ACC Music
ACC Wind Ensemble
Directed by Dr. Albert Lo
Tuesday, November 19th
7:00 PM
Highland Recital Hall
Embedded Files
Program
Program
Samuel Barber (1910-1981)
arr. Frank M. Hudson
Overture to the School for Scandal Op. 5
Yasuhide Ito (b. 1960)
Fantasia on a Bach Chorale Prelude
Arthur Pryor
arr. Tim Higgins
Blue Bells of Scotland
Soloist: Ian Vinciguerra, trombone
Arr. by Omar Thomas
Shenandoah
Richard Danielpour
Towards a Splendid City
Program Notes
SAMUEL BARBER
Overture to The School for Scandal Opus 5 (1931)
Samuel Barber was a 21-year-old student at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia when he composed his Overture to The School for Scandal. The title refers to Irish author Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s 1777 comic play. Barber noted that the Overture was not intended as a curtain raiser for performances of Sheridan’s work. Rather, Barber composed the piece “as a musical reflection of the play’s spirit.”
In April of 1933, Barber’s The School for Scandal Overture won Columbia University’s Joseph H. Bearns Prize. That August 30, the work received its premiere as part of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s final 1933 summer concert at the Robin Hood Dell, conducted by Alexander Smallens. The Overture was well received by an audience of almost eight thousand.
In the spring of 1938, both the New York Philharmonic and Cleveland Orchestra included Barber’s The School for Scandal Overture as part of New York concerts. On November 5 in New York, Arturo Toscanini conducted the NBC Symphony Orchestra in the world premieres of Barber’s Adagio for Strings and First Essay for Orchestra. That concert, broadcast nationwide, solidified Barber’s reputation as one of America’s most gifted young composers.
Although composed at the very outset of Samuel Barber’s career, The School for Scandal Overture features the melodic inspiration, colorful orchestration, and unerring sense of momentum that remained hallmarks of the American composer’s work. These qualities have assured The School for Scandal Overture’s continued presence in the concert repertoire.
YASUHIDE ITO
Fantasia on a Bach Chorale Prelude, O Mensch, bewein’ dein’ Sunde groB
“I have always been fascinated by Johann Sebastian Bach's music, ever since I was studying musical composition during my high school days in Hamamatsu. I have enjoyed very much playing Bach's chorales as well as their developed forms, the chorale preludes and fantasias on the piano, recognizing at the same time the fabulous architecture of Bach's music. Among the pieces I know, I came to notice that his excellence in note placements and part writings were most remarkably accomplished in the chorale prelude, O Mensch, bewein' dein' Snde gros (Oh Man, bewail your great sins) BWV622.
On September 11, 2001, I witnessed on TV the shocking images of the collapse of the twin towers of the World Trade Center, and mourned the fact that we have to embrace the beginning of the 21st century with such horror. The previous century has already seen all but too many wars. It was then that I came across this chorale in my mind.
At the very same period, I was commissioned to write a piece for the Chubu Japan Air Self-Defense Force Band, which I named Chorale Fantasia, a work inspired by the chorale. It premiered in 2002. This present rendition is a shortened version, and is eight minutes long, instead of the original 14 minutes. Instead of simply cutting the piece down, the details were meticulously modified during the reconstruction of the whole fantasia. It was commissioned by the wind ensemble of Hamamatsu Municipal High School and premiered in 2013.”
“For the opening, I quoted another arrangement of a chorale, BWV402, while a quote from BWV622 is presented in the final section, and with the middle section being a free-form variation of the same chorale. The irregular meter section starting from the 150th measure is based on The Seventh Seal I composed in 1979.”
- Program Note by composer
OMAR THOMAS
Shenandoah
“ 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 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 of 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 imagining 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.”
- Program Notes by the Composer
RICHARD DANIELPOUR
Towards A Splendid City
Toward the Splendid City was composed on commission from the New York Philharmonic. While composed as a portrait of New York, the city in which I live, it was written almost entirely away from home. Work on the piece began in Seattle in the spring of 1992 and was completed in mid-August of that year in Taos, New Mexico. At the time I was nearing the end of a year-long residency with the Seattle Symphony and had serious second thoughts about returning to New York. Life was always complicated in the city and easier, it seemed, everywhere else. I was, however, not without a certain pang of nostalgia for my hometown, and as a result Toward the Splendid City was driven by my love-hate relationship with New York. It was, needless to say, a relationship badly in need of resolution.
Eventually, upon returning to Manhattan, I began to understand that the humanity and difficulty of New York were inseparable -- and that if in the difficulties of urban life humanity is to be embraced, then the inconveniences must also be accepted.
Toward the Splendid City is, in addition to being a portrait of New York, a tribute to its Philharmonic Orchestra. The first performances took place in the first week of January 1996, with Leonard Slatkin conducting the Philharmonic.
Having written this work nearly 25 years ago, I now realize that it is also a snapshot of the city at a time when New York may have been at its most vibrant. I often look back at the 1980s and 1990s as having been something of an American equivalent to what Paris in the 1920s must have been like.
Part of what made New York feel so alive during that time was a sense of optimism that was felt by many of its citizens, and its landmarks -- the New York skyline, Central Park, Yankee Stadium, Fifth Avenue -- were, and to some extent still are visual manifestations of that optimism. Since 9/11, and following some of the financial challenges that the country has been wrestling with, this sense of optimism has faded somewhat, but the energy still to an extent remains.
Some of the sections in Toward the Splendid City have their own visual equivalents. I've always associated the beginning of the work with this special passing over the Triboro Bridge into Manhattan from the airport, with the famous skyline of New York on the left side. As a child I remember that and getting this rush of energy whenever I would see it. In the middle of the work, with its rumbling baseline ostinato, was composed with an accompanying image of entering the city by way of the Lincoln Tunnel. The somewhat ethereal section toward the end of the piece was my evocation of an airplane making its final descent with the lights of the city flickering and dancing below.
In 2016, Peter Stanley Martin proposed the idea of collaborating on a version of the work for wind band. I thought it was a wonderful idea and I was happily willing to give my support in his realizing the project. It is because of his vision and insight that a band version of Toward the Splendid City now exists. May this new edition continue to reawaken the sense of optimism that we all want to experience now or at any time.
The work’s title comes from the heading of Pablo Neruda’s 1974 Nobel Prize address, in which he included the following: “We must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence, to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song – but in this dance or in this song there are fulfilled the most ancient rites of our conscience in the awareness of being human.”
- Program Note by composer
ARTHUR PRYOR
Blue Bells of Scotland
One of them most well-known of all Scottish folksongs. The song was arranged by Arthur Pryor for trombone with accompaniment. This version is usually called Blue Bells of Scotland. It is most commonly played with a piano or concert band, but has also been performed with orchestra and brass band. Although the exact date is disputed due to some naming questions, Arthur Pryor probably composed his solo setting around 1899.
- Program Note from score
There are a number of versions of The Blue Bells of Scotland. The words featured on an 1803 broadside refer to a young Scotsman going off to fight for king and country during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1792-1815). Early ballads were dramatic or humorous narrative songs derived from folk culture that predated printing. Originally perpetuated by word of mouth, many ballads survived because they were recorded on broadsides. Musical notation was rarely printed, as tunes were usually established favorites. The term ballad eventually came to mean any kind of topical or popular verse.
- Program Note from Heritage Encyclopedia of Band Music
Pryor was widely regarded as one of the greatest trombone virtuosos, due to his impeccable technique and exquisite sound. He composed some 300 works, including enduring solos such as the Blue Bells of Scotland. Intended to showcase his impressive talents on a technically-limited instrument, many of Pryor’s solo compositions were written during a time when there were very few substantial solo pieces for the trombone.
- Program Note from U.S. Marine Band concert program, 2 February 2020
Wind Ensemble Roster
Wind Ensemble Roster
Flute
*Leilani Foreman (Principal)
Holly Livingston
Kierian Overbeek
Darwynne Thomas
Oboe
*Kai Vasquez (Principal)
Melanie Blanco
Zack Sansing
Bassoon
*Ivy James (Principal)
Kara Oldenhouse
Bb Clarinet
*Alexander Gonzales (Principal)
Louie Jasso
Valerie Flores
Chloe Powell
Austin Zellers
Bass Clarinet
Atrieus Venegas
Alto Saxophone
Quetzal Licea-Urvina
*Mayer Caballero (Principal)
*Eric Diaz (Co-Principal)
Tenor Saxophone
Daniel Hererra
Baritone Saxophone
Gavin North
Trumpet
*Clifford Brunswick (Principal)
**Nathan Harward (Co-Principal)
Justis Garza
Brady Lang
Carolina Sanchez
Jarif Garcia
French Horn
*Erick Colindres (Principal)
Michael O'Brien
Adrian Borjas
Trombone
*Ian Vinciguerra (Principal)
Antonio Gamez
Francisco Lainez
Courtney Williams (Trombone/Bass Trombone)
Jorge Castano
Euphonium
*Zach Burns (Principal)
Erik Zienner
Chris Blair-Chipman
Tuba
*Jesse Stoessel (Principal)
Tim Trevino
Percussion
*Jacob Shelton (Principal)
Randy Maldonado
Jamar Gooden
**Ajani Graham (Co-Principal)
Jessica Longoria Chavez
Margelle Tornado
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