Southwest Baptist
University News Release
Contact:
Charlotte Marsch, Director of Marketing and Communications
SBU Wind Symphony
concert is April 23
BOLIVAR, Mo. – Southwest Baptist University Department of Music presents “Spring in the Ozarks – A Celebration of the Season” featuring music performed by the SBU Wind Symphony at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 23, in Pike Auditorium on the Bolivar Campus. Works by Reed, Bryant, Iannaccone, Whitacre and Vaughan Williams are featured by the 55-member ensemble.
“The
music from this concert is connected to the spring season in some way,” said
Dr. Brian Hopwood, conductor and director of instrumental studies at SBU. “Many
of history’s great composers have been fascinated with spring and used this
season of rebirth, renewal and resurrection as inspiration in their compositions.
Works like Vivaldi’s ‘Spring’ from the ‘Four Seasons,’ Beethoven’s ‘Spring
Sonata’ (Violin Sonata in F, op. 24), the ‘Spring Symphony, op. 44’ by Benjamin
Britten for chorus and orchestra and ‘Schumann’s Symphony No. 1’ (Spring) are
but a few in this category.”
The
concert will open with Alfred Reed’s concert overture “The Hounds of Spring,” written on commission and
dedicated to the John L. Forster Secondary School Symphonic Band of Windsor,
Ontario. The inspiration and title comes from a 19th-century poem, “Atlanta in
Calydon,” a magical picture of young love in springtime. The setting is an
attempt to capture the twin elements of the poem, exuberant youthful gaiety and
the sweetness of tender love, in an appropriate musical texture. According to
composer Steven Bryant, “Dusk” is a “simple, chorale-like work [which] captures
the reflective calm of dusk, paradoxically illuminated by the fiery hues of
sunset. I’m always struck by the dual nature of this experience, as if
witnessing an event of epic proportions silently occurring in slow motion.”
Anthony
Iannaccone wrote “After a Gentle Rain” on a commission from the Eastern Michigan
Symphonic Band in 1979. Its two movements, “The Dark Green Glistens with Old
Reflections” and “Sparkling Air Bursts with Dancing Sunlight,” clearly paint mental
images for the listener. The work is to a certain degree both
quasi-programmatic and quasi-impressionistic. “Cloudburst,” by Eric Whitacre,
was originally composed for SATB choir and percussion in 1991 and was
transcribed on commission for wind band by the composer in 2001. Whitacre was
inspired to write the work after witnessing an actual (“breathtaking”) desert
cloudburst. The lyrics are based on the poem “The Broken Water Jug” by Octavio
Paz.
Whitacre
describes the two versions: “Where the choral version is intimate and delicate,
the version for winds is strong and assured, and to my ears it sounds like it’s
suddenly in Technicolor … on a 50-foot screen.”
The
program will conclude with a wind band cornerstone, “English Folk Song Suite”
by Ralph Vaughan Williams.
The
performance is free and open to the public. For more information, please call
Brian K. Hopwood, department of music, at (417) 328-1647 or e-mail him at
bhopwood@sbuniv.edu.
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Southwest
Baptist University is a leader among private universities in truly integrating
Christ-centered academic pursuits with comprehensive professional programs at
an affordable price. At SBU, the faculty and staff create a caring, academic
community to prepare students to be servant leaders in a global society. For
more information, visit www.SBUniv.edu.
