UTAH VALLEY UNIVERSITY
SYMPHONY
“TRAVELER”
UVU WIND SYMPHONY
Dr. Christopher Ramos, Director
WOODS CROSS HIGH SCHOOL WIND ENSEMBLE
Mr. Todd Campbell, Director
October 1, 2025
7:00 p.m.
Concert Hall
CONDUCTOR’S STATEMENT
I wrote this before the awful events on our campus on September 10. The students overwhelmingly wished to move ahead with this concert, especially considering our original theme. Following is that meditation. If at any point tonight you feel you need to step away from the concert and take a break, please feel free to do so. Our music tonight is our gift to you and each other to band together and make a joyful noise even as we grieve.
There are seasons in life when we find ourselves standing at an edge—the twilight where light and darkness mingle—trying to decide whether to plant our feet or to step. These in - between places have their own atmospheres: the air tastes a bit like memory and a bit like morning, and the heart feels both very young and very old. Tonight’s music inhabits those liminal thresholds and asks how we move through them together. Our poster bears the image of The Fool, the archetypal traveler of the tarot, smiling into the sun at the very lip of a cliff, a small dog nipping at his heels, a white rose in his hand—a figure of zero, of beginnings, of radiant unknowing. The Fool’s rose signals innocence, the loyal dog both companionship and warning, and the brink itself the necessary risk of any real journey. Our Fool also wears a Schellenkappe—a cap with bells—whose sound announces the truth - telling jester, the playful one allowed to speak plainly in serious rooms.
David Maslanka’s Traveler opens not as a farewell but as a stride. He framed the piece around Bach’s chorale, “Nicht so traurig, nicht so sehr” (“Not so sad, not so much”), and wrote of feeling not an ending, but a gathering of what has been and a projection into what might yet be. Midway, the energy settles into a stillness—battles mostly fought, the soul pausing before its next step. Maslanka’s own program note holds a line I carry with me: “In our hearts, our minds, our souls / we travel from life to life to life.” That is liminality put to song. And if you listen closely, you’ll hear an actual shimmer of bells in this middle section—a small, literal Schellenkappe glinting at the music’s edge.
Shuying Li’s In This Breath lives at a quieter threshold—the place where one inhalation meets the next, and where grief is transfigured into continuity. In her note, Li recalls Thích Nhất Hạnh’s image of the cloud that does not die but becomes rain and river: the insight that life is continuation, not disappearance. The piece was written in the wake of her partner’s passing, and you can feel how the music holds sorrow and gratitude in the same hand—how it invites us to be present enough that our breath becomes a practice of remembrance. In this frame, the Fool’s “beginner’s mind” is not naïveté but courage: the willingness to meet each moment as new.
Lindsay Bronnenkant’s Tarot is a three - movement suite—The Fool, The King of Cups, The Tower—that walks right into our theme and lights it from different angles. In The Fool, the music leaps with intentional comedy and a bit of “beginner’s luck,” sometimes skating perilously close to chaos (those whole - tone gusts feel like the ground tilting), yet landing, somehow, on its feet. The King of Cups turns toward empathy and water’s depth—head and heart carefully balanced. And then The Tower arrives like a necessary storm: façades crumble, structures fail, and a harsher kind of illumination flashes. Bronnenkant traces a lineage back to Holst’s The Planets and his raga - inflected pitch worlds, reimagining those colors for a different kind of divination. The result is a journey through innocence, compassion, and rupture—the Fool’s path writ large.
If there is a single image that threads these works together for me, it is the little bell cap—the permission to wonder aloud. The Schellenkappe reminds me that play and seriousness are not opposites; they are companions that help us cross thresholds with both humility and joy. Tonight, may you hear the bells at the cliff’s lip, feel the grass under your boot- soles, and find yourself encouraged to step— together—with awe.
Scan to read full Conductor’s Statement.
PROGRAM
Woods Cross High School Wind Ensemble (30 minutes)
Mr. Todd Campbell, Conductor
Celebration Fanfare (2023) Pinkzebra
Second Suite in F, Op. 28, No. 2 (1911/1922)
I. March
II. Song without Words, “I’ll love my love”
III. Song of the Blacksmith
IV. Fantasia on the “Dargason”
Intermission (15 minutes)
Gustav Holst (1874-1934)
UVU Wind Symphony (60 minutes)
Dr. Christopher Ramos, Conductor
Traveler (2003)
In This Breath (2025)
Consortium Premiere
Tarot (2021/22)
I. The Fool
II. The King of Cups
III. The Tower
Utah Premiere
David Maslanka (1943-2017)
Shuying Li (b. 1989)
Lindsay Bronnenkant (b. 1988)
Flute
Jessica Allen
Cami Bartholemew
Jenifer Swanson*
Ashley Toomey
Oboe
Luca de la Florin
Emily Adams
Bassoon
Eric Christensen*
Joshua Magnusson
Clarinet
Adrian Blanco
Hannah Brown
Kaydence Butler
John Gates
Conner Hodson
Julia McHenry
Jeffrey Rawlings*
Alec Russell
Robyn Ward
Kathleen Williams
UVU Wind Symphony
Dr. Christopher Ramos, Conductor
Saxophone
Gideon Baker, Tenor
Addie Hogan, Alto
Ruth Payne, Bari
Logan Stanford, Alto*
Trumpet
Arye Arteaga
Brandon Ard
Katherine Goehring
Connor Perkins
Hugo Thompson*
Jordon Toomey
Horn
Steven Dulger*
Cora Jackson
Sean Knowlton
Andrew Williams
Trombone
Michael Ferrier*
Steven Gravley
Jay Henrie, Bass
Mackay Hill
William Whitehead
Euphonium
Abdallah Elhaddi
Gabriel Nelson
* denotes section principal
Tuba
Sam Hikida
Alex Jensen
Jarom Lewis*
Giovanni Ochoa
Percussion
Jordan Bushman
Carter Cox
Liesel Coxson
James Hatch*
Geovanni Thomas
Alex Stone
Nick Walker
String Bass
AJ Peery
Piano
Anna Peterson
Harp
Travis Lunt
Ensemble Manager
Tess Petersen
Piccolo
Leah Keyes
Flute
Maggie Bradford
Charlie Bradshaw
Isabelle Clark
Ethan Deguenon
Usiel Martinez
Macie Green
Ellie Hogan
Leah Keyes
Bridget Moulton
Ainsley Reese
Olivia Wheeler
Oboe
Andrew Kambalov
Bassoon
Lyric Utrilla
Clarinet
Bella Badauka
Danny Bennion
Jill Evans
Kenia Fitz
Emma Lavender
Jack Manning
Yey Mendez
Marli Salter
Alison Van Lent
Woods Cross High School Wind Ensemble
Mr. Todd Campbell, Director
Bass Clarinet
Rachel Allen
Aida Steed
Alto Saxophone
Sophia Garaycochea
Tim Johnson
Izzie Thomas
Tenor Saxophone
Santiago Mancilla
Noah Telford
Baritone Saxophone
Amelia McChesney
Trumpet
Max Chi-Tovar
Darryl Dempsey
Max Holdstock
Carter Jacobs
Daniel Messina
Simon Miller
David Perez
Makay Richards
Evan Taylor
French Horn
Jesse Hall
Sophie Pollard
Carson Strong
Ben Whitehead
Trombone
Tyson Adams
Will Campbell
Oliver De Vries
Rachel Gibson
Benson Hamblin
Malaki Olsen
Halle Tucker
Euphonium
Alex Arteaga
Taylor Jensen
Brayden Larsen
Gianna Lavanway
Tuba
Davis Boyle
Hunter Love
Joe Ruganis
Percussion
Henry Campbell
Lilly Evans
Nathan Gridley
McKenna Howes
Makini Ita’Aehau
Charlie Jensen
Taiden Palmer