THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY College of Music presents
University Wind Ensemble
Patrick Dunnigan, Director Keith Griffis, Graduate Associate Conductor Caleb Miller, Graduate Associate Conductor
Wednesday, October 7, 2026 7:30 p.m. | Ruby Diamond Concert Hall
To Ensure An Enjoyable Concert Experience For All… Please refrain from talking, entering, or exiting during performances. Food and drink are prohibited in all concert halls. Recording or broadcasting of the concert by any means, including the use of digital cameras, cell phones, or other devices is expressly forbidden. Please deactivate all portable electronic devices including watches, cell phones, pagers, hand-held gaming devices or other electronic equipment that may distract the audience or performers. Recording Notice: This performance may be recorded. Please note that members of the audience may at times be included in this process. By attending this performance you consent to have your image or likeness appear in any live or recorded video or other transmission or reproduction made in conjunction to the performance. Florida State University provides accommodations for persons with disabilities. Please notify the College of Music at (850) 644-3424 at least five working days prior to a musical event to request accommodation for disability or alternative program format.
PROGRAM La Procession du Rocio (1912)
Caleb Miller, graduate associate conductor
Joaquin Turina (1882–1949) tr. Reed 9:00
Against the Rain (2014)
Roshanne Etezady (b. 1973) 4:30
George Washington Bridge (1950)
William Schuman (1910–1992) 8:30
Keith Griffis, graduate associate conductor
Tulsa (1957)
Don Gillis (1912–1978 ) tr. Maurice Ford 10:00 INTERMISSION
Feierlicher Einzug (1909)
Richard Strauss (1864–1949) 7:00
The Good Soldier Schweik Suite, Op. 22 (1956)
Robert Kurka (1921–1957) 20:00
Fantasy Variations on a Theme by Niccolo Paganini (1988)
James Barnes (b. 1949) 16:00
NOTES ON THE PROGRAM Turina: La Procession du Rocio Joaquín Turina was born in Seville, Spain, on December 9, 1882, a year that also saw the birth of notable artists Béla Bartók, Percy Grainger, Pablo Picasso, Igor Stravinsky, and Anton Webern. Turina began his musical studies in Madrid with José Trago, who also taught his friend Manuel de Falla, before moving to Paris in 1905 to study with Vincent d’Indy. He benefited from d’Indy’s demanding training and remained in Paris until 1914. Turina was a marvelous pianist and an excellent conductor who was Diaghilev’s choice to lead the Russian ballets performed in Spain. He also wrote a two-volume musical encyclopedia and a treatise on composition, prior to his appointment as a distinguished professor of composition at the Conservatory of Madrid in 1931. The tone poem La procesión del Rocío was first performed on March 30, 1913 in Madrid, and repeated shortly thereafter in Paris. Although a single movement composition, the work is divided into two distinct two sections labeled Triana en fiestas (Triana in festival) and La procesión. The opening section depicts the various religious and popular celebrations that precede the procession honoring the Virgen del Rocío (Virgin of the Dew, also known as Nuestra Señora del Rocío). This pilgrimage is still held annually during Pentecost. It begins in Seville (Triana is a neighborhood within the city) and ends at a hermitage in the coastal town of Rocío, near Huelva. Over the course of six days, thousands of pilgrims make their way over fifty miles of fields to the sea. These pilgrims, mostly seated in farming carts or walking, escort the statue of the Virgin of the Dew. In the evenings, campfires are lit and music fills the air. Flamenco dancing, singing, and clapping are integral to the celebration, known as a Romería. Turina’s composition conveys the religiosity of the procession, as well as the vital popular spirit of the nightly entertainment. – Prof. Lousie K. Stein, University of Michigan Etezady: Against the Rain The following excerpt is pulled directly from Etezady’s personally written program notes: Against the Rain is based on a choral work I wrote as a part of a set of songs based on poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink And rise and sink and rise and sink again; Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; Yet many a man is making friends with death Even as I speak, for lack of love alone. It well may be that in a difficult hour, Pinned down by pain and moaning for release, Or nagged by want past resolution’s power, I might be driven to sell your love for peace, Or trade the memory of this night for food. It well may be. I do not think I would.
Roshanne Etezady (b. 1973) is an American composer and educator from Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. In her upbringing, she was musically inspired by the works of composer and lyricist, Stephen Sondhein, particularly in his contributions to the American musical theater canon, as well as the popular musics of the 1980s. The single most pivotal formative moment in her young life recounts watching composer Philip Glass and his ensemble guest perform on Saturday Night Live, which marked her interest in contemporary classical music and composition as a serious study. Etezady holds degrees from Northwestern and Yale Universities, crossing paths with notable compositional mentors including William Bolcom and Michael Daugherty. Etezady’s compositions have won her fellowships with prestigious music organizations such as Aspen Music Festival, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and recognitions from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Etezady currently works as a Professor of Composition at the University of Michigan, her alma mater (DMA, 2005). Schuman: George Washington Bridge William Schuman (1910–1992) was an iconic, prolific American composer and the first to win a Pulitzer Prize in musical composition. Throughout his illustrious career, he held many positions, including director of publications for Schirmer, Inc., president of The Juilliard School, and was the first president of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Subtitled “An Impression for Band,” George Washington Bridge was composed in 1950 and premiered by the Michigan All-State Band at Interlochen. Inspired by his daily commute along New York’s Henry Hudson Parkway, the work reflects Schuman’s fascination with the bridge’s seemingly shifting personality across different times, traffic, and light. About the piece, Schuman wrote: There are few days in the year when I do not see George Washington Bridge. I pass it on my way to work as I drive along the Henry Hudson Parkway on the New York shore. Ever since my student days when I watched the progress of its construction, this bridge has had for me an almost human personality, and this personality is astonishingly varied, assuming different moods depending on the time of day or night, the weather, the traffic and, of course, my own mood as I pass by. I have walked across it late at night when it was shrouded in fog, and during the brilliant sunshine hours of midday. I have driven over it countless times and passed under it on boats. Coming to New York City by air, sometimes I have been lucky enough to fly right over it. It is difficult to imagine a more gracious welcome or dramatic entry to the great metropolis. Gillis: Tulsa Don Gillis (1912–1978) was an American composer, conductor, and radio producer. Born in Missouri and raised in Texas, Gillis earned music degrees from Texas Christian University and North Texas State Teachers College as a trombonist. Gillis had a prolific career in radio production, which led him to become a producer for the NBC Symphony Orchestra under Arturo Toscanini. As a composer, Gillis has more than 150 works credited to him, including his famous Symphony No. 5½ “A Symphony for Fun,” which was also later transcribed for band by Maurice Ford.
The First National Bank and Trust Co. of Tulsa, Oklahoma, commissioned Tulsa in 1950 for the Tulsa Philharmonic Orchestra. Of the piece, Gillis writes Tulsa is a symphonic poem in four sections, the first of which is a pastoral movement depicting the land before the settling of the white man. This moves without pause into a rather violent struggle for possession of the land. This struggle, filled with the energy and passion of frontier civilization, ends in victory as the land is transformed from wilderness to homestead and thence to a modern city. The third movement attempts to ‘bring in’ an oil well and is graphic in its portrayal of the violence of a ‘gusher.’ The final section is a celebration in which the whole population joins in a shirttail parade and square dance in the street. Strauss: Feierlicher Einzug Richard Strauss (1864–1949) was one of the most iconic figures of the late German Romantic era. The son of hornist and composer Johann Strauss, Richard Strauss was a prolific orchestral composer and conductor, renowned for his tone poems and operas. His most famous and recognizable works include Don Juan, Till Eulenspiegel, and Also sprach Zarathustra. Excerpted from Feierlicher Einzug der Ritter des Johanniter-Ordens, which translates to mean “Fanfare for the Solemn Procession of the Knights of the Order of St. John”, Feierlicher Einzug is one of Strauss’s original compositions for brass ensemble. The original scoring includes parts for 15 trumpets, 4 horns, 4 trombones, 2 tubas, and timpani, and was later transcribed for orchestra. Feierlicher Einzug exemplifies Strauss’ lifelong admiration for brass instruments and his commanding, dramatic flair as a composer. Kurka: The Good Soldier Schweik Suite Robert Kurka (1921–1957) was an American composer who left an enduring legacy in mid-century American classical music during his short lifetime. Born in Illinois to Czech immigrants, Kurka began studying music as a violinist, earned a master’s degree from Columbia in 1948, and then taught at various colleges. Though he claimed to be largely self-taught in composition, he briefly studied under composers Otto Luening and Darius Milhaud. Kurka very quickly earned widespread esteem as a composer, securing prestigious recognitions such as the George Gershwin Memorial Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a grant from the National Institute of Arts and Letters. Kurka led an impressively prolific career as a composer in his tragically shortened life, passing away just before his 36th birthday. The Good Soldier Schweik Suite, Op. 22, was composed in 1956. Notably, Kurka premiered a preliminary version of the suite in 1952, which he later expanded into the opera that would become his most successful work. Scored for 14 winds with timpani and percussion, the suite draws on the anti-war satire The Good Soldier Schweik and His Fortunes in the World War, written by Czech novelist Jaroslav Hašek after World War I. Each of the six movements captures the Austro-Hungarian Empire through the eyes of Schweik, an innocent, good-natured man forced to become a soldier in the war and fight for a cause in which he does not believe.
Barnes: Fantasy Variations on a Theme by Niccolo Paganini Fantasy Variations on a Theme by Niccolo Paganini (1988) was commissioned by Colonel John R. Bourgeois, the 25th Director of the United States Marine Band, for the ensemble. Premiered at the Music Educators National Conference (MENC) in 1988, the work contains twenty variations based on the theme of Paganini’s 24th Caprice in A Minor (for solo violin) in which showcases every major section of the symphonic band. The following excerpt pulls directly from Barnes personal program notes on the piece: I decided that, like Johannes Brahms and Sergei Rachmaninoff, I would stay with the basic harmonic progression that Paganini used. The reason I wrote the piece in A minor is because Paganini’s Caprice (which is itself a set of nine virtuosic variations) is in A minor. I did this out of respect for the composer’s original intentions. My overall concept was to use the variation technique to showcase every solo instrument and/or every instrumental section of the modern wind band. In doing so, it was my intent to give the Marine Band a work they could play almost anywhere for almost any kind of audience: a piece full of energy, drama, and even a little humor. Composer James Barnes (b. 1949) maintains an impressive catalogue of musical contributions to the wind band medium. His many publications for wind bands and orchestra have warranted performances at musical venues stretching from Tanglewood to Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. and beyond. A native of Hobart, Oklahoma, Barnes studied composition and music theory at the University of Kansas, earning both bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the institution, of which he enjoyed a 27-year tenure teaching orchestration, arranging and composition, wind band history and repertoire, and served as both assistant and associate Director of Bands. Barnes has twice been a recipient of the American Bandmasters Association Ostwald Award for outstanding contemporary wind band music, among many other distinguished compositional recognitions. Barnes is in constant demand as a guest composer, conductor, and lecturer throughout the United States, Europe, Australia, Japan, and Taiwan.
University Wind Ensemble Personnel Patrick Dunnigan, Director Keith Griffis and Caleb Miller, Graduate Associate Conductors Piccolo Krista Zimmerman
Bass Clarinet Caron Braggs
Flute Matthieu North* Sophie Palm Avery McConnell Sofia Velez-Santiago
Saxophone Caleb Wolf, alto* Parker Button, alto Luis Angel, tenor JJ Kutudis, baritone
Oboe Haley O’Niell* Kyle Nishihori (+ Eh) Jackson Makowske Eva Helbock
Trumpet/Cornet Tyler Bennett* Nathan Reid* Angelo Del Oro Kate Moncada Alisyn Jones Katherine Brinkman
Bassoon Hunter Fisher* Marcus Palermo Robin Moussier Sophia Clement (+ Contra) Clarinet Joseph Eckhart* Eric Olmsted* Daniel Burrow Mia Guerrero Nate Odom Nathan Edwards Nia Thompson Abby Varnadoe Natalia Morales
Horn David Pinero* Emma Brockman* Aiden Curry Kaia Pinney Wesley Vaden
Trombone Mateo Buitrago* Daniel Munnisi Jacob Zussy Shane O’Sullivan, bass Euphonium Brendan Dominique* Kris Stottlemire Tuba Connor Kelley* Theodore Marvel Braden Meyer String Bass Annabelle Cutshaw Harp Amber Harris Percussion Ian Guarraia* Will McCoy Jessica Weinberg Ethan Turner Drew Jungslager Alex Aquino Gabby Overholt Sami Smith
* Principal/Co-Principal