Symphony Band

About the Program

Program notes by Mark Bilyeu

Jack Wilds
Moon Over Half Dome
Born 1986
Composed 2019
Duration 7 minutes

Composer and educator Jack Wilds  received his bachelor of music studies from the Butler School of Music at The University of Texas at Austin. During this time, he studied composition with Donald Grantham, and arranging with Glenn Richter. Jack's music draws on philosophical and religious texts, poetry, and visual art, like his work Moon Over Half Dome. “Moon Over Half Dome is a photograph by Ansel Adams,” explains Wilds, “The image depicts a granite mountain in Yosemite National Park with the moon hanging overhead to the left. To my eye, the dome almost looks as if it is in motion, like a wave being pulled upward by the moon. This piece is a response to the image, using ever-increasing interlocking tempos and a constantly transforming ostinato to portray the mountain breaking loose and rising toward the moon.” Wilds is currently a lecturer at Texas State University, where he teaches composition, music theory, ear training, and music technology courses.

Florence Price
The Old Boatman
Born  April 9, 1887, Little Rock, Arkansas
Died June 3, 1953, Chicago, Illinois
Composed 1933 / 2022
Duration 4 minutes

Florence Price is the  first African-American woman to have her music performed by a major symphony orchestra when the Chicago Symphony performed her Symphony in E Minor  in 1933. Born in Arkansas, Price attended the New England Conservatory—one of the few schools which accepted African American students at the time—and returned to Arkansas where she taught at the university level. Concerned with the escalating racial tensions under Jim Crow, she and her family moved to Chicago in 1927, where Price’s career flourished. After a divorce from her husband, she moved in with composer and pianist Margaret Bonds, which led to relationships with other influential Black artists of the day including Marian Anderson, Roland Hayes, and Langston Hughes.  As critic and author Alex Ross writes, despite an impressive output of over 300 works, “[Price] is mentioned more often than she is heard,” which was the case until 2009, when  a substantial collection of her unpublished works were discovered in an abandoned house in St. Anne, Illinois, including her two-page work for piano “The Old Boatman,” which was then transcribed for wind band in 2022 by Dana Paul Perna.

George Gerswhin
An American in Paris
Born September 26, 1898, Brooklyn, New York  
Died July 11, 1937 Los Angeles, California  
Composed 1928  
Premiered December 13, 1928, Carnegie Hall, New York Philharmonic; Walter Damrosch, conductor  
Duration 19 minutes  

George Gershwin traveled to Paris in 1926 to study with Ravel. Ravel is said to have refused to teach him, asking “Why be a second-rate Ravel when you can be a first-rate Gershwin?” Gershwin returned to Paris in 1928 to study with Nadia Boulanger and to finish composing An American in Paris, which he had begun during his first trip as a thank you to his hosts Robert and Mabel Schirmer. The program note at the premiere, written by music critic Deems Taylor in collaboration with Gershwin, begins “By its composer’s own confession, An American in Paris is an attempted reconciliation between two opposing schools of musical thought—a Pax Romana, as it were, imposed upon two customarily warring camps. It is program-music in that it engages to tell an emotional narrative; to convey, in terms of sound, the successive emotional reactions experienced by a Yankee tourist adrift in the City of Light. It is absolute music as well, in that its structure is determined by considerations musical rather than literary or dramatic. The piece, while not in strict sonata form, resembles an extended symphonic movement in that it announces, develops, combines, and recapitulates themes. Only, whereas the ordinary symphonic movement is based upon two principal themes, An American in Paris manipulates five.” 

Katahj Copley
In Living Color
Born 1998
Composed 2021
Premiered December 22, 2021, Lockport Township High School Wind Symphony, Brian Covey, conductor

“I believe that music is the ultimate source of freedom and imagination and the most freedom I have had as a musician was through composing. Composition is like me opening my heart and showing the world my drive, my passion, and my soul.” These are the words of composer and Georgia native Katahj Copley.  Born in 1998, Copley’s first work, Spectra, premiered in November 2017, performed by the University of West Georgia’s Saxophone Ensemble. Since that first premiere,he has written over 60 works, including over 25 for wind band. Copley writes “2020 brought the world to a pause. With the global pandemic of COVID-19, so many of life’s simple joys were taken, including the opportunity to perform music. To me, music is one of the greatest means of communication. When it was taken away, the language of music became foreign—and for some, a passion for the subject disappeared. Now, as the world slowly takes its turn again, a love for music has grown—through separation, we grew stronger. I wrote In Living Color as an ode for live music, especially music performed on the wind band stage. The piece offers a kaleidoscope of colors and energy from modern jazz artists such as Snarky Puppy, American Boy singer Estelle, and takes inspiration from George Gershwin. Please help me celebrate life and all the small things that lead to big things with In Living Color.”

Steven Bryant
all stars are love
Born May 28, 1972 Little Rock, Arkansas
Composed 2010/2014/2017
Premiered 15 July 2017, World Youth Wind Orchestra Project 2017, Mid Europe, Schladming, Austria. Hila Plitmann, soprano, Verena Mösenbichler-Bryant, conductor.
Duration 7 minutes

All stars are love is a setting of the E.E. Cummings poem all stars are that Bryant composed for his wife, conductor Verena Mösenbichler-Bryant for their wedding in 2010, where it was performed by soprano Hilá Plitmann. Upon hearing it, fellow composer Eric Whitacre remarked that the piece would make an excellent instrumental work, which Bryant considered and eventually undertook, creating a second version as a commission for the Colorado Wind Ensemble in 2014. Rather than a straightforward transcription, Bryant recomposed and expanded much of the original stating that this version, "contains as much new music as material from the original song, though the dramatic shape and harmonic progression at the heart of the work remain." Bryant later took the two different versions, and combined them into a third version for soprano and wind ensemble (heard on tonight's program), which premiered at the World Youth Wind Orchestra Project as part of Mid Europe 2017, sung once again by Plitmann, and conducted by Bryant's wife Verena, to whom the original setting was first dedicated. 

Michael Daugherty
Niagara Falls
Born 1954, Cedar Rapids, IA
Composed 1997
Premiered  October 4, 1997, University of Michigan Symphonic Band, H. Robert Reynolds, conductor
Duration 10 minutes

The Composer writes:

Niagara Falls, a gateway between Canada and the United States, is a mecca for honeymooners and tourists who come to visit one of the most scenic waterfalls in the world. The Niagara River also generates electricity for towns on both sides of the border, where visitors are lured into haunted houses, motels, wax museums, candy stores, and tourist traps, as well as countless stores that sell "Niagara Falls" postcards, T-shirts, and souvenirs. This composition is another souvenir, inspired by my many trips to Niagara Falls. It is a ten-minute musical ride over the Niagara River with an occasional stop at a haunted house or wax museum along the way. Its principal musical motive is a haunting chromatic phrase of four tones corresponding to the syllables of Niagara Falls, and repeated in increasingly gothic proportions. A pulsing rhythm in the timpani and lower brass creates an undercurrent of energy to give an electric charge to the second motive, introduced in musical canons by the upper brass. The saxophones and clarinets introduce another level of counterpoint, in a bluesy riff with a film noir edge. My composition is a meditation on the American Sublime.

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About the Artists

Hilá Plitmann

Two-time Grammy Award-winning soprano, songwriter, and actress Hilá Plitmann is known for opera, concert, film, and theater performances filled with emotionally-charged fearlessness, unique expressivity, and mesmerizing drama. She rose to prominence after premiering a work by Del Tredici with the New York Philharmonic just one year after graduating from Juilliard – on only two weeks’ notice – and has since become a frequent soloist on major stages across the world. Widely-recognized as one of today’s foremost interpreters of contemporary music, she regularly performs new works by a diverse array of composers, as well as traditional repertoire, and boundary-pushing projects in non-classical genres. With jazz guitarist Shea Welsh and tabla virtuoso Aditya Kalyanpur, she co-founded global music project Renaissance Heart. Her tour-de-force role in Eric Whitacre’s groundbreaking electro-musical Paradise Lost: Shadows and Wingsat Pasadena’s Boston Court Theatre, involving singing, acting, dancing, and martial arts, won her a nomination as “Best Actress in a Musical” from the Los Angeles Ovation Awards and L.A. Ticketholder Awards. She leads innovative residencies and workshops at campuses across the U.S., bringing diverse pedagogical methods combining technical focus, tools and approaches for connecting, and a sense of inner confidence, mindfulness, centering, and presence.

Cody Ray

Cody Ray is currently pursuing a doctor of musical arts in wind conducting at The University of Texas at Austin where he studies with professor Jerry Junkin and serves as a graduate teaching assistant for University Bands. He received his bachelor of arts in music education from the University of Alabama at Birmingham under the mentorship of Dr. Sue Samuels, Dr. Gene Fambrough, Dr. Cara Morantz, and Dr. Sean Murray, and a master of music in wind conducting from Tte University of South Carolina (’24) studying under Dr. Cormac Cannon, Dr. Jay Jacobs, and Dr. Quintus Wrighten. Prior to his graduate studies, Cody served as the assistant director of bands at Cairo High School in Cairo, GA from 2020-2022. Before coming to Cairo, he also served as director of bands at Sipsey Valley High/Middle School from 2019-2020 and director of bands at Sulligent High School from 2018-2019. His professional affiliations include the National Association for Music Education, the College Band Directors National Association, and the National Band Association.

Cliff Croomes

Cliff Croomes serves as the Associate Director of Bands and Director of the Longhorn Band at the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to this appointment, Croomes was the Assistant Director of Bands at Louisiana State University and the Music Director and Principal Conductor of the Civic Orchestra of Baton Rouge. Previous to his appointment the faculty he studied at LSU for his Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees. Dr. Croomes earned his Bachelor of Music Studies degree from the University of Texas at Austin and is an alumnus of the Cavaliers Drum and Bugle Corps from Rosemont, Illinois. He has performed with ensembles throughout the United States, London, Paris, Switzerland, Germany, Italy and consulted throughout Japan. Dr. Croomes holds an endorsement with Innovative Percussion Inc. and is a founding board member of the composer diversity initiative “And We Were Heard” as well as a member of the Dr. William P. Foster Project advisory board. Dr. Croomes also holds an honorary membership in Kappa Kappa Psi.

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Symphony Band

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