Yale Concert Band-Feb 16, 2018

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

Friday, February 16, 2018, at 7:30 pm

Aaron Copland

Percy Aldridge Grainger

Thomas C. Duffy

An Outdoor Overture

Colonial Song

Three Places in New Haven

I. Castle in the Sky (Rollo Reads a Book)

II. The Long Wharf (Rollo Sails Away)

III. City Band March (Rollo Gets a Job) Ji Su Jung YSM 19, marimba

~ INTERMISSION ~

John Mackey

Wine-Dark Sea I. Hubris

II. Immortal thread, so weak

III. The attentions of souls

About Tonight’s Music An Outdoor Overture (1938) AARON COPLAND Copland composed this piece for an entirely indoor occasion: a concert of the orchestra of the High School of Music and Art in New York City. The school’s conductor, Alexander Richter, was in the process of launching a campaign to foster the writing of “American music for American youth,” and the composer found the invitation to write such a work “irresistible,” all the more perhaps because his music was undergoing a stylistic change.

Copland was originally thought of as a kind of American Stravinsky during the period of the 1920s: tonal but boldly so, emphasizing complex and often harsh sonorities, and influenced in rhythmic language by jazz and Stravinsky himself. In the late 1930s, however, he gradually switched to almost exclusively diatonic melodic writing and simpler counterpoint. The rhythmic vitality, widely spaced textures, and hints of bitonality of his earlier style remain, making his music more accessible but still distinctive.

An Outdoor Overture was a milestone in confirming this change, since it was written for young people to play and the vague criterion of accessibility therefore mattered more to Copland than it had before.

This version for band was made by Copland himself, several years after the original composition of the overture. The “outdoor” in the title stems from the style of spacious chordal writing, implying that very high and very low sonorities are present throughout.

Colonial Song (1913) PERCY ALDRIDGE GRAINGER Although Percy Grainger’s work is typically based around collecting and arranging folk songs and country dances of the English countryside, Colonial Song, which he wrote for and about the people in his native Australia, is something of an oddity in that it contains no traditional tunes. He expressed the wish to “voice a certain kind of emotion that seems to me not untypical of native-born colonials in general.” Concerning colonials, he wrote the following: “Perhaps it is not unnatural that people living more or less alone in vast virgin countries and struggling against natural and climactic hardships (rather than the more active and dramatically exciting counter of wills of their fellow men, as in more thickly populated lands) should lean largely [to] patiently yearning, inactively sentimental wistfulness.”

Percy Grainger was born in 1882 in Brighton, Victoria, Australia. A precocious pianist, twelve-year old Percy gave a series of concerts, the proceeds from which enabled him to go and study at Frankfurt for six years, after which he began his European career as a concert pianist, settling in London in 1901.

He came to the United States in 1915 and enlisted as an Army bandsman at the outbreak of World War I. He became a U.S. citizen in 1919.

Three Places in New Haven (2000) THOMAS C. DUFFY Charles Ives spent four years on the Yale campus in New Haven from 1894-1898. Many of the places he frequented are still intact. Each movement of Three Places in New Haven addresses one particular place in New Haven. Each is frequented or visited by Rollo, Ives’ fictional character of lowest common denominator aesthetic sophistication and taste.

YALE CONCERT BAND I. Castle in the Sky (Rollo Reads a Book) Yale’s library was built by stonemasons and is set in a gothic style. The workers took leftover materials and, instead of constructing ventilation boxes on the roof in the traditional square-box fashion, covered the air vents with a miniature medieval castle, complete with flying buttresses and cobbled walls. From some distance, one can see this castle, perched curiously on the top of a ten-story building. It floats above Yale’s Cross Campus green-space, where students go to sit on the grass after studying.

One hears the opening bustle of students currying to class. The motives are made of Charles Ives’ name through the ancient technique of soggeto cavato (carved subject). C=c, H=b, A=a, R=re=d, L=la=a, E=e, S=E-flat, and I=ti=b. Thus the Ives motive is c, b, a, d, e, e-flat, b. The scurrying fades to reveal the quiet contemplative sound of students at work (Yale’s alma mater, “Bright College Years” [“Die Wacht Am Rhein”]). Students run for the library before it closes and one hears the clock tower sounding the warning for doors to close. Once inside, students set to work and the solo marimba presents a four-part hymn.

But Rollo has a very short attention span. As the monotony of reading begins to affect him, he daydreams. First the sounds of student life outside begin to invade his consciousness. In fact, he wonders why he studies at all—what’s the use? (The metaphysical question is presented by the trumpet, in the style of a question that “may never be answered.”) Eventually, he fantasizes that a military maneuver is taking place in the castle in the sky. One hears the sounds of percussion, troops marching here and there.

The solo marimba attempts to “question” Rollo’s daydream, and things end with neither an answer to the question nor a firm sense of whether the dream is real or the reality a dream.

II. The Long Wharf (Rollo Sails Away) The Long Wharf extended far out into the shallow New Haven harbor, and had for many years been the place where ships loaded and unloaded their produce and other goods. This was the harbor into which the British sailed during the Revolutionary War (and a few patriots fired a cannon at the British ships.

Their aim was so poor that the British reported that they conquered New Haven unchallenged!). The harbor also is the home of Savin Rock, for years New Haven’s miniature version of Coney Island. Now the New Haven Green is far inland from the harbor’s water, but before a century of land fill, the church in which Ives played the organ was very close to the shore itself. Close enough for the sounds of the church’s bells to be heard on the water.

Rollo opts to spend Sunday morning not in church, but sailing on the harbor. The sun comes up on the peaceful waters of the harbor and Rollo floats about in a state of blissful detachment. While Rollo dozes on the boat, here and there one (and perhaps he) hears the sounds of the church service. The hymn that wafts out over the harbor contains a message—it is “Wachet auf” (“Sleepers Wake!”).

III. City Band March (Rollo Gets A Job) City Band March is homage paid to Charles Ives’ Country Band March. This march follows the form of its country cousin, including a da capo exposition, and a “coda” in which things become complicated.

The city of New Haven was home to Eli Whitney, the innovator who brought the concept of mass production to life. During Ives’ time in New Haven, industry boomed and citizens enjoyed a fine mass transportation system, founded on a network of trains and trolley cars. This music presents the sounds of a city at work, busily producing “things”—some of metal, some needing to be stamped out, and some requiring much repetitive attention.

Rollo works in a factory and dreams throughout the workday of the pleasant train ride home to the country. He himself is a “mass product:” he dresses like everyone else, he rides the train in like everyone else, he repeats the same task all day like everyone else, and at day’s end, he joins the long trudging line of automatons as the “masses” move in synchronicity, coming and going to their assigned jobs (hear their robot-like cadence: two quarter notes, two eighth-notes, and one quarter note!).

Does the piece end with Rollo boarding a train that increasingly speeds him home, or is it his imagination— the acceleration representing his increasing desperation to be out of the factory and on his own? You decide.

Wine-Dark Sea (2014) JOHN MACKEY “For the past 10 years, I’ve written all of my music in collaboration with my wife, Abby. She titles nearly all of my pieces, a process that usually involves my writing the music, then playing it for her, after which she tells me what the piece is about. Without her help, Aurora Awakes would be Slow Music Then Fast Music #7 in E-flat. Sometimes she’ll hear a piece halfway through my writing process and tell me what the music evokes to her, and that can take the piece in a different (and better) direction than I had originally intended. I’ve learned that the earlier she is involved in the process, the better the piece turns out. So with Wine-Dark Sea, my symphony for band, I asked for her help months before I ever wrote a note of music.

“The commission, from Jerry Junkin and The University of Texas Wind Ensemble, in honor of the 100th anniversary of the Sarah and Ernest Butler School of Music, was for a piece lasting approximately 30 minutes. How could I put together a piece that large? Abby had an idea. Why not write something programmatic, and let the story determine the structure? We had taken a similar approach with Harvest, my trombone concerto about Dionysus, the Greek god of wine. Why not return to the Greek myths for this symphony? And since this story needed to be big (epic, even), I’d use the original, truly epic tale of Odysseus, as told thousands of years ago by Homer in the Odyssey.

“The full Odyssey, it turned out, was too large, so Abby picked some of the “greatest hits” from the epic poem. She wrote a truncated version of the story, and I attempted to set her telling to music. Here is the story the way Abby outlined it (in three movements), and I set it: ‘After ten years of bloody siege, the Trojan War was won because of Odysseus’ gambit: A horse full of soldiers, disguised as an offering. The people of Troy took it in as a trophy, and were slaughtered.

‘Odysseus gave the Greeks victory, and they left the alien shores for home. But Odysseus’ journey would take as long as the war itself. Homer called the ocean on which Odysseus sailed a wine-dark sea, and for the Greek king it was as murky and disorienting as its name; he would not find his way across it without first losing himself.

‘I. Hubris ‘Odysseus filled his ship with the spoils of war, but he carried another, more dangerous, cargo: Pride.

This movement opens with his triumphal march, and continues as he and his crew maraud through every port of call on their way home.

‘But the arrogance of a conquering mortal has one sure consequence in this world: a demonstration of that mortal’s insignificance, courtesy of the gods. Odysseus offends; Zeus strikes down his ship. The sailors drown. Odysseus is shipwrecked. The sea takes them all.

YALE CONCERT BAND ‘II. Immortal thread, so weak ‘This movement is the song of the beautiful and immortal nymph Kalypso, who finds Odysseus near death, washed up on the shore of the island where she lives all alone. She nurses him back to health, and sings as she moves back and forth with a golden shuttle at her loom. Odysseus shares her bed; seven years pass. The tapestry she began when she nursed him becomes a record of their love.

‘But one day Odysseus remembers his home. He tells Kalypso he wants to leave her, to return to his wife and son. He scoffs at all she has given him. Kalypso is heartbroken.

‘And yet, that night, Kalypso again paces at her loom. She unravels her tapestry and weaves it into a sail for Odysseus. In the morning, she shows Odysseus a raft, equipped with the sail she has made and stocked with bread and wine, and calls up a gentle and steady wind to carry him home. Shattered, she watches him go; he does not look back.

‘III. The attentions of souls ‘But other immortals are not finished with Odysseus yet. Before he can reach his home, he must sail to the end of the earth, and make a sacrifice to the dead. And so, this movement takes place at the gates of the underworld, where it is always night.

‘When Odysseus cuts the throats of the sacrificial animals, the spirits of the dead swarm up. They cajole him, begging for blood. They accuse him, indicting him for his sins. They taunt him, mocking his inability to get home. The spirit of his own mother does not recognize him; he tries to touch her, but she is immaterial.

He sees the ghosts of the great and the humble, all hungry, all grasping.

‘Finally, the prophet Teiresias tells Odysseus what he must do to get home. And so Odysseus passes through a gauntlet beyond the edge of the world, beset by the surging, shrieking souls of the dead. But in the darkness he can at last see the light of home ahead.’

“Wine-Dark Sea is dedicated to Jerry Junkin, without whom the piece would not exist. The second movement, “Immortal thread, so weak,” telling of Kalypso’s broken heart, is dedicated to Abby, without whom none of my music over the past ten years would exist.”—John Mackey

Yale University Bands P.O. Box 209048, New Haven, CT 06520–9048 ph: (203) 432–4111; fax: (203) 432–7213 stephanie.hubbard@yale.edu; www.yale.edu/yaleband

About Tonight’s Guest Artist Ji Su Jung is currently a master’s degree candidate at the Yale School of Music (’19MM). As an advocate for today’s modern solo percussion art, Ji Su has a distinctive voice instantly recognizable for its lyricism and insight. Ji Su is a rarity in the world of percussion, having begun her studies at the age of three. Her exceptional potential quickly blossomed into a professional musical voice, leading her to perform at The Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. and throughout the East Coast of the United States. In 2015, Ji Su was invited by NPR host Fred Childs to be a Young Artist in Residence on his nationally syndicated program, Performance Today. During the week of her residency, she performed many of the seminal pieces in the marimba repertoire, introducing the marimba to listeners in every corner of the country. Her concert for children in Minnesota was highly successful, demonstrating Ji Su’s love for bringing classical music to young audiences. Later that year, she was a laureate at the International Marimba Competition in Linz, Austria, that led to her joining an elite roster of solo artists endorsing the Adams line of concert marimbas.

With the rapidly expanding repertoire for percussion with other instruments, Miss Jung has become an active chamber musician alongside her solo concerts. In 2014, through a national audition she was chosen as the percussionist at the renowned Yellow Barn Chamber Music Festival in Vermont. There she played with many of today’s greatest chamber musicians, including legendary pianist Gilbert Kalish and Roger Tapping, formerly of the Takács String Quartet. Through her endorsement contract with the Vic Firth mallet and drumstick company, Ji Su has made numerous performance videos that have garnered a quarter million views on its website. Through this medium, her lyrical approach to the marimba has drawn accolades throughout the world from composers, percussionists and general music lovers.

Upcoming Yale Bands Performances • Monday February 26, 2018: Yale Jazz Ensemble Winter Concert. Thomas C. Duffy, Music Director. Feat. Grammy Award-winning saxophonist Wayne Escoffery. Music by Charles Mingus, Joe Henderson, Thad Jones, Irving Berlin.

7:30 pm. Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall. Free (no tickets required).

• Thursday, March 8, 2018: Yale Concert Band, Thomas C. Duffy, Music Director. Ask the Sky and the Earth: An Oratorio Cantata for the Sent-down Youth (Tony Fok), with the SYGQ Chorus, Charles Lu, Music Director (sung in Chinese with English supertitles); Three Places in New Haven (Thomas C. Duffy), Sam Um YSM 18, marimba [in association with the College Band Directors National Association Eastern Division Conference]. 7:30 pm, Woolsey Hall. Free and open to the public.

• Sunday, April 8, 2018: Stan Wheeler Memorial Jazz Concert. Yale Jazz Ensemble, Thomas C. Duffy, Music Director, and the Reunion Jazz Ensemble. 2:00 pm, Levinson Auditorium, Yale Law School, 127 Wall Street. Free.

• Friday, April 13, 2018: Yale Concert Band Spring Concert. Thomas C. Duffy, Music Director. Feat. From the Blue Ridge (Jeff Midkiff), Jeff Midkiff, mandolin; Shakata: Singing the World Into Existence (Dana Wilson); Ghost Train I. (Eric Whitacre) and Bell-piece (Percy Grainger). With special guests the Fair Haven Middle School Band, Daniel Kinsman, Director. 7:30 pm, Woolsey Hall. Free.

• Sunday, May 20, 2018: Yale Concert Band Annual Twilight Concert. Ceremonial music on the eve of Yale’s Commencement. 7:00 pm, outside on the Old Campus. Free.

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 nontonal 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.

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

Piccolo Ben Tillinger MY 21 Flute Beatrice Brown PC 19* Monica Barbosa DC 19 Jeremy Goldwasser SM 21 Neyén Romano BK 18 Catherine Lacey BR 18 Julia Cai BR 20 Rona Ji MC 18 Melissa Leone SY 21 Joan Gomez-Aguilar BK 20 Katie Handler TC 21 Oboe Michelle Nguyen YSM 18* Lauren Williams YSM 18 English Horn Lauren Williams 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 GH 20 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 Ellie Handler ES 18

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

Euphonium Ryan Lindveit MUS 19

Tuba Josef Lawrence TC 20* Alison Ross GH 20

Soprano Saxophone Nick DeWalt SY 21

String Bass Jordan Calixto MUS 18

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

Harp Michelle Tong MY 21

Tenor Saxophone Antonio Medina MY 19

Piano Julia Weiner BK 19

Baritone Saxophone Sara Harris SY 19

Timpani Rebecca Leibowitz TC 18

Cornet/Trumpet (rotating) Eli Baum JE 19* James Brandfonbrener MC 21 Noah Montgomery GH 19 Holt Sakai BR 18 Adam Tucker MC 21 Jacob Zavatone-Veth MY 19

Percussion David Zuckerman DC 20* Ryan Haygood BF 21 Melina Delgado MY 19 Nasser Odetallah BR 20 Jonathan Roig ES 18 Ben Wallace YSM 14/21†

French Horn (rotating) Michael McNamara TD 20* Sida Tang SY 19 Allison Hammer BF 20 Derek Boyer BR 18 Juliet Yates TC 21

Music Librarian Derek Boyer BR 18

Trombone William Burns MC 20* Robert Howard GH 21 Luke Benz SM 19 Matthew Kegley PC 19 Zachary Haas YSM 18†

* principal

**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. † performing on Mackey Wine-Dark Sea only

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