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Educational Matinee Information Packet WVU Wind Symphony, March 10, 2020 Country Living!

Purpose of the series

The WVU School of Music is offering a series of weekday matinee performances, open to all grades and ages from public schools, private schools and homeschool groups. The performances provide an opportunity to enhance school curriculum and to expose students to the arts. Performances start at 10:00 a.m. and are typically 60 minutes in length without intermission. The WVU School of Music ensembles will include Symphony Orchestra, Percussion Ensemble, University Chorus, Wind Symphony, and Jazz Ensembles.

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Ensemble background and history

The WVU Wind Symphony is one of six ensembles within the WVU Bands program. It consists of approximately 50 of the finest wind and percussion performers at West Virginia University. The Wind Symphony performs a wide range of musical genres ranging from traditional wind band works, marches, and orchestral transcriptions to more contemporary works and even popular selections. The ensemble has performed at prestigious concert venues such as Symphony Hall in Chicago and Carnegie Hall in New York City.

Director spotlight

Dr. Scott Tobias currently serves as Director of Bands and Associate Professor of Music at West Virginia University where his responsibilities include conducting the WVU Wind Symphony, teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in conducting, and providing administrative leadership for the WVU Bands program. Prior to coming to West Virginia University, Dr. Tobias served on the faculties of the University of Central Florida and Appalachian State University. He also previously served as a high school band director in the public schools of Georgia and South Carolina. Dr. Tobias is a recipient of the National Band Association Citation of Excellence, the University of North Carolina Board of Governors Excellence in Teaching Award, and has been named to Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers. He currently serves as President of the National Band Association and President of the Big 12 Band Directors Association.

Overall theme of the performance – Country Living!

The Wind Symphony will present highlights from their March 9th concert entitled Country Living. The works on this program were loosely associated, by title, with scenes from life in the country. Images referenced include scenes from hiking in the Shenandoah Valley, the sounds of a small country church, a turn of the century county fair, and a joyride on back country roads.

Composers backgrounds and compositional ideas

Four different composers are represented on this program of five works. Three of the composers are alive today with one having lived in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Those composers are Michael Markowski (b. 1986), Omar Thomas (b. 1984), Donald Grantham (b. 1947), and John Philip Sousa (1854-1932).

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joyRiDE / Michael Markowski (b. 1986)

n the summer of 2005, I was on stage at Carnegie Hall in New York City playing alto saxophone as a senior in my high school band. The concert lineup: Grainger, de Meij, Mackey, and just under three minutes I of Markowski

When my band director, Jon Gomez, first received word that our high school music department was selected to perform in New York, he asked me if I’d like to write something to open the concert and commemorate the trip – something that was bursting with joy. “Maybe,” he suggested, “it would be cool to take something more traditional, like Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, and blend it with something more modern, like John Adams.” The idea was so simple and so astounding that the assignment excited me immediately – it excited me so much that within ten days, I had completed the first complete draft of joyRiDE, a two-and-a-half-minute concert opener that borrows Beethoven’s infamous melody and dresses it in a tie-dye blazer of rhythm and texture that nod humbly to John Adams’ Short Ride In A Fast Machine. - Michael Markowski

Southern Harmony / Donald Grantham (b. 1947)

n 1835, William “Singin’ Billy” Walker’s songbook Southern Harmony was first published. This remarkable collection contains, according to its title page, “a choice collection of tunes, hymns, psalms, odes, and I anthems; selected from the most eminent authors in the United States.” In fact, few of the numbers in the book are identified as the work of a particular composer. Many are folksongs (provided with religious texts), others are traditional sacred tunes, while some are revival songs that were widely known and sung throughout the south. The book was immensely popular, selling an amazing 600,000 copies, and was commonly stocked “along with groceries and tobacco” in general stores across the American frontier.

The music of Southern Harmony has a somewhat exotic sound to modern audiences. The tunes often use modal or pentatonic rather than major or minor scales. The harmony is event more out of the ordinary, employing chord position, voice leading and progressions that are far removed from the European music that dominated concert halls at the time.

In his use of several tunes from Southern Harmony, the composer has attempted to preserve the flavor of the original vocal works in a setting that fully realizes the potential of the wind ensemble and the individual characteristics of each song.

Shenandoah / Omar Thomas (b. 1984)

he song Shenandoah is one of the most well-known and beloved Americana folk songs. Originally a river song detailing the lives and journeys of fur traders canoeing down the Missouri River, the symbolism of T this culturally-significant melody has been expanded to include its geographic namesake – an area of the eastern United States that encompasses West Virginia and a good portion of the western part of Virginia – and various parks, rivers, counties, and academic institutions found within.

Back in May 2018, after hearing a really lovely duo arrangement of Shenandoah while adjudicating a music competition in Minneapolis, I asked myself, after hearing so many versions of this iconic and historic song, how would I set it differently? I thought about it and thought about it and thought about it, and before I realized it, I had composed and assembled just about all of this arrangement in my head by assigning bass notes to the melody and filling in the harmony in my head afterwards. I would intermittently check myself on the piano to make sure what I was imaging worked, and ended up changing almost nothing at all from what I’d heard in my mind’s ear.

This arrangement recalls the beauty of Shenandoah Valley, not bathed in golden sunlight, but blanketed by low- hanging clouds and experiencing intermittent periods of heavy rainfall (created with a combination of percussion textures, generated both on instruments and from the body). There are a few musical moments where the sun attempts to pierce through the clouds, but ultimately the rains win out. This arrangement of Shenandoah is at times mysterious, somewhat ominous, constantly introspective, and deeply soulful. - Omar Thomas

The Fairest of the Fair / John Philip Sousa (1854-1932)

he Fairest of the Fair is generally regarded as one of Sousa’s finest and most melodic marches, and its inspirations came from the sight of a pretty girl with whom he was not even acquainted. It was an T immediate success and has remained one of his most popular compositions. It stands out as one of the finest examples of the application of pleasing melodies to the restrictive framework of a military march.

The Boston Food Fair was an annual exposition and music jubilee held by the Boston Retail Grocers’ Association. The Sousa Band was the main musical attraction for several seasons, so the creation of a new march honoring the sponsors of the 1908 Boston Food Fair was the natural outgrowth of a pleasant business relationship.

In fairs before 1908, Sousa had been impressed by the beauty and charm of one particular young lady who was the center of attention of the displays in which she was employed. He made a mental note that he would someday transfer his impressions of her into music. When the invitation came for the Sousa Band to play a twenty-day engagement in 1908, he wrote this march. Remembering the comely girl, he entitled the new march The Fairest of the Fair. - Paul Bierley

Come Sunday, II. Shout! / Omar Thomas (b. 1984)

ome Sunday is a two-movement tribute to the Hammond organ’s central role in black worship services. The first movement, Testimony, follows the Hammond organ as it readies the congregation’s hearts, minds, and

Cspirits to receive The Word via a magical union of Bach, blues, jazz, and R&B. The second movement, Shout!, is a virtuosic celebration – the frenzied and joyous climactic moments when The Spirit has taken over the service.

The title is a direct nod to Duke Ellington, who held an inspired love for classical music and allowed it to influence his own work in a multitude of ways. To all the black musicians in wind ensemble who were given opportunity after opportunity to celebrate everyone else’s music but our own – I see you and I am you. This one’s for the culture! - Omar Thomas

**Winner of the 2019 National Band Association Revelli Composition Contest**

WVU Wind Symphony

FLUTE Bb CLARINET Jacob LaBarge Madisyn Becker Long Island, NY ~ Music Performance (BM) Alexandria, KY ~ Music (BA) & Economics (BS) Emily Loh Kell Campbell Wheeling, WV ~ Forensic Biology (BS) Parkersburg, WV ~ Music Performance (BM) Lydia Moenssen * Liliana Farabaugh Mount Clemens, MI ~ Music Performance (BM) Ridgeley, WV ~ Mathematics (BS) Juan Carlos Narvaez Adrienne Hafley Elizabeth, NJ ~ Music Performance (BM) Union, KY ~ Chemistry (BS) Ethan Nylander Chase Hogan Middletown, DE ~ Music Performance (BM) Elkridge, MD ~ Music Performance (BM) Tyler Schmidt Emma Locarnini Sudlersville, MD ~ Music Performance (BM) Charles Town, WV ~ Music Performance (BM) Rachel Pellegreen Fredericksburg, VA ~ Music Education (BM) OBOE Claire Roth Paul Converse * Annandale, VA ~ Environ. Soil & Water Science (BS) Nokesville, VA ~ Music Performance (BM) Nick Schlie * Ashley Knox Hebron, KY ~ Music Performance (BM) Ripley, WV ~ Music Composition (BM) EJ Wogaman Springfield, VA ~ Music Education (BM) BASS CLARINET Mandi Bearjar Summerhill, PA ~ Music Education (BM) BASSOON Bohdan Shevchenko * Kamianske, Ukraine ~ Music Performance (MM)

ALTO SAXOPHONE EUPHONIUM Micah Buser Kyle Steindler * Ridgeley, WV ~ Music Education (BM) Manassas, VA ~ Music Performance (BM) Eric Domanico * South Lyon, MI ~ Music Education (BM) TUBA Aaron Freeman * TENOR SAXOPHONE Annandale, VA ~ Music Education (BM) Kayla Tokar Joshua Sheppard Uniontown, PA ~ Music (BA) Havre de Grace, MD ~ Music Education (BM) Cameron Tefft Woodbridge, VA ~ Music Performance (BM) BARITONE SAXOPHONE Nathaniel Penven Blacksburg, VA ~ Music Education (BM) DOUBLE BASS Jacob Hardy Martinsburg, WV ~ Music Industry (BA) HORN Natalie Jackson * Rochester, NY ~ Music Performance (MM) PERCUSSION Annie Moon Nick DeLancey Frostburg, MD ~ Music Education (BM) Weirton, WV ~ Music Education (BM) Isaac Price Dimitri Georgantonis Paden City, WV ~ Music Education (BM) East Rochester, NY ~ Music Education (BM) Haley Smith Nate Kaniecki Fairfax, VA ~ Music Education (BM) Wheeling, WV ~ Music Education (BM) Julia Stocking Ian Loft Lusby, MD ~ Music (BA) Burke, VA ~ Music Education (BM) Robert Shamblen Crofton, MD ~ Music Education (BM) TRUMPET Andrew Simonette * Lara Bonatesta Canonsburg, PA ~ Music Education (BM) Branchburg, NJ ~ Music Industry (BA) Andrew Strutz Alyssa Bumpus Mars, PA ~ Music Performance (BM) Ripley, WV ~ Music Education (BM) Zack Busch Griffithsville, WV ~ Music Industry (MA) PIANO Jonna Dwyer Matthew McCurry Davidsonville, MD ~ Music (BA) & Spanish (BA) Assistant Director of Bands ~ West Virginia University David Riggs * Wilmington, NC ~ Music Performance (BM) Ben Wilson Parkersburg, WV ~ Music Industry (MM) * - denotes principal TROMBONE Grant Adams * Manassas, VA ~ Music Performance (BM) Andrew Ortega Titusville, PA ~ Music Performance (DMA) Douglas Shaffer Morgantown, WV ~ Music Education (BM) Alexander Strutz Mars, PA ~ Music Industry Studies (BA)

SCHOOL OF MUSIC PO BOX 6111 / Creative Arts Center Morgantown WV 26506-6111 www.music.wvu.edu Office: 304.293.5511 FAX: 304.293.7491 Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Institution