Tuesday, November 7, 2023, 7:30pm
Meyerson Symphony Center + Livestream

Fanfare

7:15pm, Meyerson lobby

For Uncommon Valor
Andrew E. Lawson

Dallas Winds Brass & Percussion
Jeremy Kondrat, conductor

Program

Hands Across The Sea  [3’00”]
John Philip Sousa

Bury and Rise [13’00”] WORLD PREMIERE
Catherine Likhuta

– INTERMISSION –

First Suite in E-Flat for Military Band [10’30”]
Gustav Holst

1. Chaconne
2. Intermezzo
3. March

Vital Sines [15’35”]
Viet Cuong
Eighth Blackbird, guest artists

• • Lina Andonovska, flute
  • Laura Metcalf, cello
  • Elly Toyoda, violin
  • Matthew Duvall, percussion
  • Zachary Good, clarinet
  • Lisa Kaplan, piano

Dallas Winds Personnel

STRING BASS
Andrew Goins

HARP
Naoko Nakamura

PIANO
Cameron Hofmann

TIMPANI
Jacob Hord, principal

PERCUSSION
Roland Muzquiz, principal
Matt Richards
Michael McNicholas
Steve McDonald
Steve Kimple

PERSONNEL MANAGER
Gigi Sherrell Norwood

MUSIC LIBRARIAN
Chrystal Stevens

TECHNICAL DIRECTOR
Ramon Muzquiz

FOUNDER / EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Kim Campbell
EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT
Grace Lovrien
DIRECTOR OF CONCERT OPERATIONS
Gigi Sherrell Norwood
DIRECTOR OF EDUCATION
Todd Toney
BOOKKEEPER
Lenore Ladwig Scott

Livestream

Michael Vazquez – Audio Engineer
Savannah Ekrut – Director
Adam Ellard – Switcher
Lydia Amstutz – Titles
Christopher Cook – Remote Cameras
Ciara Negley – Camera Operator
Todd Toney – Cues
Jack Jones, Tom Pilkinton – Technical Direction
David Lovrien – Title Design

Program Notes

Alfred Reed

(January 25, 1921—September 17, 2005)

Alfred Reed was a musician, composer, conductor, and publisher who played an active role in keeping the wind ensemble form of music alive in the United States in the post-John Philip Sousa era.

Born in New York City, Reed’s musical education started at age 10. Formal education was interrupted by World War II, when Reed served in the 529th Army Air Force Band. It was during this time Reed wrote perhaps his best-known piece, Russian Christmas Music, in a mere sixteen days, when the work the band had intended to perform for an important Russian/American diplomatic event proved unsuitable.

Following the war, Reed attended The Juilliard School of Music, then enjoyed gigs as the staff composer and arranger at NBC and ABC before completing his B.A. and M.A. at Baylor University in Waco.

Always an advocate for wind ensemble music, Reed wrote more than 200 works, and from 1955 to 1966 worked for the Charles H. Hansen Music Corporation, one of the major publishers of band music, instruction books, fake books and other music literature. Reed then took his industry experience into the academic world, where he founded the first college-level music business curriculum at the University of Miami. He continued to compose up until his death at age 84, in 2005, when he reportedly had enough pending commissions to take another 31 years to complete. He wrote A Jubilant Overture in 1970.

John Philip Sousa

(November 6, 1854—March 6, 1932)

Historians may call Stephen Foster the “Father of American Music” but John Philip Sousa was America’s first serious classical composer. Sousa served as a musical ambassador for the United States, gaining fame around the world as “The March King.” Not “The British March King,” or the “Austrian March King,” mind you. Kenneth J. Alford and Josef Wagner only aspired to the greatness that was Sousa. Sousa was the undisputed, internationally recognized March King. Period.

Sousa began his musical education when he was six, and apparently settled on a musical career early on because his father apprenticed him to the United States Marine Band at age thirteen to prevent young Sousa from running away to join a circus band. He served out his apprenticeship with the Marines, then joined a series of theatrical orchestras, where he learned to conduct. In 1880 he returned to become the conductor of the “President’s Own” Marine Band, serving under five different presidents. In 1892 he left to form his own civilian wind ensemble, and rapidly scaled the heights of popular music to become the first American superstar. Over the next 39 years, until Sousa’s death, the Sousa Band toured America nearly every year, traveled to Europe at least three times, and once toured all around the world, with stops in England, Ireland, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and Hawaii before returning to the mainland United States—all in the age of railroad and steamship travel. Commercial aviation on that scale wasn’t yet a thing.

He wrote Hands Across the Sea in 1899, at a time when he surely must have been contemplating, if not actively planning to take his band on their first European tour. That tour, which happened in 1900, included a performance at the Exposition Universelle, a world’s fair held in Paris. Sousa did not dedicate Hands Across the Sea to any particular country, but said the march was for all of America’s friends abroad. The march was immediately popular; historians tell us the audience demanded he play it three times at its debut performance.

Catherine Likhuta

(contemporary)

Catherine Likhuta is a Ukranian/Australian composer, born in Ukraine and currently living in Australia. It was at the University of Melbourne that she met then Director of Bands, Nicholas Williams, an old friend and longtime associate conductor of the Dallas Winds. Williams connected her to Dallas Winds’ Artistic Director and Conductor Jerry Junkin. From that connection, Junkin and Kim Campbell, Founder and Executive Director of the Dallas Winds, hatched the idea to commission a work from Likhuta. Bury and Rise is the result. Likhuta says of the work:

“In February 2022, the world was shocked by Russia’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine. My 60-year- old disabled mother lived in Kyiv at the time and did not survive the attack on the city. Later, I was approached by Jerry Junkin and The Dallas Winds with a commission request for a piece which would celebrate the stoic heroism of the Ukrainian resistance. I quickly realised that my brain has repressed many of most traumatic memories of these past few months. The start of the full-scale war and many of the subsequent developments felt absolutely surreal. Perhaps, it is only through music that I can express what I need to say about these events. There are no words to describe how important this commission is to me.

 

The piece features the key elements of Ukrainian folk music and its gutsy, almost tribal yet wonderfully optimistic spirit. The capabilities of wind band fit perfectly with Ukrainian musical traditions—from the band’s angular rhythms to its brilliant runs on woodwinds going up against heroic brass and colourful percussion. Furthermore, there are numerous possibilities to imitate traditional Ukrainian instruments with the core band arsenal: piccolo and flute can sound just like sopilka, horn makes an excellent trembita, and harp is a great substitute for bandura.

 

The title of the piece, Bury and Rise, is a loose translation of a line from the iconic poem “Zapovit” (“Testament”, 1861) by Taras Shevchenko, arguably the most important artist for the Ukrainian identity. Shevchenko asks to bury him when he passes and then rise to defend the homeland. That is exactly what Ukrainians have done. Bury and Rise celebrates the spirit of the Ukrainian people, their never-ending optimism against all odds, and—as a news reporter recently put it—their stamina as the fastest renewable energy source.”

Gustav Holst

(September 21, 1874-May 25, 1934)

Despite his German name, Gustav Holst was an English-born composer who is best known for his orchestral work, The Planets. Holst grew up learning piano, organ, and trombone, and began writing music when he was twelve, although his father tried to discourage his interest. Young Gustav eventually convinced his father to let him study at the Royal College of Music, where he immersed himself in the music of everyone from Henry Purcell (1659-1695) to Richard Wagner (1813-1883). Holst also soaked up philosophy from William Morris and George Bernard Shaw, and made a life-long friend of fellow composer Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Holst and Vaughan Williams became critique partners, playing their unfinished works for each other and arguing philosophy late into the night. In the early 1900s, when a resurgent interest in British folk music swept musical circles, Vaughan Williams would coerce Holst into song-collecting expeditions—a pursuit Holst did not enjoy nearly as much as Vaughan Williams did. This same passion for song collecting influenced the young Australian composer, Percy Grainger.

Although Holst was deeply respected as a music teacher, his reputation as a composer languished. His operas did not win the prestigious awards he anticipated, and his choral works got only a lukewarm reception. With each professional setback, Holst would take off on a hiking trip to nurse his wounds, hoping to discover a new source of inspiration. On one such trip Holst discovered astrology, with two results: he would happily cast his friends’ horoscopes for the rest of his life, and he found the inspiration to write a suite in seven movements called The Planets. It premiered in 1918 and remains Holst’s best-known and most beloved work.

First Suite in E-flat for Military Band

Two years after The Planets finally gained Holst the reputation he sought, he polished up and premiered another work, first completed in 1909, back when Vaughan Williams was hauling Holst out of his comfortable rut to collect folk songs. The First Suite in E-flat for Military Band is one of the founding works of the modern wind band repertoire. Premiered in 1920 at the Royal Military School of Music, the First Suite convinced other composers, including Vaughan Williams and Grainger, that serious music could be written for a wind ensemble.

Viet Cuong

(Contemporary)

American composer Viet Cuong was born in West Hills, California, and raised in Marietta, Georgia. His works have been performed on six continents, in such venues as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, and the Library of Congress. The New York Times called his music “alluring,” and “wildly inventive.” The Dallas Winds has previously performed two of Cuong’s works: Bull’s-Eye, and Re(new)al, which featured the Epoch Percussion Quartet.

Of his new work, Vital Sines, Cuong says:

“It would be difficult to overstate just how important the wind band has been in my life. Band was where I found community and identity during a time in my youth when I feared that there was nothing out there for me. In fact, it was one of the only places during those teenage years where I felt confident in who I was. And it was ultimately this confidence that gave me the nerve to believe that I could one day make it as a composer. But my life in the wind band world almost never was. I very nearly gave up my musical pursuits in a fit of childhood frustration at the age of 11. My father, though he had no musical ability himself, saw in it something important. Always one to look after my creativity, he steadied me and encouraged me to give it more time. It was not long before he was proven right, and music had become something vital to me.

 

I find myself thinking of that crucial moment more and more since my father’s passing, and how music was and remains my vital connection to him. In the last weeks of his life—spent in the disorienting whir of the ICU—I often struggled to speak. But when I could not, I would play him the pieces of mine that I knew were his favorites, hoping that the sounds, the sine waves, could find their way to his consciousness. Since his death, I have come to understand that my love for music is inseparable from the love I have for him. I still catch myself wanting to call him and play him my latest efforts.

 

This one, Vital Sines, is dedicated to my father’s memory as the guardian of my musical life, as well as the many moments during my life when I found sanctuary in music. The creation of this particular piece, though challenging, was a way of finding solace when I needed it most. Throughout the piece, I employ several musical sequences and chaconne forms, all of which use repetition as a means of development. The overarching structure of the piece thus bears a resemblance to the visual depiction of the sine wave, rising and falling like the tracing of breaths and heartbeats. There is of course comfort in the familiarity of continued repetition. But I also followed memories back to my teenage years in Band, when that community had the extraordinary ability to not just bring me comfort but heal my heart. What I then realized was that all the other musical communities I have become a part of since then, Band or not, hold this same healing power.

 

With this concerto for Eighth Blackbird and Wind Band I am tremendously honored to bring together the Wind Band and New Music communities, both vital to me and so many others. Thank you to my father for helping me find my way all those years ago. This one’s for you.”