Henry Fillmore (1895-1982) Rolling Thunder (1982)

We open this afternoon’s program with the raucous Rolling Thunder circus march. It features our superb trombone section. Not coincidently, the trombone was Fillmore’s primary instrument.

James Henry Fillmore Jr. was born in Cincinnati, OH. His father was a composer of gospel music and was a highly religious presence in the Fillmore household. In fact, when his mother gave him a used trombone, young Henry and his mother kept it a secret from his father who believed the trombone was an uncouth and sinful instrument. Fillmore graduated from the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, after which he traveled around the United States as a bandmaster with his wife, exotic dancer Mabel May Jones.

In 1938, Fillmore moved to the area where he spent the rest of this life conducting area bands and composing marches and novelty pieces involving the trombone. He also wrote several works for the , and the , including Miami’s current fight song Miami U How-Dee-Doo.

Frank Ticheli (b. 1958) Postcard (1991)

Frank Ticheli is Professor of Composition at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music. He has written for orchestra, chamber ensemble, and choir, but he is perhaps best known for his more than twenty pieces for concert band. Recently, the Metropolitan Wind Symphony has performed his jazz inspired Blue Shades, the energetic Vesuvius and his beautifully melancholy Rest. The Metropolitan Wind Symphony has commissioned Mr. Ticheli for a new composition for wind band as part of a three-ensemble consortium. The Metropolitan Wind Symphony will premiere the resulting composition in May 2017.

About Postcard, the composer writes the following: Postcard was commissioned by my friend, colleague, and former mentor, H. Robert Reynolds, in memory of his mother, Ethel Virginia Curry. He requested that I compose not an elegy commemorating her death, but a short energetic piece celebrating her life. In response, I have composed this brief "postcard" as a musical reflection of her character -- vibrant, whimsical, succinct. It is cast in an ABA' form. The primary theme, first heard in the flute and clarinet and used in the outer sections, is a palindrome -- that is, it sounds the same played forwards or backwards. This theme honors a long-standing tradition in the Reynolds family of giving palindromic names (such as Hannah and Anna) to their children. H. Robert Reynolds' first name is Harrah. The theme's symmetry is often broken, sometimes being elongated, other times being abruptly cut off by unexpected events. The B section is based on a five-note series derived from the name Ethel: E (E natural) T (te in the solfeggio system, B flat) H (in the German system, B natural) E (E-flat this time) L (la in the solfeggio system, A natural). The development of this motive can be likened to a journey through a series of constantly changing landscapes. The A' section is articulated by the return of the main melody. This section is not identical to the A section, but is close enough in spirit to it to give the effect of a large-scale palindrome surrounding the smaller ones. Postcard was completed in the summer of 1991. The University of Michigan Symphony Band premiered the work on April 17, 1992, under the baton of H. Robert Reynolds.

Carl Orff (1895-1982) (arr. John Krance) Carmina Burana (1936, 1965)

We close the first half of the program with the wind band arrangement of the seminal cantata Carmina Burana by the German composer Carl Orff. The original Carmina Burana (Latin for Songs from Beuern) was a manuscript of 254 poems and dramatic texts that were discovered at the Benedictine monastery of Benediktbeuern, Bavaria in 1803. It is believed that they were created and performed by traveling troubadours in the 11th through the 13th century. Though discovered in a monastery, these texts are most definitively secular, dealing in topics such as love (lust), drinking, gambling and satire against authority including the Catholic Church. Between 1935 and 1936, Carl Orff created a stage cantata incorporating 24 of the poems. The Frankfort Opera premiered the resulting work, Carmina Burana, in 1937. The work for orchestra and chorus remain popular to this day. Amazon sells over 100 different recordings of the Orff masterwork. In 1965, John Krance transcribed 13 of the 24 movements of the cantata for wind band. The movements are (note: some movements segue into the next): 1. O Fortuna, velut Luna (O Fortune, variable as the moon) 2. Fortune lango vulnera (I lament Fortune’s blows) 3. Ecce gratum (Behold the spring) 4. Tanz-Uf dem anger (Dance – On the lawn) 5. Floret silva (The noble forest) 6. Were diu werlt alle min (Were the world all mine) 7. Amor volat undique (The God of Love flies everywhere) 8. Ego sum abbas (I am the Abbot) 9. In taberna quando sumus (When we are in the tavern) 10. In trutina (I am suspended between love and chastity) 11. Dulcissime (Sweetest boy) 12. Ave formosissima (Hail to thee, most beautiful) 13. Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi (Fortune, Empress of the World) Carl Orff was born in the Bavarian city of Munich. As a child, he studied piano, organ and cello. He composed songs as well as music for puppet shows he presented to family. Orff attended the Munich Academy of Music until 1914. He then served in the German Army during World War I, where he was severely injured and nearly killed when a trench caved in. After the war, he held various positions at opera houses in Mannheim and Darmstadt. The other significant contribution Orff made was in the area of childhood music education, composing many musically challenging pieces for children, incorporating special melodic and percussion instruments. The Orff pedagogy is still used in music education to this day.

Jan Van der Roost (b. 1956) Dances of Innocence (2008)

Jan Van der Roost composed Dances of Innocence to commemorate a girl who passed away at the tender age of 14. In contrast to the somber, joyless tone such a memory usually invokes, it is a rather cheerful work that reflects the innocence and lightheartedness of a child. It does open in a serious mood, but quickly becomes more energetic and turns into a dance. Dances of Innocence is an ode to all the beauty, sincerity and cheerfulness that a child radiates.

Jan Van der Roost was born in Duffel, Belgium, in 1956. He studied trombone, history of music and musical education at the Lemmensinstituut in Leuven (Louvain) and continued his studies at the Royal Conservatoires of Ghent and Antwerp, where he qualified as a conductor and a composer.

At present, he teaches at the Lemmensinstituut in Leuven (Belgium), is special guest professor at the "Shobi Institute of Music" in Tokyo, guest professor at the "Nagoya University of Art" and visiting professor at Senzoku Gakuen in Kawasaki (Japan).

Lewis J. Buckley (b. 1947) Turkey in the Straw (1989)

Perhaps best known today as the ice cream truck song, Turkey in the Straw is an American folk song dating from the early 19th century. Originally a tune for fiddle players, it was first popularized in the late 1820s and early 1830s. The song's tune is derived from the ballad "My Grandmother Lived on Yonder Little Green" which was derivative of the Irish ballad "The Old Rose Tree.” The first published lyrics with the title Turkey in the Straw appeared in the 1861 by Dan Bryant, a leader of a blackface-performing troupe. In 1928, Turkey in the Straw was used as the base melody in the famous early Mickey Mouse cartoon Steamboat Willie. The rendering of the melody in the cartoon is noted for being one of the first instances of successful synchronization in animated films. Maestro Buckley offers his own comments on the arrangement: I was riding to work one morning with Turkey in the Straw stuck in my head. Every time I got to a certain point in the tune, I could just hear the trombone playing these four glissandi, and I thought it would be a great sound. It seemed so interesting that I went home that night and started working on it, just to hear the trombone passage. As I was working on it, I had some other interesting ideas (think Circus Waltz, Flute cadenza, Baritone Saxophone solo), and it turned out to be one of the most fun arrangements I've ever done. Warren Benson (1924-2005) The Solitary Dancer (1969)

As composer, conductor and performer Warren Benson was perhaps best known for his music for wind ensemble and percussion, and for his song cycles. Benson wrote over 150 works. While an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, Benson was the timpanist for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. He has performed under the baton of many of the 20th century master conductors including Eugene Ormandy, Fritz Reiner and Leonard Bernstein. Benson was largely self-taught in composition, found great inspiration in jazz and poetry, and was highly influenced by nature, languages, literature, and travel. To quote the introductory preface to this work, "The Solitary Dancer deals with quiet, poised energy that one may observe in a dancer in repose, alone with her inner music." Benson sought quiet excitement in The Solitary Dancer, and this goal is fulfilled with translucent orchestration and the constant manipulation of color, minimal melodic materials, and subtle dynamic nuances. Challenges in this piece are not necessarily technical; rather, performers are required to demonstrate control and restraint while maintaining sonorities for extended periods of time.

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) English Folk Song Suite (1923)

We close our concert with one of the four cornerstone works in the wind band repertoire, the English Folk Song Suite.

Prior to the mid-20th century, most band works were transcriptions of orchestral works, marches and band arrangements of popular music. There were few serious works for the wind band. These cornerstone works, all written early in the 20th century, provided the foundation for an explosion of new compositions for band that emerged in the final half of the century until now. The cornerstones include Percy Grainger’s Lincolnshire Posy, Gustav Holst’s First and Second Suites for Military Band and Ralph Vaughan William’s English Folk Song Suite. The Metropolitan Wind Symphony has been cycling through these works recently, ending the present cycle with our performance this afternoon. It is particularly important for young musicians, like the students performing with us today, to have an opportunity to experience these works at a high performance level.

The band of the Royal Military School of Music commissioned the originally titled Folk Song Suite. The premier was performed at Kneller Hall in West London on July 4, 1923. Source materials include various folk songs of the Norfolk and Somerset regions of England. Gordon Jacob, who was Vaughan William’s student and prolific band and orchestra composer in his own right, transcribed the suite for orchestra.

The suite contains three movements:

1. March: Seventeen Come Sunday 2. Intermezzo: My Bonny Boy 3. March: Folk Songs from Somerset

Ralph Vaughan Williams was an English composer, whose many compositions are regularly performed by orchestras around the world, including one of his most famous (and earliest) work: Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. He was a close friend and schoolmate of Gustav Holst and like Holst, was fascinated by English folk music. Like yet another contemporary, Percy Grainger, Vaughan Williams was concerned about the decline of the oral tradition that kept folk music alive in the British culture. Many of his works have roots in English folk culture as his way to keep the tradition going. This has given his compositions a distinctly English sound.

Program notes by Gregory C. Depp