YCB 4-13-18 Program

Yale Concert Band Thomas C. Duffy, Music Director Woolsey Hall, Yale University

Friday, April 13, 2018, at 7:30 pm

Gustav Holst

Mars, the Bringer of War, from “The Planets”

Gustav Holst

First Suite in E-flat for Military Band

I. Chaconne

II. Intermezzo

III. March

Thomas C. Duffy

Percy Grainger ed. Thomas C. Duffy Dana Wilson

Scalin’ and Wailin’ (premiere)

with the Fair Haven K-8 School Band

Daniel Kinsman, conductor Bell Piece

Luis Aguilar YSM ’19, tenor

with the Yale Handbell Ensemble Shakata: Singing the World Into Existence ~ INTERMISSION ~

Ryan Lindveit Jeff Midkiff trans. Thomas C. Duffy

Don’t Be Evil: Fanfare for Band (premiere)

Ryan Lindveit, conductor From the Blue Ridge

Jeff Midkiff, mandolin I. Allegro

II. Slow, Lyrical

III. Allegro: The Crooked Road

About Tonight’s Music Mars, the Bringer of War, from The Planets (1924) GUSTAV HOLST The Planets, composed for orchestra in 1915, is a suite of seven tone poems, each symbolically describing a different planet. The work has insistent odd meters of five and seven beats, thick streams of parallel triads, and an opulent instrumentation. The entire suite was first performed for a private audience in 1918 and in public, without Venus and Neptune, in 1919.

Mars, the Bringer of War was complete in the composer’s mind early in the summer of 1914, when the First World War was but an emerging threat. The work is dominated by a relentless hammering out of 5/4 rhythm that suggests the relentless destruction of war. The soli duet between the cornet amd euphonium (euphonium, traditionally a British band instrument, is also called for in the orchestral score) is also particularly poignant. Gustav Holst himself transcribed this movement for band in 1924.

First Suite in E-flat for Military Band (1909) GUSTAV HOLST Gustav Holst wrote his First Suite in E-flat for Military Band in 1909, one of the few early band originals that has been transcribed for symphony orchestra. The suite consists of three movements: Chaconne, Intermezzo, and March. The opening theme of the Chaconne is passed from the low brass through the middle brass to the upper brass, while the woodwinds weave filigrees above the “ground.”

Eventually, the filigrees give way to the actual theme, presented high in the woodwinds, thus completing the orchestral journey of the ground from the lowest to highest instruments. The Intermezzo is based on a variation of the Chaconne theme, presented first in an angular and giocoso setting, then in a cantabile style. The two settings alternate throughout the movement. The two themes of the March, one dynamic and the other lyric, are also taken from the Chaconne theme, the first being something of an inversion, the latter being “right side up.” The suite culminates in a setting of the two themes contrapuntally.

Scalin’ and Wailin’ (2018) THOMAS C. DUFFY Composed for American Composers Forum’s Bandquest Program.

Thomas C. Duffy wrote this piece for Daniel Kinsman and the Fair Haven K-8 School in Fair Haven, Connecticut. This piece is a model of diffential opportunity. It is designed to accommodate performances by players with different skill levels and make possible the best and most honest experience when lesser experienced ensembles play side by side with more experienced groups. So often the lesser experienced groups sit there and allow the most difficult parts to be carried by the more experienced ensemble. In Scalin’ and Wailin’, every part’s music has three levels of difficulty: the red part is for beginners, the white part is for more experienced players, and the blue part is for more advanced players. Tonight, the Yale Concert Band musicians will play the blue parts and their guests from the Fair Haven 7th and 8th Grade Band will play the white parts. In this piece, every player makes a unique contribution to the overall perfomance by playing a part that fits his or her level of proficiency. The piece is all based on a simple C natural minor scale and motives constructed from it.

YALE CONCERT BAND Bell Piece (1954) PERCY GRAINGER ed.Thomas C. Duffy (1990) In 1935, Percy Aldridge Grainger wrote a short piece for piano based on the 1601 John Dowland song for lute and voice, entitled Now, O now, I needs must part. In 1949, based on his former piano arrangement, he began to sketch the score of a wind band and tuneful percussion composition entitled Bell Piece. In 1951, he added a section to the end of Bell Piece which he called Tail Piece to Bell Piece. Between 1951 and 1953, he made three rescorings of each section and the whole piece. There are two programs which indicate that Grainger performed each section at least once, the first in Hollywood, Florida, in 1949; the second in Oberlin, Ohio, in 1953. Through the good graces of Keith Brion, some parts of three different and distinct sketch scores and some of the instrumental parts from each of the three arrangements were given to Thomas C. Duffy. The reconstruction required some decisions as to which parts were written when, which parts were intended to be revised as suggested by the composer’s notes in the last sketch, which parts were obsolete as they had in fact been revised to fit the combined presentation but the revised parts simply were no longer available, and how the missing parts might be best reproduced from the various sketch scores. The Yale Concert Band premiered this new edition of the Bell Piece in 1989, and the following year, Duffy discovered materials that indicated Now, O now, I needs must part, further changes were required to better align the edition with the Parting though I absent mourn. composer’s original wishes and rescored it again. This re-edited Absence can no joy impart; version was premiered by the Yale Concert Band in 1990 and will Joy once fled cannot return. be repeated here this evening. The handbell part was performed While I live I needs must love, originally by Grainger’s wife, Ella. We thank this evening’s guest Love lives not when Hope is gone. performers: Milo Brandt, Emma Goldrick, Erin Hebert, Paul StelNow at last Despair doth prove, ben, and Pong Trairatvorakul of the Yale Handbell Ensemble, and Love divided loveth none.

Luis Aguilar, tenor, of the Yale School of Music.

Shakata: Singing the World Into Existence (1993) DANA WILSON Indigenous Australians believed that the country did not exist until the ancestors sang it, and that still, to be perceived, its songlines must be followed by the descendants. Shakata: Singing the World Into Existence is a sort of collective ritual whereby the ensemble conjures up the earth and its various aspects.

The term “shakata” has no literal significance, thereby allowing it to be a trans-lingual (or pre-lingual) intonement. Much of the work’s rhythmic components might draw for the listener associations with certain styles of rock music, and therefore the piece might mistakenly be perceived as purposefully “contemporary.” On the contrary, it is the composer’s belief that such components are quite primitive (in the sense of “primary,” not “simple” — perhaps a reason why, in this age of ephemera and sophistication, rock music is so popular) and their “basic” nature contributes to the primordial quality required to conjure existence. Dana Wilson holds a Doctorate from the Eastman School of Music and is professor emeritus at the Ithaca School of Music.

Don’t Be Evil: Fanfare for Band (2018) RYAN LINDVEIT “Don’t Be Evil: Fanfare for Band was composed in 2018 in honor of the 20th anniversary of the founding of Google. ‘Don’t be evil’ was the motto of Google’s corporate code of conduct. The idea of one of the world’s largest tech companies telling itself to not be evil in the way it handles user data is both wildly hilarious and extremely dark. Thus, this fanfare is celebratory in a deeply ambivalent way. Fragments of Daisy Bell (1892), which was the earliest song produced using computer speech synthesis and featured in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, appear in various guises in this fanfare.” – Ryan Lindveit

In addition to playing euphonium in the Yale Concert Band, Ryan Lindveit (b.1994) is currently pursuing a Master of Music Degree in Composition at the Yale School of Music. He grew up in Texas and is a graduate of the University of Southern California, where he was selected as Salutatorian for the class of 2016 and named the Thornton School of Music’s Outstanding Graduate. His music has received recognition from BMI, ASCAP, SCI, the American Modern Ensemble, the National Band Association, Tribeca New Music, and the Texas Music Educators Association. Recently, Ryan was commissioned by the New York Youth Symphony in partnership with the Interlochen Center for the Arts to write a new piece for orchestra, which will be premiered in Carnegie Hall in May 2019.

From the Blue Ridge (2011) JEFF MIDKIFF trans. for wind band Thomas C. Duffy (2018) “My love for playing the mandolin, and a lifetime of doing so, began to take on new meaning and motivation just a few years ago. After decades of performing as a professional clarinetist in numerous orchestral concerts, I felt a deep-seated desire to bring my favorite instrument in line with those experiences. I truly enjoy the amazing color, language and structure of the symphony, and my years as a clarinetist made me familiar with it from the inside of the orchestra. I have worked to develop a highly improvisational approach to the mandolin, and I knew in my heart that I could say something with it on a symphonic scale. My excitement and motivation for this piece started with the idea that I could bring my most natural companion to the symphonic stage — two seemingly different worlds together. I hope you enjoy the fusion of these complementary musical worlds.

“The Roanoke Symphony Orchestra and their Music Director & Conductor David Stewart Wiley commissioned the piece in November of 2010 and it was then that the falling leaves, blowing in the wind, drew the opening musical scene. The first of three movements, Allegro, begins with the mandolin on swirling sixteenth notes, setting the stage for excitement and anticipation, as does the entire movement. Indeed, our Blue Ridge’s beauty and importance to me would form the piece. The middle of the first movement moves from D-Minor to the relative key of B-Flat Major with woodwinds in a waltz-like dance, before we return to the first (fast) theme. Although the movement ends quickly, there is a final unexpected fade with a long held single note in the clarinets.

“The lyrical and slow second movement draws on more typical and familiar bluegrass melodies.

Having grown up in Roanoke, moved away, and returned, I wanted the concerto to echo the emotions associated with home, and with coming home to Roanoke. To get there, I looked no further than the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Roanoke Valley. ‘Wildwood Flower’ by the Carter Family, and Bill Monroe’s

YALE CONCERT BAND ‘Roanoke’ are my thematic inspirations. A haunting fiddle tune from the mandolin (accompanied by the oboe) paints a picture of longing before the journey is complete. The end of the movement is ‘resolved’ with major thirds returning from the ‘Roanoke’ theme, and an improvisational-sounding piccolo solo, flowing without significant break to the final movement, after a brief mandolin utterance over a halo of strings.

“The third movement, The Crooked Road, is an upbeat, improvisational and dynamic affair. It draws strongly from jazz and bluegrass themes in a series of ideas in a ‘controlled jam session’ with one idea leading to another. Every section of the orchestra has a virtuosic role to play, with percussion in particular setting up the different rhythmic grooves. A break in the action occurs with an extended cadenza for mandolin and soloists before a mixed-meter blues riff for full band. Another somewhat brief cadenza for solo mandolin inserts and asserts itself just before a bright, upbeat and up-tempo conclusion ends the new work with a flourish upward. Thus ends our musical journey ‘From The Blue Ridge’!”

– Jeffrey Midkiff, September 2011

About Tonight’s Guest Artist Jeff Midkiff is a musician who is comfortable in more than one musical setting. “I feel at home in the Blue Ridge Mountains playing fiddle tunes,” he says, “but I also feel at home playing clarinet in an orchestra.” A Virginia native, Midkiff is a mandolinist and composer as well as clarinetist and dedicated music educator. He is an Orchestra Director with the Roanoke City Schools (VA) and received the 2017 Yale Distinguished Music Educator award.

Midkiff received his BA in Music Education from Virginia Tech, and his MM in clarinet performance from Northern Illinois University. While immersing himself in the classical repertoire, he was also gaining a reputation as one of the world’s foremost mandolinists. He was a member of the bluegrass group Lonesome River Band and his solo CD “Partners In Time” has received critical acclaim.

Midkiff’s Concerto for Mandolin and Orchestra, “From the Blue Ridge,” was composed in 2011 for the Roanoke Symphony and has been performed by numerous orchestras including the Rochester Philharmonic, Jacksonville Symphony, Boulder Philharmonic, Knoxville Symphony, Champaign-Urbana Symphony, Shreveport Symphony, Williamsburg Symphony, Northwest Florida Symphony, Symphony of Southeast Texas, Ohio Northern Symphony, and the Cal Poly Symphony. The Concerto was also performed at the Kennedy Center with the Boulder Philharmonic as part of the 2017 SHIFT Festival. His “Double Concerto” for Mandolin, Violin and Orchestra was premiered in 2014 by the Roanoke Symphony and his “Gypsy Quintet” for Mandolin and String Quartet was commissioned by the Carpe Diem String Quartet and premiered in 2017.

Jeff Midkiff appears, in part, with support from the Rosamonde Safier Yale Band Endowment, established in honor of Rosamonde Safier, a piano prodigy and Tin Pan Alley song composer, to support collaborations between the Yale Bands and the professional world.

YALE CONCERT BAND

About the Music Director Thomas C. Duffy (b. 1955) is Professor (Adjunct) of Music and Director of University Bands at Yale University, where he has worked since 1982. He has established himself as a composer, a conductor, a teacher, an administrator, and a leader. His interests and research range from non-tonal analysis to jazz, from wind band history to creativity and the brain. Under his direction, the Yale Bands have performed at conferences of the College Band Directors National Association and New England College Band Association; for club audiences at NYC’s Village Vanguard and Iridium, Ronnie Scotts’s (London), and the Belmont (Bermuda); performed as part of the inaugural ceremonies for President George H.W. Bush; and concertized in nineteen countries in the course of sixteen international tours.

Duffy produced a two-year lecture/performance series, Music and the Brain, with the Yale School of Medicine; and, with the Yale School of Nursing, developed a musical intervention to train nursing students to better hear and identify body sounds with the stethoscope.

He combined his interests in music and science to create a genre of music for the bilateral conductor - in which a “split-brained conductor” must conduct a different meter in each hand, sharing downbeats. His compositions have introduced a generation of school musicians to aleatory, the integration of spoken/sung words and “body rhythms” with instrumental performance, and the pairing of music with political, social, historical and scientific themes. He has been awarded the Yale Tercentennial Medal for Composition, the Elm/ Ivy Award, the Yale School of Music Cultural Leadership Citation and certificates of appreciation by the United States Attorney’s Office for his Yale 4/Peace: Rap for Justice concerts – music programs designed for social impact by using the power of music to deliver a message of peace and justice to impressionable middle and high school students.

From 1996 to 2006, he served as associate, deputy and acting dean of the Yale School of Music. He has served as a member of the Fulbright National Selection Committee, the Tanglewood II Symposium planning committee, and the Grammy Foundation Music Educators Award Screening Committee, and completed the MLE program at the Harvard University Institute for Management and Leadership in Education. He has served as: president of the Connecticut Composers Inc., the New England College Band Directors Association and the College Band Directors National Association (CBDNA); editor of the CBDNA Journal, publicity chair for the World Association of Symphonic Bands and Ensembles; and chair of the Connecticut Music Educators Association’s Professional Affairs and Government Relations committees. For nine years, he represented music education in Yale’s Teacher Preparation Program. He is a member of American Bandmasters Association, American Composers Alliance, the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, Connecticut Composers Incorporated, the Social Science Club, and BMI. Duffy has conducted ensembles all over the world and was selected to conduct the NAFME National Honor Band in the Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C.

FAIR HAVEN 7TH AND 8TH GRADE BAND 2017-2018 DANIEL KINSMAN, Music Director

Flute Jovana Chavarria Bianca de la Cruz Jordan Wabahati Clarinet Henry Hernandez Thalia Paucay Adrianna Perez Milton Sebastian Erika Velasquez Michelle Urena

Bass Clarinet Damian Vazquez

Euphonium Ivana Santana

Trumpet Bianca Jackson Zabian Nieves Angel Sandoval

Percussion Noel Conde Alenh Cordero James Douglas Katherine Figueroa Ryan Perez Marianna Rivera

Trombone Alexandra Azana Solymar Concepcion Gabrielle Douglas Gloria Ramirez Marlen Velazquez

Daniel Kinsman currently teaches general and instrumental music at Fair Haven K-8 School in New Haven, Connecticut. Throughout his career Dan has specialized in working with diverse, urban and international students and families. The 800+ students he teaches represent over 50 nationalities from around the world with more than a dozen native languages being spoken by students at home. He has also taught at the high school level in the Los Lunas public schools in rural New Mexico. Prior to his current teaching position, Dan served as the Education Director for the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. He also performed professionally on tuba with the 2005-06 National Tour of the Broadway show “Blast!”

In the fall of 2014, Dan was recognized as a recipient of the Morris and Irmgard Wessel Foundation’s “Unsung Hero” award for his work with immigrant and refugee students in New Haven.

Dan completed his undergraduate work in Music Education at University of Massachusetts in Amherst, and earned his Master’s Degree in Music Education from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. His further educational pursuits have taken him as far as West Africa where he studied traditional African drumming.

Pre-Concert Performance in the Woolsey Hall rotunda provided by the Yale Saxophone Quartet Nick DeWalt, soprano saxophone Jacob Hillman, alto saxophone Antonio Medina, tenor saxophone Flynn Chen, baritone saxophone Carrie Koffman, Lecturer in Saxophone, Yale School of Music, Coach

YALE CONCERT BAND 2017-2018 THOMAS C. DUFFY, Music Director STEPHANIE HUBBARD, Business Manager

Piccolo Ben Tillinger MY 21 Flute Beatrice Brown PC 19 principal Monica Barbosa DC 19 Jeremy Goldwasser SM 21 Neyén Romano BK 18* Catherine Lacy BR 18* Julia Cai BR 20 Rona Ji MC 18* Melissa Leone SY 21 Joan Gomez-Aguilar BK 20 Oboe Tim Feil YSM 19 principal Lauren White YSM 18 English Horn Lauren White YSM 18 Eb Clarinet Alex Brod BK 19 Clarinet Christopher Zhou PC 19 Keith L. Wilson Principal Clarinet Chair** Alexander Ringlein BR 18* Alison Ho Chengpei Liu NUS/JE 20 Eric Wang PC 21 Jessica Oki TC 20 Christian Fernandez BF 20 Jacob Neis SY 18 * Madeline Bender TD 20 Heather McClure MY 20 Betsy Li MY 18* Bass Clarinet Eleanor Handler ES 18*

Bassoon Maddy Tung TD 21 principal Bradford Case SM 20 Jorge Nunez MC 20

Euphonium Ryan Lindveit MUS 19

Tuba Josef Lawrence TC 20 principal Alison Ross GH 20

Alto Saxophone Jacob Hillman MC 19 principal Nick DeWalt SY 21 Flynn Chen TC 20

String Bass Kelvin Ng YSM 19 Harp Michelle Tong MY 21

Tenor Saxophone Antonio Medina MY 19

Piano Julia Weiner BK 19

Baritone Saxophone Sara Harris SY 19 Cornet/Trumpet (rotating) Eli Baum JE 19 principal James Brandfonbrener MC 21 Noah Montgomery GH 19 Holt Sakai BR 18* Adam Tucker MC 21 Jacob Zavatone-Veth MY 19 French Horn (rotating) Michael McNamara TD 20 principal Sida Tang SY 19 Allison Hammer BF 20 Derek Boyer BR 18* Juliet Yates TC 21 Trombone William Burns MC 20 principal Robert Howard GH 21 Luke Benz SM 19 Zachary Haas YSM 18

Timpani Rebecca Leibowitz TC 18* Percussion David Zuckerman DC 20 principal Melina Delgado MY 19 Ryan Haygood BF 21 Nasser Odetallah BR 20 Jonathan Roig ES 18* Music Librarian Derek Boyer BR 18 * graduating seniors

**Friends of Keith L. Wilson (Director

of Yale Bands from 1946–1973) honored him by endowing the principal clarinet chair in the Yale Concert Band in his name. If you would like information about naming a Yale Concert Band chair, please contact the Yale Bands office.

YALE CONCERT BAND OFFICERS

President: Beatrice Brown General Managers: Madeline Bender, Heather McClure Social Chairs: Maddy Tung, David Zuckerman

Personnel Manager: Adam Tucker Publicity Chair: Jeremy Goldwasser