Program Notes

THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER | Francis Scott Key arr. John Stafford Smith

MONARCH FANFARE | Michael Oare

Monarch Fanfare is dedicated to the Old Dominion University Wind Ensemble and to their conductor, Dennis J. Zeisler, to commemorate his retirement after 39 years of service. The piece was written as a concert opener and premiered by the ODU Wind Ensemble in Professor Zeisler’s final concert. Although the piece was intended for collage level musicians, it is written at a difficult level accessible to high school players.

- Program Note from publisher

OUR CAST AWAYS | Julie Giroux

6.5 million companion animals enter animal shelters every year and 2.4 million of these adoptable animals are put down. These numbers do not include the thousands who suffer in silence. Thanks to thousands of caring people, these numbers are steadily decreasing, but we still have a long way to go. This work is dedicated to all those who work hard in the fight to end puppy mills, to rescue suffering pets and to provide care and medical attention to all those rescued. It is dedicated to those companions who get rescued and for those whose rescue never comes.

We are all shepherds. Every living creature is in our care. Hopefully mankind will someday uphold his responsibility and become caretaker of all living things on earth. Maybe someday all humans will be humane and mankind will be kind.

- Program Note by composer

"For Those who rescue, Those who get rescued and especially for Those whose rescue never comes."

MANNIN VEEN Dear Isle of Man | Haydn Wood

Mannin Veen, published in 1937, is a classic band work of the post-Holst, pre-Hindemith era of band works; it draws on the composer’s experiences of Manx culture when his family lived on the Isle of Man, an autonomous island “Crown Dependency” situated between Ireland and the English mainland in the Irish Sea. The composition exhibits both symphonic grandeur and Celtic tunefulness, often featuring the principal clarinet.

- Program Note by Cal State Los Angeles Wind Ensemble concert program, 13 March 2014

CELESTIA’S HORIZON | Katahj Copley

I have a fascination with the sunrise. I love the way the colors appear from nowhere to brighten the world and begin the day with wonder and curiosity. I wanted to create a piece that would see the night sky turning into a new day. With Celestia’s Horizon (celestia -- a Latin name for the heavenly sky), I was able to create that sound.

Celestia’s Horizon illustrates the beginning of a sunrise. Using different pairings of the ensemble, the piece transforms from a dark and cold beginning to a warm, awe-inspiring climax. The piece ends with a sense of warmth and curiosity as the day finally begins.

- Program Note by composer

ALPINE MEADOW | Cait Nishimura

Alpine Meadow was written during a self-directed, technology-free composing retreat in a cabin near Ashland, Oregon. I had recently visited Yosemite National Park for the first time, and was particularly inspired by the scenic drive on Tioga Road; this mountain pass is the highest in elevation in California (reaching almost 10,000 feet), and winds through the Sierra Nevada mountains overlooking the valleys and meadows below. Standing at the highest point of the road, I felt the cool breeze pass by me and then make its way through the grasses and trees below. The music in Alpine Meadow is intended to represent the quiet intensity of this remote and beautiful place.

- Program Note by composer

CANDLE DRAGON | Kirk Vogel

The aurora borealis, or northern lights, has intrigued civilizations and cultures around the world for centuries. The title of this engaging band work comes from the ancient Chinese term for the northern lights, and the music evokes a snake-like flickering and intensity to capture the celestial phenomenon in sounds.

- Program Note by composer

Candle Dragon was commissioned by the Colorado State Chapter of the American School Band Directors Association.

DRAWING MARS | Michael Markowski

Before I discovered my love for music, I loved space. In my bedroom, in the many craters of my popcorn ceiling, I stuck what must have been hundreds of tiny glow-in-dark stars. On hot, summer nights, a swirling galaxy would appear as I also peppered these stickers on the blades of my ceiling fan. On my desk next was a large plastic globe of the moon and, for a short-lived time in our living room, I had even constructed a homemade planetarium taped together from triangular pieces of heavy, black garbage bags and inflated by a table fan. Inside, equipped with a flashlight and a laser pointer, I talked to an imaginary audience about my favorite constellations and the planets of our solar system as they, too, glowed on the inside ceiling of this giant, dark plastic bubble. In the evenings, I spent hours looking at the surface of the moon, at Mars, at the rings of Saturn, at the moons orbiting Jupiter, at the Andromeda galaxy, at that fuzzy little nebula near Orion’s belt, all through an 8-inch diameter telescope in my backyard. I even remember trying to read a couple of Carl Sagan’s books, although in retrospect I was probably too young to really understand them. But after finding a few episodes of his show Cosmos, a TV program that made the wonders of the universe easily digestible, I was hooked. For a 7th grade English project, I even made a short film called Their First Encounter — my first attempt at writing and directing science fiction, complete with fog, strobe lights, and tin foil costumes.

As my obsession grew, I eventually asked my mom to drive me two hours north to Flagstaff, Arizona where Lowell Observatory has stood at the top of Mars Hill Road for the last 100 years. Percival Lowell was born into a rich family in the mid 1800s, studied math at Harvard, travelled the world, but soon realized that the universe was calling to him. Out of his own pocket, he funded his own observatory.

Lowell was obsessed with the planet Mars. His colleague in Italy, a guy by the name of Giovanni Schiaparellli, had discovered strange lines all across the planet — lines that, in Italian, he called ‘canali’ (not to be confused with cannoli). In Italian, canali roughly translates to ‘channel-like landscapes’— like a riverbed — something naturally made — no big deal. But when Lowell translated the word, he called them ‘canals,’ which have a very different connotation. When we think of canals, as Lowell did, we probably think of something man-made, something that has been constructed with purpose and intention.

Lowell wanted to study these canals for himself, so night after night, he would look through his telescope up at Mars, then down at a piece of paper and draw the surface of the planet as he saw it. He did this for months and eventually developed a theory: he believed that Mars was a dying planet — that it was drying up — and in order to save their civilization, some kind of intelligent beings had constructed this incredible system of canals — some 30 miles wide — in an attempt to siphon melting water from the polar ice caps and funnel them down to the major metropolitan areas, the darker areas on the planet which he called oases.

The crazy thing about all this is that people believed him! Actually, there was really no reason to doubt him. He was well educated, he had the best technology available for the times and one of the biggest telescopes in the world. He wrote three really convincing books arguing this theory, and in 1905, even The New York Times ran a full page article under the headline “THERE IS LIFE ON THE PLANET MARS: Prof. Percival Lowell, recognized as the greatest authority on the subject, declares there can be no doubt that living beings inhabit our neighbor world.” In fact, it would take another 50 years for scientists to get close enough to Mars to see in better detail that oh… there aren’t actually any Martian-made canals after all. Although we now know that the canals that Lowell saw were largely psychological tricks, his observations captured the imagination of the world and even inspired early 20th century science fiction like H.G. Welles’s War of the Worlds and Edgar Rice Bourroughs’s many Mars-inspired books.

I don’t think the music in Drawing Mars tells a story about aliens invading Earth or of “first contact” or anything like that, but I do think it tries to get inside Lowell’s head as he looks through his telescope, night after night, in the dark, all alone, as his mind maybe starts to wander… and wonder… woah, what if I’m right? What if there is life on Mars?

Of course, we now know that Lowell’s imagination maybe got the best of him, but as Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.”

- Program Note by composer

THE DAUNTLESS BATTALION MARCH | John Philip Sousa

President Warren G. Harding and bandmaster John Philip Sousa -- two Americans who served their country in totally different capacities -- were awarded honorary doctorates by the Pennsylvania Military College in Chester on February 7, 1920. Sousa saluted the cadets in his own inimitable way, by composing a march in their honor. The band score was dedicated "To Col. Hyatt, the Faculty and Cadets of the Pennsylvania Military College" and was entitled The Pennsylvania Military College March. An orchestra score, presumably made later, was entitled The Pennsylvania Military March. But by the time the march was published, Sousa has provided a more colorful title.

- Program Note from John Philip Sousa: A Descriptive Catalog of His Works

NIGHTRIDE | Robert Sheldon

While there is no specific storyline behind Nightride, the inspiration was actually drawn from feelings of wanting to escape from the 2020 start of the pandemic through imagining or dreaming of a way to leave it all behind by getting in the car and driving through the night to a safer place. Since that sounds rather ridiculous in writing, I opted not to include that in the program note! Instead, it may be best to think of this as a metaphor - navigating a ride through the night, being alone with your thoughts, working through ways to deliver yourself out of the dark moments in life into the light.

- Program Note by composer