Concerto competition winner Curtis Prichard and Otis Murphy are featured on upcoming Wind Ensemble concert, April 2

03.27.2013 | Jacobs School of Music

compositeJacobs School student co-winner of the recent Brass Concerto Competition Curtis Prichard, euphonium, will perform with the IU Wind Ensemble on Tuesday night, April 2nd in Auer Hall at 8pm.

Prichard, a doctoral student studying with Dan Perantoni and M. Dee Stewart, will perform Martin Ellerby’s “Euphonium Concerto.” Prichard has performed throughout the United States and China as a featured soloist and a member of the internationally acclaimed Tennessee Tech Tuba Ensemble, Mr. Jack Daniel’s Original Silver Cornet Band, and the University of Michigan Symphony Band. His euphonium playing can be heard on albums of the Tech Tuba Ensemble, the Tubas Unlimited, the Tech Faculty Brass Arts Quintet, the University of Michigan Symphony Band and the IU Wind Ensemble. Prichard completed his master’s degree at the University of Michigan. Now a doctoral student at Jacobs, he is pursuing professional auditions while maintaining an active performance schedule.

Professor Otis Murphy will perform on the concert in the world premiere performance of David DeBoor Canfield’s saxophone concerto, “Elevator Music.” Otis Murphy holds the position of associate professor of music in the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. He is in great demand as an international soloist and clinician, having gained wide recognition on four continents: North America (United States and Canada), Europe (Austria, Belgium, England, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Scotland, Spain, Switzerland and Wales), Asia (Japan, Singapore and Taiwan), and Australia. Murphy has performed in some of the great concert halls of the world including Isaac Stern Concert Hall in Miyazaki, Japan; Merkin Concert Hall in New York City; Palau de la Musica in Valencia, Spain; the Strathmore in Washington, D. C.; Opera City Concert Hall in Tokyo, Japan; Palacio Euskalduna in Bilbao, Spain; Phoenix Hall in Osaka, Japan; and Casals Hall in Tokyo.

Pulitzer Prize winning composer Kevin Puts will be represented with a performance of his “Millennium Canons,” premiered at Symphony Hall in Boston with the Boston Pops Orchestra under the direction of Keith Lockhart.

Also on the program are classic works of Percy Grainger (Irish Tune), Walter Piston (Tunbridge Fair) and Percy Fletcher (Vanity Fair).

REVIEW: (HT – Peter Jacobi, Concert and Symphonic Bands) New version of ‘The Upward Stream’ for wind ensemble tops contemporary program

02.08.2013 | Jacobs School of Music

HeraldTimesOnline.com

IU CONCERT AND SYMPHONIC BANDS

MUSIC REVIEW: New version of ‘The Upward Stream’ for wind ensemble tops contemporary program

By Peter Jacobi H-T Reviewer | pjacobi@heraldt.com
February 7, 2013

Indiana University’s Concert and Symphonic Bands took to the Musical Arts Center stage Tuesday evening to perform a program of works that, save for one by Bach, originated in contemporary times. And prove they did once again that the 20th century and beyond have brought forth musical blooms of all sorts and fashions.

The highlight among highlights came at evening’s end: a premiere of sorts, a new version for wind ensemble of “The Upward Stream,” written in 1985 by the American composer Russell Peck, as he put it, to express “the idea of rising against the downward current to explore moments of inspiration and significance at least for a time in the enjoyable triumph of life.”

Written originally for tenor saxophone soloist and orchestra, it had its rebirth Tuesday in a wind ensemble transcription by Scott Jones. On hand to solo was the Jacobs School of Music’s splendid saxophone artist Thomas Walsh. He joined the Symphonic Band, led by Jeffrey Gershman. Together, they gave music that stirred and whirled a topnotch workout. One heard moments of introspection and those of majesty. Walsh had the opportunity to make his tenor sax sing and dance; in splendid form, he took full advantage of that opportunity.

Gershman and his Symphonic Band began their portion of the evening with Steven Bryant’s 2012 “Ecstatic Fanfare,” a thickly orchestrated, lush and exhilarating exercise played with zest and crackerjack precision. Between the Bryant and the Peck, master’s candidate Christopher Dortwegt stepped upon the podium to conduct the band in a sumptuous transcription by Alfred Reed of a Bach air, “My Jesus! Oh, What Anguish.” To hear it so well played and sympathetically conducted was edifying.

Eric Smedley’s Concert Band opened the concert, providing four works of differing persuasions. Carol Bremer’s “Early Light” (1999) sought to recall and reflect childhood moments in a ball park, most particularly presentations of “The Star -Spangled Banner,” here obliquely quoted in a lively amalgam of sounds. Malcolm Arnold’s 1979 Prelude, Siciliano and Rondo features melodies and rhythms suggestive of British life and land. Maestro Smedly had his musicians playing not only persuasively but as a true ensemble.

Master’s candidate Paul De Cinque took charge for an admirable reading of Percy Grainger’s 1912 “Handel in the Strand,” a charming and frolicking item (originally written for violin, piano, and cello but later orchestrated by Richard Franko Goldman) meant to honor the range of British music, from the revered Handel to fondly remembered musical comedy.

Smedley and company ended their half of the program with Anthony Iannaccone’s 1979 “After a Gentle Rain,” a two-movement celebration of rainfall and its aftermath. In “The Dark Green Glistens with Old Reflections,” one reveled in music gentle to the ears. What followed, “Sparkling Air Bursts with Dancing Sunlight,” indeed sounded like energy refreshed and released.

Copyright: HeraldTimesOnline.com 2013

 

Professor Emeritus Ray Cramer elected to National Band Association Hall of Fame

01.17.2013 | Jacobs School of Music

Ray E. Cramer, professor emeritus and past chair of the Jacobs School of Music Department of Bands, has been elected to the National Band Association’s Hall of Fame of Distinguished Band Conductors.

As one of the highest honors given to an American Bandmaster, the induction ceremony will take place on Saturday, February 2 at Troy University in Troy, Alabama. In attendance at the ceremony will be chair of the Jacobs School Band Department, Professor Stephen Pratt.

While at IU, Cramer conducted the Wind Ensemble and Chamber Winds and taught graduate conducting, band history, and wind literature classes. He is past president of the Midwest Clinic, past president of the College Band Directors National Association and the Indiana Bandmasters Association. Mr. Cramer is in demand internationally as guest conductor, clinician, and adjudicator. He is a regular guest conductor of the Musashino Academy of Music Wind Ensemble in Tokyo.

History of the National Band Association Hall of Fame of Distinguished Conductors

The National Band Association Hall of Fame of Distinguished Conductors is located on the campus of Troy University in the Hawkins-Adams-Long Hall of Honor.  Troy University was selected in 1978 after a search was made by Dr. William Revelli, then president, and members of the National Band Association.  Dr. Revelli asked Dr. Al Wright of Purdue University to secure the very best place available.  Dr. Wright then contacted Dr. John M. Long, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Director of Bands, and a member of the Alabama Historical Commission, to consider possibility at Troy University.  Dr. Long contacted Dr. Ralph Adams, President of Troy State University, who said “We would be pleased and highly honored to house the Hall of Fame.”

The National Band Association, which is the largest band organization in the world accepted Dr. Adam’s offer and it was placed on the Troy campus.  The Hall of Fame opened in 1980 in Smith Hall and at this time, it was the only national hall of fame in Alabama.

Membership in the Hall of Fame is open to any American bandmaster in the United States. To qualify for nomination, a director has to be at least sixty-five years old, retired, and to have made a national reputation as a band conductor.  He or she must also have made national impact on the American band movement.  Anyone may nominate a director by submitting an application to the Chairman of the Board of Electors of the National Band Association.  The Board of Electors, which represents five national band organizations, then votes on the recommendation.

In 1995 Dr. Ralph Adams generously donated more than one million dollars to Troy University for a permanent home for the Hall of Fame where it is now housed.  Dr. Jack Hawkins, Jr., Chancellor of the Troy University System, has continued the great support to make the Hall of Fame a valuable asset to the university.

There are currently only fifty members that have been elected to the Hall of Fame of Distinguished Conductors.

Members of historical significance include Patrick Conway, Patrick Gilmore, Edwin Franko Goldman, Arthur Pryor, Ernest S. Williams, Herbert L. Clarke, Frederick Fellen, Alber Austin Harding, William D. Revelli and John Philip Sousa. Members with ties to the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music include Mark H. Hindsley, Director of the Marching Hundred from 1926-29, Frederick C. Ebbs, former Director of Bands 1967-1982 and Ray E. Cramer, former Director of Bands 1982-2005.

REVIEW: (HT – Concert and Symphonic Bands) Concert offers stomping march usually reserved for outdoor enjoyment

11.15.2012 | Jacobs School of Music

HeraldTimesOnline.com

MUSIC REVIEW: CONCERT AND SYMPHONIC BANDS

Concert offers stomping march usually reserved for outdoor enjoyment

By Peter JacobiH-T Reviewer | pjacobi@heraldt.com
November 15, 2012

Maestros Jeffrey Gershman and Eric Smedley each included a bonus rare for the indoor season of their Indiana University Concert and Symphonic Bands: a good old, plain old, tempt-your-feet-to-stomp march, this on their shared Tuesday night program in the Musical Arts Center.

Amidst the more serious compositions performed were a couple of pieces usually reserved for summer outdoor enjoyment. They were a delight to hear, the delight added to by the snappy and classy way they were played.

The Concert Band, which took the stage for the first half of the evening, turned to “The Purple Pageant” by Karl King, whose “Viking March” is so popular here, featuring as it does IU’s stand-up anthem of allegiance. “The Purple Pageant” honors Northwestern University and, more particularly, its long-time director of bands, Glenn Bainum, whose band maneuvers this writer enjoyed often during student and faculty years at that institution. Gershman and the Symphonic Band chose John Philip Sousa’s “Easter Monday on the White House Lawn,” a not-so-well-known item that, nevertheless, has all the typical ears-tempting Sousa touches.

There was, of course, more to appreciate.

Smedley led his ensemble in Alfred Reed’s “Russian Christmas Music,” a 1944 journey through melodies and developments suggestive of Russian choral traditions, music somber, sonorous, and appropriately performed that way, and then the 2006 Ron Nelson composition, “Autumn Rune: Pastorale,” a work mysterious in essence and meant to reflect the nature of epic poetry told by the Finns of long ago; Smedley built that composition’s climaxes sumptuously. Master’s Degree in Wind Conducting candidate Trae Blanco directed the Concert Band skillfully in a dazzling exercise called “New Century Dawn,” written in 1999 by David Gillingham to mark the start of a new millenium. The music did sound like dawn breaking and sunlight emerging and hope springing forth. Gershman and the Symphonic Band added a flavorful variety of pieces, including two items requiring smaller numbers. For Joseph Schwantner’s 1996 “In evening’s stillness,” the stage was reconfigured to seat a chamber group of woodwind players on one side, an equal-sized brass group on the other, with a Steinway between. Benjamin Watkins sat at and conquered the Steinway along with a goodly portion of the score, which portrayed the commanding yet calming silences and winds of nature.

David Maslanka’s “Coming Home,” part of a 2005 concerto for clarinet and wind ensemble called “Desert Roads,” gave soloist Lilly Haley a wealth of opportunities to show what she can do, which seemed to be quite a lot. Haley and her colleagues, guided by Gershman, treated the lovely, song-like music with tender care.

Another master’s-in-conducting candidate, Paul DeCinque, selected Aaron Copland’s “Variations on a Shaker Melody” for his moments with the Symphonic Band. He did not waste them. The noble reading of that sweet and simple tune, as arranged and transfigured by the variations, was the obvious result of thoughtful preparation. Gershman took to the podium to end the concert spiritedly with William Schuman’s expansive adaptation of the William Billings anthem from American revolutionary time, “Chester.”

Copyright: HeraldTimesOnline.com 2012

Wind Ensemble hosts Election Night concert in Auer Hall

11.06.2012 | Jacobs School of Music

The Jacobs School’s Wind Ensemble, conducted by Stephen W. Pratt, offers a free Election Night concert this evening at 8pm in Auer Hall, ending well before the results are tallied!

The concert will feature Professor William Ludwig, who will perform The Avatar: Concerto for Bassoon and Chamber Winds by Dana Wilson. The three movement concerto displays the unique qualities of the bassoon and the wonderful musical interpretation of the soloist. He’ll be joined on the concerto by Chih-Yi Chen, performing the very extensive piano part, along with many of the principal players of the IU Wind Ensemble. 

Other items of interest include the world premiere of the wind ensemble version of Plenty of Horn by David Stock, a piece composed for Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony. The wind version has just been completed by Dr. John Boyd, emeritus professor from Indiana State University. Florent Schmitt’s original composition for wind band, Dionysiaques, was composed in 1913 for the finest musicians in Paris. It is a tour-de-force which will conclude the concert.

Other works by Percy Grainger, Warren Benson, William Bolcom and Claude Debussy will also be performed.

Two-Day Music Festival features Jacobs Students

10.18.2012 | Jacobs School of Music

The music division of Indiana University’s Business Careers in Entertainment Club (BCEC) is pleased to present Bloomingtone on Friday, October 19th and Saturday October 20th  in multiple venues in downtown Bloomington. The festival will include a couple of Jacobs School of Music talented students:

Student of Dee Stewart, Cameron Smith (Bass Trombone) will be DJing as DJ Turbo at Kilroy’s Sports Bar on October 19th, at 10pm.

Marshall Robbins (jazz guitar) will open the evening at Cafe Django in his combo featuring a bass and drum at 7pm.

Student of Steve Houghton, Mitch Shiner’s (jazz percussion) trio will play at Cafe Django at 9pm.

The Anderson Sextet featuring Jacobs School of Music students Nate Anderson (drums), Sookin Jeong (piano), Marshall Robbins (jazz guitar), Keith Jost (bass), Christian Allmendinger (trumpet), and Drew Lefkowith (saxophone), will perform at Cafe Django at 10pm.

Kevin Miescke (French Horn):and the quartet Cor 4 will perform at Serendipity at 7:15pm.

Leighann Daihl, Mee Jung Ahn, and Pei-San Chiu (student of Early Music professor Michael McCraw) will perform with early wind instruments at Serendipity at 8pm.

Andrew Lunsford (Tenor) will serenade at Serendipity at 8:45pm

Roy Park (clarinet) will be playing with The Park Trio at Serendipity at 9:30pm.

Evan Chapman (percussion ) and fellow Jacobs percussion students of the quartet Square Peg Round Hole will be performing at Serendipity at 10:15pm.

Diederick van Wassenaer (violin) will be playing fiddle with the bluegrass band The Underhills at Max’s Place at 11:30pm.

DM student Kyle Glaser receives Research Grant by National Band Association

09.24.2012 | Jacobs School of Music

Congratulations to Kyle Glaser, DM Wind Conducting student, who has won a research grant by the National Band Association. At the completion of his doctoral document, he will receive the award and his research document, “Robert Russell Bennett’s Lost Suite for Band:  Down to the Sea in Ships,” will be printed in the NBA Journal. 

The National Band Association, founded on September 11, 1960, is the largest band directors’ professional organization in the world. It was organized for the purpose of promoting the musical and educational significance of bands and is dedicated to the attainment of a high level of excellence for bands and band music.

Among many projects, the NBA awards grants to NBA members who conduct research on topics that pertain to bands. 

Glaser completed his doctoral work in May. He is newly appointed to the music faculty at Texas State University and will begin in August.

Kenyan Band Members visit the Jacobs School

09.24.2012 | Jacobs School of Music

Two members of the prestigious Kenyan Administration Police Band (APB), Charles Njoka and Samson Gikunda, will be visiting the Jacobs School for two weeks of interactions with faculty, students, and Bloomington public schools, starting September 21. Alumnus Diana Nixon (DM ’10), faculty member Kim Carballo, and sophomore vocal performance student Liz Nixon visited Nairobi last March, providing performances, master classes, and coaching to high school, university, and adult musicians, including members of the APB. Now the APB members are coming to the U.S. to return the favor.

Kyle Glaser appointed to band faculty at Texas State University-San Marcos

07.26.2012 | Jacobs School of Music

Alumnus Kyle Glaser, DM’12, was recently appointed to the faculty of Texas State University-San Marcos as associate director of bands. He will conduct several ensembles, including the Bobcat Marching Band, the Texas State University Symphonic Winds, and the men’s and women’s basketball bands. In addition, he will teach courses in arranging and conducting. Read more.

Review: Grantham’s works in spotlight; ensemble lives up to its name

04.25.2012 | Jacobs School of Music

Grantham’s works in spotlight; ensemble lives up to its name

By Peter Jacobi H-T Reviewer | pjacobi@heraldt.com
April 22, 2012

click here for original article

Reflections on two evenings spent listening to music mostly new to this writer:

Band festival

The annual “Spring Festival of Winds, Brass and Percussion” in Indiana University’s Musical Arts Center on Wednesday focused heavily on works by Donald Grantham, an award-winning composer who was present to hear his works performed.

The festival concert makes room for all three of the Jacobs School’s concert band ensembles. Each included a work of Grantham’s as part of its evening fare. In total, the chosen compositions proved Grantham to be not only a skilled craftsman but a creative artist with something to say.

Led by Eric Smedley, the Concert Band, which took the stage first, performed “Kentucky Harmony,” built from pieces found in an early 19th century collection of shape-note hymn tunes set in four parts. What was once vocal, Grantham had recast in 2000 for band. The results were harmonically bracing and illuminating, casting an aural light on historically important music that once had roused the faithful. Smedley and his players caught the fervor and provided the technical precision to make the old harmonies stir listeners once again.

Conductor Jeffrey Gershman selected Grantham’s “Baron Cimetiere’s Mambo” for his Symphonic Band. Here was a Haitian-inspired adventure in wild rhythms and chilling atmosphere, some of that suggesting the influence of voodoo. The composition’s title refers to the guardian of cemeteries in island lore. The performance hinted at the sinister but also turned appropriately flamboyant, almost flaming in intensity.

Grantham’s 1999 “J’ai ete au bal” had Stephen Pratt and the Wind Ensemble as its champions. A celebration of Cajun and New Orleans brass music, its flavors, as realized by the musicians, were infectious and intoxicating.

The non-Grantham repertoire included (for the Concert Band) John Barnes Chance’s keep-the-musicians-busy “Blue Lake Overture,” effectively conducted by David Woodley; (for the Symphonic Band) Percy Grainger’s effervescent “Molly on the Shore” and the galloping “Dance of the Jesters” by Tchaikovsky; (for the Wind Ensemble) Borodin’s mood-soaked “Polovtsian Dances,” written for the opera “Prince Igor,” and a playfully orchestrated and inventive “Symphonic Synthesis” by Bloomington’s David DeBoor Canfield.

A night later

On Friday in Auer Hall, the New Music Ensemble introduced three absolutely new works, adding another of 2011 origin and a vintage 1971 composition.

One of the “absolutely new” was Paul Moravec’s “Parnas Duo” which, in fact, received a “preview performance,” a pre-premiere reading by the sisters Parnas, violinist Madalyn and cellist Cicely, Jacobs students for whom the piece was written and who will officially premiere it in New York later this week. Moravec supplied the sisters with listenable material that shows off their considerable talents for purity of tone, for stretching the technical capacities of their instruments, and for intuitively capturing the essences of contemporary music.

A 16-person New Music Ensemble, authoritatively led by David Dzubay, tackled Francisco Cortez Alvarez’ “No llores,” winner of the Dean’s Prize Commission.

IU doctoral candidate Alvarez both honors the traditions of his homeland Mexico and bemoans its current chaotic state with an impressive tone poem that extols, accosts, accuses, mourns and ultimately expresses hope.

Tonia Ko’s “Many Splendid Forgettings” gained a premiere performance as winner of the Georgina Joshi Composition Commission Award. Astutely scored for tenor and nine instrumentalists, the work sets to music elegiacally a Paul Gaugin letter about memory, in drunkenly fractured method a Li T’ai Po poem called “A Statement of Resolutions after Being Drunk on a Spring Day,” and with melodic simplicity three haiku by Basho Matsuo about nature prompting memories. David Margulis excelled as vocalist. Dzubay kept him and the ensemble balanced dynamically.

Visiting guest composer Dorothy Chang, possessor of an IU doctorate and teacher at the University of British Columbia, was represented by “Three Windows,” an absorbing three-movement flowering of 21st century Impressionism. One could picture “Streams and Strata,” then an eagle “soft and silent, encircling high,” and, finally, urban encroachment on the beauties of nature in the concluding “Metal on Wood.” With sensitivity, Dzubay guided 16 players through an environment obviously loved by Chang, the shaper of its contours.

Friday’s program opened with the late Stefan Wolpe’s Piece for Trumpet and Seven Instruments. The composer could not have asked for better blasts, bleats and blares than soloist Eddie Ludema lavishly showered on his obstreperous handiwork.

See another Jacobi review, page B8.

 

Copyright: HeraldTimesOnline.com 2012