Tuesday, October 17, 2023, 7:30pm
Meyerson Symphony Center + Livestream

Fanfare

7:15pm, Meyerson lobby

From The Ashes
Randy Stagich

Dallas Winds Brass & Percussion
Jeremy Kondrat, conductor

Program

Washington Grays [4’00”]
Claudia S. Grafulla

Roma  [12’00”]
Valerie Coleman

Huapango [8’30”]
José Pablo Moncayo

– INTERMISSION –

Symphony No. 3, “Organ” [38’00”]
Camille Saint-Saëns
Bradley Hunter Welch, organ

1. Adagio – Allegro moderato – Poco adagio
2. Allegro moderato – Presto – Maestoso – Allegro

Dallas Winds Personnel

STRING BASS
Andrew Goins

HARP
Naoko Nakamura

PIANO
Cameron Hofmann

TIMPANI
Jacob Hord

PERCUSSION
Roland Muzquiz, principal
Michael McNicholas
Drew Lang
Joe Ferraro
Steve McDonald
Steve Kimple
Jon Lee

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

Scott Probst – Audio Engineer
Savannah Ekrut – Director
Lenore Scott – Switcher
Lydia Amstutz – Titles
Christopher Cook – Remote Cameras
Ciara Negley – Camera Operator
Todd Toney- Cues
Cameron Conyer – Technical Director
David Lovrien – Title Design

Program Notes

Claudio Grafulla

(October 31, 1812—December 5, 1880)

Claudio S. Grafulla was born on a small island off the coast of Spain, emigrating to the United States in 1840, when he was 28, to become a musician in New York City. Horn was his primary instrument, but he also excelled at arranging and composing. Before long he became the director of the New York National Guard’s 7th Regiment Band—the ensemble for which John Philip Sousa wrote the march The Gallant Seventh.

But Grafulla didn’t need to rely on Sousa to supply his band with new marches. He was a prolific composer himself, and many of his works were included in the “band books” of music distributed to the Union army’s regimental bands during the Civil War. He wrote The Washington Grays in 1861 for another regiment in the New York State Militia—the 8th Regiment, known for their gray uniforms. Consistently popular, the march has been recorded many times and earned praise from Frederick Fennell, the long-time principal guest conductor for the Dallas Winds. Fennell said of The Washington Grays, “Masterfully simple . . . It is a march of great passion – no introduction, no break strain, no stinger. A real indoor rouser.”

Valerie Coleman

(contemporary)

Musicians like Valerie Coleman are the reward the wind ensemble world gets for allowing women and people of color to have more of a voice in the field. She is a GRAMMY®-nominated flutist who was hailed by The Washington Post as one of its “Top 35 Women Composers,” and recognized by the classical music radio program Performance Today as 2020’s Classical Woman of the Year.

Coleman’s works have been performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Boston University Tanglewood Institute, the New York Philharmonic, and the St. Louis Symphony among many others, and have been commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera/Lincoln Center Theater, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, and other
significant ensembles across the country. She and her family are based in New York City.

Roma was commissioned by a 23-member consortium of ensembles under the umbrella of the College Band Directors National Association. Their goal was to commission a minority composer who had already established a top-tier reputation, and to give the premiere to a high school with a largely minority student body whose music program was exemplary. The premiere was by Roma High School, Roma, Texas, Dena Laurel conducting, on April 9, 2010.

Coleman traveled to Roma twice while working on the composition. The tiny town sits on the Rio Grande River, about 56 miles northwest of McAllen. Its student body includes many students who live in Mexico and make the border crossing every day to attend school. Coleman sat in on rehearsals to get a feel for the band’s abilities, then returned to workshop the piece as it neared completion, calling the experience, “A true musical exchange of minds.”

“It was an exciting process to work with such talented young minds,” Coleman said in her published program notes. “In a band program that sets such a high standard with discipline, musicality, and integrity.”

Playing on the name of the town and the cross-border fluidity of the student body, Coleman linked the music to that of the Roma, or nomadic Romani tribes that have spread their traditions, language, legends, and music from the Middle East, the Mediterranean region, and Europe to the Americas and all around the world. “They are a nation without a country,” Coleman said. “Roma is a tribute to that culture.”

Jose Pablo Moncayo

(June 29, 1912—June 16, 1858)

In the early years of the 20 th century, José Pablo Moncayo was a leading light in the movement to gain recognition and respect among the musical establishment of Europe and North America for Mexico’s growing artistic community. Moncayo’s talents as a composer, performer, and conductor, and his commitment to drawing on indigenous material, gave him a unique voice in classical music at the time.

Much as Alexander Borodin and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov did in Russia a generation before, when they championed Russian folk music, Moncayo joined forces with composers Daniel Ayala, Salvador Contreras, and Blas Galindo in the Grupo de los Cuatro (The Group of the Four), dedicating themselves to the cause of modern Mexican music. The composers’ goal: to express music from their native folklore using contemporary harmonic and contrapuntal techniques.

Huapango is Moncayo’s earliest attempt at this synthesis. Sixty years after its completion, it remains one of Mexico’s most popular compositions. The Huapango is a traditional Mexican song form that combines voice, dance rhythms, and instrumental music. The melodies usually grow out of 16 th century Spanish music, but the rhythms spring directly from the indigenous cultures of Mexico. The combination provides a brilliant example of how colliding cultures can create exciting new sounds and forms.

Camille Saint-Saëns

(October 9, 1835—December 16, 1921)

Camille Saint-Saëns was a French composer of the Romantic period, whose many works, including Symphony No. 3, have become beloved standards of the classical repertoire. This might come as a surprise to the music critics of his day, who called his works, “Bad music well written” and judged him far inferior to his contemporaries, Léonce Cohen and Victor Steig.

These were roughly the same critics who proclaimed William Dean Howells a better writer than Mark Twain and Charles Dickens combined. Clearly, they all descended from the critic who thought Ben Jonson was a far superior playwright to that William Shakespeare guy.

Born in Paris in 1835, Saint-Saëns was a musical prodigy, playing piano in small public recitals from the age of five, and making his professional concert debut at age ten. He entered the Paris Conservatoire at thirteen, where he was encouraged to learn to play the organ, since church organists made a more comfortable living than piano soloists. Although music was always his first love, he studied widely, showing interest in French literature, Latin, Greek, religious studies, mathematics, music history, philosophy, archaeology, and astronomy.

Upon graduation from the Conservatoire in 1853, Saint-Saëns was hired as the organist for a large parish in Paris. His official stipend was small, but the extra money he earned playing for weddings at the church was enough to allow him to live comfortably while pursuing side careers as a piano soloist and composer. After four years there, he moved to an even larger church with a better organ, where he remained for another 16 years.

In 1886, long after he had retired as an organist to focus on composition, Saint-Saëns accepted a commission from the Royal Philharmonic Society in England to write a symphony. Most of his work had focused on operas, ballets, and chamber works. Saint-Saens had only written two symphonies early in his career, plus one student work in symphonic form back at the Conservatoire. He must have sensed that this third symphony might be his last because he quite literally pulled out all the stops, including challenging piano passages, beautifully romantic orchestral sections, and a prominent part for a glorious pipe organ.

He retreated to a remote Austrian village so he could work on the symphony with no distractions, but even the most dedicated composer has to take a few brain breaks from the serious work now and then. Whenever he needed to step away from Symphony No. 3 for an hour or two, Saint-Saëns played around with a series of solo piano sketches he’d written to amuse his piano students many years before. Those sketches evolved into The Carnival of the Animals, another beloved Saint-Saëns composition.

—Program notes by Gigi Sherrell Norwood