yes. It's settled then." Sometimes the dialogue is more along the lines of "You are smart and strong. I would be lucky to have you. I would walk the path of life beside you 'til the end of time if you will have me."

Although this game feels somewhat like the iron age with magic and dragons, it has a progressive, flourishing society. Bi-racial and/or same sex marriages are a ho-hum norm, a concept our own world fails to achieve.

In Skyrim, if so desired, your spouse can and will fight beside you. They will die for you or with you. For most of them, that death is permanent. You cannot remarry (not without cheating anyway). What was, is over and there will be no other. Being the hopeless romantic that I am, I found the whole situation intriguing and heart wrenching especially if related or injected into real world circumstance. In one instance while playing the game, I emerged from the chapel with my brand-new husband only to have him killed later that evening in a vicious full on vampire attack right outside the temple. (Hey! No fair! I knew I should have married a warrior and not a merchant. I restarted the game.) Skyrim weddings are happening in the middle of a world full of violence, disease, war and death. Something Earth is all too familiar with.

Riften Wed is the music for loves and unions, past and present such as this. A love, a wedding, a lifetime shared by two people in the middle of a storm that threatens to tear them apart. Where "'til death do us part" is not only a reality, it's a given. Where love is a gift worthy of all the joy and pain it demands.

One life, one love, one ending.

This music is for those that are truly Riften Wed. Note by Julie Giroux

Angels in the Architecture

Frank Ticheli

Angels in the Architecture was commissioned by Kingsway International and received its premiere performance at the Sydney Opera House on July 6, 2008, by a massed band of young musicians from Australia and the United States, conducted by Matthew George. The work unfolds as a dramatic conflict between the two extremes of human existence–one divine, the other evil.

The work’s title is inspired by the Sydney Opera House itself, with its halo-shaped acoustical ornaments hanging directly above the performance stage.

Angels in the Architecture begins with a single voice singing a 19th-century Shaker song: I am an angel of Light I have soared from above I am cloth’d with Mother’s love.

I have come, I have come, To protect my chosen band And lead them to the promised land.

This “angel”–represented by the singer–frames the work, surrounding it with a protective wall of light and establishing the divine.

Other representations of light–played by instruments rather than sung–include a traditional Hebrew song of peace (“Hevenu Shalom Aleicham”) and the well-known 16th-century Genevan Psalter, “Old Hundredth.” These three borrowed songs, despite their varied religious origins, are meant to transcend any one religion, representing the more universal human ideals of peace, hope, and love. An original chorale, appearing twice in the work, represents my own personal expression of these aspirations.

In opposition, turbulent, fast-paced music appears as a symbol of darkness, death, and spiritual doubt. Twice during the musical drama, these shadows sneak in almost unnoticeably, slowly obscuring, and eventually obliterating the light altogether. The darkness prevails for long stretches of time, but the light always returns, inextinguishable, more powerful than before. The alternation of these opposing forces creates, in effect, a kind of five-part rondo form (light–darkness–light–darkness–light).

Just as Charles Ives did more than century ago, Angels in the Architecture poses the unanswered question of existence. It ends as it began: the angel reappears singing the same comforting words. But deep below, a final shadow reappears–distantly, ominously.

Note by Frank Ticheli