News

The Lee University Wind Ensemble will make its first performance of the semester on Wednesday, Oct. 9 at 7:30 p.m. in the Conn Center. This 52-member organization is auditioned from the best wind and percussion musicians on campus, regardless of degree plan.

“This year’s ensemble has the largest turnover of students in recent history with 15 new performers,” said Conductor Dr. David Holsinger. “I am excited about the talents each of the new members brings to the ensemble and how quickly the new players have adjusted to the level expected from the band members.”

The concert will feature compositions from five composers. The ensemble will open the concert with Claude T. Smith’s “Festival Variations,” written in 1985 for the United States Air Force Band. Its technical passages coupled with romanticism ranks it as one of the monumental compositions of the 20th century for winds and percussion.

The ensemble will also present the Tennessee premiere of “Somnia Mortem,” composed by Franklin Piland, a 23-year-old student of Donald Grantham at the University of Texas. The piece was inspired by the poetry of Khalil Gibran.

A familiar name, but an unfamiliar work, takes center stage in the concert with Gustav Holst’s “Moorside Suite.” This three-movement work is a masterwork of Holst’s maturity. Written in 1928, six years before his death, it achieves a synthesis of his creative talent as a composer with the folk-song influences of 20 years earlier.

Richard Saucedo, noted band composer, has penned an arrangement of Samuel Barber’s art song, “Sure on This Shining Night,” for winds. Barber, typically associated with his “Adagio for Strings,” was one of the most celebrated composers of 20th century neo-romanticism.

The concert will close with David Maslanka’s Symphony in “Two Movements: Give Us This Day.” This piece concludes with a modal setting of the choral melody “Vater unser in Himmelreich (Our Father in Heaven), no. 110 from the 371 four-part chorales” by Johann Sebastian Bach.

John Philip Sousa’s “Foshay Tower Washington Memorial” is prepared as an encore for the concert.

This event is free and open to the public.

For more information, please contact Lee’s School of Music at 423-614-8240.