Program
Deep in the Heart of Texas — TMEA Concert
Jerry Junkin, Artistic Director and Conductor
Brian Shaw, Trumpet
Lilla Cockrell Hall, San Antonio, Texas
February 13, 2020 | 8:00 p.m.
Liberty Fanfare — John Williams
United States Army Band Herald Trumpets
Asphalt Cocktail — John Mackey
Rest — Frank Ticheli
Second Concerto for Trumpet — Fisher Tull
Brian Shaw, trumpet
Silverado — Bruce Broughton
Wine From These Grapes — W. Francis McBeth
Symphonic Dance No. 3, Fiesta! — Clifton Williams
Song of Hope — Peter Meechan
Ryan Anthony, Jens Lindemann, Tim Andersen, trumpets
ENCORE: The Yellow Rose of Texas —Carmen Dragon
ENCORE: Deep in the Heart of Texas —Richard Hayman, arr. R. Mark Rogers
ENCORE: Tico Tico — Abreu, arr. Iwai
ENCORE: Hill Country Theme — Paxton/arr. Lovrien
Program Notes
John Towner Williams (b. February 8, 1932)
One of the most popular and successful composers of the modern age, John Williams is the winner of five Academy Awards, 17 Grammy Awards, three Golden Globes, two Emmys and five awards from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. Best known for his film scores and ceremonial music, Williams is also a noted composer of concert works, and a renowned conductor.
Liberty Fanfare was written to celebrate the centennial of the Statue of Liberty in 1986. Williams said that he had “tried to create a group of American airs and tunes of my own invention that I hope will give some sense of the event and the occasion.”
John Mackey (b. 1973)
John Mackey is a superstar composer in the band world. The Dallas Winds has frequently performed his music over the past several seasons, including Hymn to a Blue Hour, Kingfishers Catch Fire, Harvest: Concerto for Trombone and Orchestra-without-strings, and most recently, Wine Dark Sea: Symphony for Band.
Asphalt Cocktail was commissioned by Howard J. Gourwitz as a gift to Dr. Kevin Sedatole, and premiered at the 2009 College Band Directors National Association conference in Austin. Of the
work, Mackey said:
“Asphalt Cocktail is a five-minute opener, designed to shout, from the opening measure, ‘We’re here.’ With biting trombones, blaring trumpets, and percussion dominated by cross-rhythms and back beats, it aims to capture the grit and aggression that I associate with the time I lived in New York. Picture the scariest NYC taxi ride you can imagine, with the cab skidding around turns as trucks bear down from all sides. Serve on the rocks.”
Frank Ticheli (b. 1958)
Born in Monroe, Louisiana, and raised in Richardson, Texas, Frank Ticheli is a highly respected composer for wind ensemble, orchestra, choral, and chamber ensembles. He teaches composition at the University of Southern California. His works have been performed and recorded by ensembles around the world. Rest is a concert band setting of Ticheli’s earlier choral work, There Will Be Rest, which was based on a poem of the same name by American poet Sara Teasdale:
There will be rest, and sure stars shining,
Over the roof-tops crowned with snow,
A reign of rest, serene forgetting,
The music of stillness holy and low.
The Dallas Winds recorded Rest on their 2011 release, Playing With Fire.
Fisher Tull (September 23, 1934—August 23, 1994)
Born in Waco and educated at the University of North Texas, Fisher A. Tull spent almost his entire career as a musician, educator, and composer in the Lone Star State. Aside from a brief, post-high school stint as a road musician in a dance band, Tull moved from Waco to Denton to Huntsville, where he taught at Sam Houston State University, and eventually became Chairman of the Department of Music. In an era when atonality was all the rage amongst composers, Tull’s music was almost always tonal, and often inspired by music from the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
Tull’s Concerto for Trumpet, No. 2, was composed in 1974, commissioned by Charles Forque, then band director at Robert E. Lee High School in Baytown, Texas. Forque intended the soloist for the work to be Carl Hilding “Doc” Severinsen, famed jazz trumpeter and then leader of the Tonight Show band on NBC. Severinsen enjoyed working with high school bands, and Forque invited him to Baytown, where he agreed to perform a series of works, including the Tull concerto. The performances were recorded, but not released until 2019 as The Lost Tapes, Vol. 1 and 2.
Severinsen said of the recordings:
It was just a fantastic, uplifting experience all the way around. I remember going down there for the first time to begin the project in the late ‘70s and all these wonderful, enthusiastic kids were there to greet me at the airport. They were just a joy to work with, and so incredibly talented. I’m talking about the kind of talent comparable to any professional band working then or today. Texas took its high school band music very seriously back then, and Charles instilled in these kids a passion and love for music that I have seldom witnessed to this day.
Bruce Broughton (b. 1945)
Bruce Broughton was born in Los Angeles, California, but, as the old saying goes, he got to Texas just a soon as he could. He is currently serving as Composer in Residence for the Composition Studies department of the University of North Texas School of Music. Broughton has built his career as a composer for film, television, and video games, garnering numerous awards and nominations, including ten Emmy Awards, and nominations for a Grammy Award. His score for the 1985 film Silverado was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Original Score category. In October 2019 he made a commitment to donate his scores to the music library at the University of North Texas.
Silverado was an old school western movie, released at time before superheroes dominated the cineplexes, but westerns had long been out of fashion. The all-star cast included Kevin Kline, Scott Glenn, Kevin Costner, Brian Dennehy, Danny Glover, and Linda Hunt, with appearances by Jeff Goldblum and John Cleese. The film was written and directed by Lawrence Kasdan, a co-writer on Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi. In addition to the Academy Award nomination, Broughton’s music was nominated for the International Film Music Critics Award for Best New Release, Re-Release, or Re-Recording of an Existing Score in 2006.
W. Francis McBeth (March 9, 1933—January 6, 2012)
Born in Ropesville, Texas at a time when the Panhandle town had fewer than 400 residents, William Francis McBeth’s career as a composer, conductor, and music educator eventually took him all around the world and exerted a strong influence on wind ensemble composition through the last half of the 20 th century. He attended Irving High School, in Irving, Texas, where he met his wife, Mary Sue White, while both were members of the Irving Tiger Band. McBeth did his undergraduate work at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas, and graduate work at the University of Texas—Austin, where he studied under Clifton Williams.
From 1957 until his retirement in 1996, McBeth served as Professor of Music and Resident Composer at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. While there he continued to compose as well as serving as the conductor for the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra in Little
Rock. In 1962 he conducted the Arkansas All-State Band, which included a tenor saxophone player named Bill Clinton.
Wine from these Grapes was written in 1992, on a commission from Kim Campbell, Founder and Executive Director of the Dallas Winds, to honor that ensemble’s founding conductor, Howard Dunn. Dunn died of cancer in 1991. Campbell explained the title of the work, taken
from a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay, by saying:
The title is taken from a collection of poems and sonnets by Edna St. Vincent Millay. The title was chosen because of the superior teaching and leadership of Howard Dunn. The wine from his grapes are the students and the great musical legacy that he left.
Clifton Williams (March 26, 1923—February 12, 1976)
James Clifton Williams, Jr. was born in Traskwood, Arkansas, got his bachelor’s degree in music from Louisiana State University, and his master’s degree from the Eastman School of Music. At Eastman, one of his composition teachers, Howard Hanson, suggested Williams focus on writing for wind ensemble, as more ensembles would perform his music and he would reach a much larger audience than if he wrote only for orchestra.
After service in the United States Army Air Corps during World War II, Williams joined the composition department at the University of Texas—Austin School of Music in 1949. He remained there until 1966. W. Francis McBeth was one of his composition students.
Somewhere around 1963 or 1964 the Minnie Stevens Piper Foundation commissioned Williams to write a suite of symphonic dances to mark the San Antonio Symphony Orchestra’s 25th anniversary, to be celebrated during their 1964-65 season. Williams wrote five dances in all, of which “Fiesta!” is the third. He quickly transcribed the orchestra version for band, and it has remained a challenging favorite for bands of all ages ever since. The Dallas Winds included Symphonic Dance No. 3: Fiesta! on its 1990 recording, Fiesta!, with Howard Dunn conducting.
Peter Meechan (January 1980)
The music of Canadian-based British composer Peter Meechan has been commissioned, recorded, broadcast, and performed by some of the world’s leading wind orchestras, brass bands, conductors and soloists, including: “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, The Band of the Coldstream Guards, Jens Lindemann, Ryan Anthony, and the BBC Concert Orchestra.
Meechan said Song of Hope:
…is dedicated to my good friend Ryan Anthony and his charity, Cancer Blows – a foundation set up to raise awareness and money to further the research that has helped give their family a hope for a future following Ryan’s diagnosis of Multiple Myeloma. Upon hearing the middle movement (simply titled “Song”) of my cornet concerto, Milestone, Ryan asked me if I could change the end from its current reflective ending to something more uplifting, and to title it Song of Hope, giving it much more meaning than I could have ever imagined.
–program notes written by Gigi Sherrell Norwood