Program

Composers

Julie Giroux

Giroux was born in Fairhaven, Massachusetts. She graduated from Ouachita Parish High School, in Monroe, Louisiana, and earned a Bachelor of Music in Performance from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. During her college years, Giroux composed several concert band works which were published by Southern Music Company. Immediately after graduation she traveled to Los Angeles, California, and began orchestrating under the employ of American composer Bill Conti for the Television Mini Series North and South. While in Los Angeles Giroux studied with several composers and orchestrators including Bill Conti, Jack Eskew and Greg McRitchie.

From 1985 to 1997, Julie Giroux orchestrated for television and films including April Fool's Day, Dynasty, North and South, North and South Book II, The Karate Kid Part II, Broadcast News, Masters of the Universe, White Men Can't Jump, and Blaze.

In 1997, Giroux began to compose heavily for concert bands and orchestras publishing exclusively with Musica Propria. In 2004 Gia Publications, Inc. published the book entitled "Composers on Composing for Band, Volume Two" which features a chapter written by Julie Giroux. Her insightful chapter gives a down to earth description which is often humorous of her personal methods and techniques for composing for bands.

In 2009, Giroux, an accomplished pianist, performed her latest work Cordoba for Solo Piano and Concert Band in five U.S. cities and attended the premiere of Arcus IX, a work for Solo F Tuba and Concert Band at Blinn College in Brenham, Texas.

Her 2009 Film and documentary orchestrations and compositions include the ongoing project "Call for Green China" which was primarily funded by World Bank was recorded, performed and broadcast live in China in 2007. In 2009 the project was extended with new musical material, recorded and set to tour seven cities in China where the show will be performed live.

Giroux's Symphony No. V "Elements" by the Eastern Wind Symphony, featuring Conductor Todd Nichols premiered on June 9, 2018. Her trumpet concerto commissioned by Conductor Ray Cramer, The Musashino Academia Musicae and principal trumpet Christopher Martin (trumpeter) of the New York Philharmonic premiered by the commissioners at The Midwest Clinic in December 2018.

An advocate of gun control and mental health awareness, Mrs. Giroux composed the work My Soul to Keep as a way to fight violence with music. In addition to its poignant lyrics and music, Giroux has made the work "Free, for everybody, forever". She has created several different settings, from acapella SATB choir to symphonic band with choir. Orchestral and vocal arrangements will also be added. The premiere took place in Orlando, Florida, the place of the second largest mass shooting in the U.S., with the Pride Bands Alliance Symphonic Band on October 13, 2019. The next large concert will be in Las Vegas, Nevada in October 2020, the site of the largest mass shooting in American history.

Giroux is a Member of American Bandmasters Association (ABA) and an honorary brother of the Omicron chapter of Kappa Kappa Psi at West Virginia University. She was initiated into the fraternity on April 2, 2005, and in December, 2017 she was awarded the Distinguished Service to Music Medal.

Julie Giroux currently resides in Madison, Mississippi and continues to compose, orchestrate and arrange for television, movies, video games, wind bands and orchestras.

Leonard Bernstein

Leonard Bernstein (/ˈbɜːrnstaɪn/ BURN-styne; born Louis Bernstein; August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, pianist, music educator, author, and humanitarian. Considered to be one of the most important conductors of his time, he was the first American-born conductor to receive international acclaim. Bernstein was "one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history" according to music critic Donal Henahan. Bernstein's honors and accolades include seven Emmy Awards, two Tony Awards, and 16 Grammy Awards (including the Lifetime Achievement Award) as well as an Academy Award nomination. He received the Kennedy Center Honor in 1981.

As a composer, Bernstein wrote in many genres, including symphonic and orchestral music, ballet, film and theatre music, choral works, opera, chamber music, and pieces for the piano. Bernstein's works include the Broadway musical West Side Story, which continues to be regularly performed worldwide, and has been adapted into two (1961 and 2021) feature films, as well as three symphonies, Serenade (after Plato's Symposium) (1954) and Chichester Psalms (1965), the original score for Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront (1954), and theater works including On the Town (1944), Wonderful Town (1953), Candide (1956), and his Mass (1971).

Bernstein was the first American-born conductor to lead a major American symphony orchestra. He was music director of the New York Philharmonic and conducted the world's major orchestras, generating a legacy of audio and video recordings. Bernstein was also a critical figure in the modern revival of the music of Gustav Mahler, in whose music he was most interested. A skilled pianist, Bernstein often conducted piano concertos from the keyboard. He shared and explored classical music on television with a mass audience in national and international broadcasts, including Young People's Concerts with the New York Philharmonic.

Bernstein worked in support of civil rights; protested against the Vietnam War; advocated nuclear disarmament; raised money for HIV/AIDS research and awareness; championed Janis Ian at age 15 and her song about interracial love, "Society's Child", on his CBS television show; and engaged in multiple international initiatives for human rights and world peace. He conducted Mahler's Resurrection Symphony to mark the death of president John F. Kennedy, and in Israel at a concert, Hatikvah on Mt. Scopus, after the Six-Day War. The sequence of events was recorded for a documentary entitled Journey to Jerusalem. Bernstein was a member of the executive committee for Writers and Artists for Peace in the Middle East, a pro-Israel group. On Christmas Day, 1989, Bernstein conducted a performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in Berlin to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall. Less than a year later, in October 1990, he died of heart attack in New York, aged 72.

Carl Maria Von Weber

Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst von Weber (c. 18 November 1786 – 5 June 1826) was a German composer, conductor, virtuoso pianist, guitarist, and critic in the early Romantic period. Best known for his operas, he was a crucial figure in the development of German Romantische Oper (German Romantic opera).

Throughout his youth, his father, Franz Anton [de], relentlessly moved the family between Hamburg, Salzburg, Freiberg, Augsburg and Vienna. Consequently he studied with many teachers—his father, Johann Peter Heuschkel, Michael Haydn, Giovanni Valesi, Johann Nepomuk Kalcher, and Georg Joseph Vogler—under whose supervision he composed four operas, none of which survive complete.[1] He had a modest output of non-operatic music, which includes two symphonies, two concertos and a concertino for clarinet and orchestra, a bassoon concerto, a horn concertino, two concertos and a Konzertstück for piano and orchestra, piano pieces such as Invitation to the Dance; and many pieces that featured the clarinet, usually written for the virtuoso clarinetist Heinrich Baermann.

His mature operas—Silvana (1810), Abu Hassan (1811), Der Freischütz (1821), Die drei Pintos (comp. 1820-21), Euryanthe (1823), Oberon (1826)—had a major impact on subsequent German composers including Marschner, Meyerbeer, and Wagner; his compositions for piano influenced those of Mendelssohn, Chopin and Liszt. His best-known work, Der Freischütz, remains among the most significant German operas.

Katahj Copley

Georgia native, Katahj Copley (he/him/his) premiered his first work, Spectra, in 2017 and hasn’t stopped composing since. As of now, Katahj has written over 100 works, including pieces for chamber ensembles, wind ensembles, and orchestra. His compositions have been performed and commissioned by universities, organizations, and professional ensembles, including the Cavaliers Brass, California Band Director Association, Admiral Launch Duo, and “The President’s Own” Marine Band. Katahj has also received critical acclaim internationally with pieces being performed in Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan, China, and Australia. 

Katahj received two Bachelor of Music degrees from the University of West Georgia in Music Education and Composition in 2021. In 2023, he received his Masters in Music Composition from the University of Texas at Austin - studying with Omar Thomas and Yevgeniy Sharlat. He is currently studying music composition at Michigan State University. 

Aside from composing, Katahj is an excited educator who teaches young musicians the joy of discovering music and why music is a phenomenal language.

 “Music for me has always been this impactful thing in my life. It can soothe, it can enrage, it can quiet, and it can evoke emotions that are beyond me and this world we live in. I believe that music is the ultimate source of freedom and imagination. The most freedom I have had as a musician was through composing. Composition is like me opening my heart and showing the world my drive, my passion, and my soul.”

Alfred Reed

Alfred Reed (born as Alfred Friedman) (January 25, 1921 – September 17, 2005) was an American neoclassical composer, with more than two hundred published works for concert band, orchestra, chorus, and chamber ensemble to his name. He also traveled extensively as a guest conductor (most notably for the Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra after the retirement of Frederick Fennell) and served as a professor at the University of Miami School of Music.