In a career that spans five decades, John Williams has become one of America’s most accomplished and successful composers for film and the concert stage. He has served as music director and laureate conductor of one of the country’s treasured musical institutions, the Boston Pops Orchestra, and he maintains thriving artistic relationships with many of the world’s great orchestras, including the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Mr. Williams has received a variety of prestigious awards, including the National Medal of Arts, the Kennedy Center Honor, the Olympic Order, and numerous Academy Awards, Grammy Awards, Emmy Awards, and Golden Globe Awards. He remains one of our nation’s most distinguished and contributive musical voices.

Mr. Williams has composed the music and served as music director for more than one hundred films. His 40-year artistic partnership with director Steven Spielberg has resulted in many of Hollywood’s most acclaimed and successful films, including Schindler’s List, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, Jaws, Jurassic Park, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, four Indiana Jones films, Saving Private Ryan, Amistad, Munich, Hook, Catch Me If You Can, Minority Report, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, Empire of the Sun, The Adventures of Tintin, and War Horse. Their latest collaboration, The BFG, was released on July 1, 2016. Mr. Williams has composed the scores for all Star Wars films, the first three Harry Potter films, Superman: The Movie, JFK, Born on the Fourth of July, Memoirs of a Geisha, Far and Away, The Accidental Tourist, Home Alone, Nixon, The Patriot, Angela’s Ashes, Seven Years in Tibet, The Witches of Eastwick, Rosewood, Sleepers, Sabrina, Presumed Innocent, The Cowboys and The Reivers, among many others. Mr. Williams has received five Academy Awards and 50 Oscar nominations, making him the Academy’s most-nominated living person and the second-most nominated person in the history of the Oscars. 

For the festivities accompanying the centennial of the Statute of Liberty, the Statute of Liberty–Ellis Island Foundation commissioned John Williams to write a fanfare to be performed at the televised ceremonies on July 4, 1986.

Before the work’s premiere, Williams told Richard Dyer that it is “about five minutes long, and it has a one-minute detachable front piece that will be the signature music for all ABC presentations connected with the Fourth of July. I’ve tried to create a group of American airs and tunes of my invention that I hope will give some sense of the event and the occasion.”

Williams conducted the Boston Pops in the first public performance of the fanfare on June 4, 1986. A month later, he led the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra in the work as part of a live national telecast.

Reviewing the Boston performance, Anthony Tommasini wrote that “as fanfares go, [it] is a humdinger. It’s got two great tunes: a brassy and boisterous fanfare riff, all roulades and flourishes and forward motion; and a long-lined tune for hushed-up strings that sounds like lots of others Williams has composed for Hollywood, but still gets you right in the back of the throat.”

Charlie Drew Johnson is a composer, euphonium player, and music educator. They hold a bachelor's degree in music education from the University of Nebraska- Lincoln and is currently studying music composition as a graduate student at the University of Oregon. Their primary teachers include Bo Atlas (euphonium) and Benjamin Dean Taylor (music composition).

The piece starts above sea level with an unaccompanied flute solo, representing the vastness and seeming emptiness of the arctic tundra. This is also represented by the intermittent pauses in the flute solo. There is a brief pause before the piano and percussion come in to represent the epipelagic zone. This part of the ocean is more colorful and supports a very strange and diverse ecosystem. I tried to capture the atmosphere and complexity of this zone through both the harmonies in the mallet percussion and piano and the polyrhythmic material to make both the tonal center and the pulse more ambiguous. I tried representing the growing complexity of the ecosystem by having some of the woodwinds enter to create a new texture leading to a trumpet solo that transitions to the entire band playing. 

As the piece progresses, the depicted environment becomes deeper and murkier due to the decreasing sunlight in each zone. One of the ways that I tried to express this was by gradually transitioning the melodies into the lower voices in the band. I also decided to make the intervals within the harmonies closer together as the piece progresses to convey the increasing water pressure as the zones descend. The mesopelagic zone features the melody in a wider range of voices. There are still melodic lines in the higher woodwinds. However, a lot of the middle and lower voices tend to be driving the main melodic content in this section. I used the glockenspiel in this piece mainly to represent light. In the mesopelagic zone, the glockenspiel and the high material in the right hand of the piano are used to represent sunlight. However, in the bathypelagic zone, they are used to represent bioluminescence because the light of the sun is essentially nonexistent at that depth. 

In the bathypelagic zone, I tend to keep the melody in the saxes, horns, euphonium, and tuba. I also utilize several glissandos in the trombones to create an eerie atmosphere. After the first climax of the bathypelagic zone, I used the higher mallet percussion as well as the flute and oboe in order to release some of the pressure of the lower instruments. I also made the intervals in the piano and vibraphone parts wider to create a sense of levity but slight disorientation due to their material mostly moving in fifths. The last part of the bathypelagic zone uses the entire band in order to create an even greater sense of weight, as well as convey the full gravity of the nightmarish environment that is the bathypelagic zone. I wrote a grand pause where the percussion and piano are just reverberating in order to create a sense of emptiness again to transition into the abyssopelagic zone. I wanted it to mirror the emptiness of the tundra but initially maintain the pressure so that after the grand pause, there is an unaccompanied tuba solo playing the same melody that the flute did at the beginning of the piece. The ending is meant to reflect the mysterious but beautiful nature of the abyssopelagic zone, and I reused material from the epipelagic zone with different orchestration to convey this. The piece ends with the piano playing one of the dreamy-sounding figures that I originally used in the epipelagic zone to emphasize the dream-like beauty and mystery of the ocean as a whole. 

Satoshi Yagisawa was born in 1975 in Japan and graduated from the Musashino Academia Musicae with a degree in composition. He later continued his studies there, graduating with a master's degree in composition two years later. His works for wind orchestras are popular in Japan and many other countries. They have been performed widely at the World Association for Symphonic Bands and Ensembles Conferences (WASBE) and the Midwest Band & Orchestra Clinic in Chicago. In Japan, he was commissioned by the National Sports Festival to compose the opening ceremonial music. Yagisawa is in high demand not only in Japan but throughout the world as an adjudicator, guest conductor, clinician, and writer for music magazines. Currently, he is teaching at Kobe College in Japan. He is one of the most prolific composers in Japan today and was awarded the 21st Japan Academic Society of Winds, Percussion, and Brass Award (2011) and the Japanese Band Directors Association Shitaya Encouragement Award (2011). His major works include A Poem for Wind Orchestra – Hymn to the Infinite Sky; Perseus – A Hero's Quest in the Heavens; Machu Picchu: City in the Sky – The Mystery of the hidden Sun Temple (Performed by the QC Wind Ensemble in 2010); To Be Vivid Stars; and Let's have Hope for a Better Tomorrow (a symbolic song for the reconstruction from the Great East Japan Earthquake).

Hymn to the Sun was commissioned by Tokai City Wind Music Band for their 40th anniversary celebration. In their request to the composer, they wrote: "For 40 years, we did our activity as if we were a family. We had new experiences, welcoming new members, supporting and helping one another, and sometimes having troubles. Through these experiences, the band became our Sun. With the piece, we would like to express our enthusiasm for progress, taking over the early members’ will." Yagisawa played in a school band as a child and strongly identified with the theme. He decided to drop in on the band almost every time he went to Nagoya and built a lasting friendship with them.

Julie Ann Giroux was born in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, on December 12, 1961. She graduated from Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, in 1984. She started playing piano at three years of age and began composing at the age of 8 and has been composing ever since. Her first published work for concert band, published by Southern Music Company, was composed at the age of 13.  

Julie began composing commercially in 1984 when Oscar-winning composer Bill Conti hired her as an orchestrator for the North & South the mini-series. With over 100 film, television, and video game credits, Giroux collaborated with dozens of film composers, producers, and celebrities, including Samuel Goldwyn, Martin Scorsese, Clint Eastwood, Madonna, Liza Minnelli, Celine Dion, Paula Abdul, Michael Jackson, Paul Newman, Harry Connick Jr. and many others. Projects she has worked on have been nominated for Oscars, Emmys, Grammys, and Golden Globe awards. She has won individual Emmy Awards in the field of “Outstanding Individual Achievement in Music Direction.” When she won her first Emmy Award, she was the first woman and the youngest person to ever win that award and now has won three Emmy Awards

Giroux has published a large catalog of classical works with an emphasis on original compositions for Wind Band. She is greatly sought after as a composer and recently completed her 5th Symphony, “Sun, Rain & Wind,” which premiered in June 2018. Her music has been recorded and reviewed internationally, receiving top reviews, and her music has been performed at major music festivals the world over.

Heroic Fanfare has a classic Romanesque feel and is part of a collection of fanfares she wrote in 2003.

Frank Ticheli's music has been described as “optimistic and thoughtful" (Los Angeles Times), “lean and muscular" (New York Times), “brilliantly effective" (Miami Herald), and “powerful, deeply felt crafted with impressive flair and an ear for striking instrumental colors" (South Florida Sun-Sentinel).  Ticheli joined the faculty of the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music in 1991, where he is Professor of Composition.  From 1991 to 1998, Ticheli was Composer in Residence of the Pacific Symphony.

Frank Ticheli is a composer for orchestral, band, and choir mediums. He is well known for his works for concert band, many of which have become standards in the repertoire. In addition to composing, he has appeared as guest conductor of his music at Carnegie Hall, at many American universities and music festivals, and in cities throughout the world, including Schladming (Austria), Beijing and Shanghai, London and Manchester, Singapore, Rome, Sydney, and numerous cities in Japan.

Frank Ticheli is the recipient of a 2012 Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, his third award from that prestigious organization. His Symphony No. 2 was named winner of the 2006 NBA/William D. Revelli Memorial Band Composition Contest. Other awards include the Walter Beeler Memorial Prize and First Prize awards in the Texas Sesquicentennial Orchestral Composition Competition, Britten-on-the-Bay Choral Composition Contest, and Virginia CBDNA Symposium for New Band Music.

Rest came about in two stages. It was originally written as a choral piece, There Will Be Rest, composed in 1999 and based on a poem of the same name by Sara Teasdale. According to Ticheli it was “dedicated to the memory of Cole Carsan St. Clair, the son of my dear friends, conductor Carl St. Clair and his wife, Susan.” The band version came about in 2010, the result of a commission from Russel Mikkelson and his family in memory of their father, Elling Mikkelson. Ticheli provides the following program note:

Created in 2010, Rest is a concert band adaptation of my work for SATB chorus, There Will Be Rest, which was commissioned in 1999 by the Pacific Chorale, John Alexander, conductor.

In making this version, I preserved almost everything from the original: harmony, dynamics, even the original registration. I also endeavored to preserve carefully the fragile beauty and quiet dignity suggested by Sara Teasdale’s words.

However, with the removal of the text, I felt free to enhance certain aspects of the music, most strikingly with the addition of a sustained climax on the main theme. This extended climax allows the band version to transcend the expressive boundaries of a straight note-for-note setting of the original. Thus, both versions are intimately tied and yet independent of one another, each possessing its own strengths and unique qualities.

The original poem by Sara Teasdale:

There will be rest, and sure stars shining

Over the roof-tops crowned with snow,

A reign of rest, serene forgetting,

The music of stillness holy and low.

I will make this world of my devising

Out of a dream in my lonely mind.

I shall find the crystal of peace, – above me

Stars I shall find.

George Percy Grainger was an Australian-born composer, pianist, and champion of the saxophone and the concert band who worked under the stage name of Percy Aldridge Grainger.

Grainger was an innovative musician who anticipated many forms of twentieth-century music well before they became established by other composers. As early as 1899, he was working with "beatless music," using metric successions (including such sequences as 2/4, 2½/4, 3/4, 2½/4).

In December 1929, Grainger developed a style of orchestration that he called "Elastic Scoring," in which the music could be adapted by a variety of ensemble sizes and instrumentations. He outlined this concept in an essay that he called "To Conductors, and those forming, or in charge of, Amateur Orchestras, High School, College and Music School Orchestras and Chamber-Music Bodies."

In 1932, he became Dean of Music at New York University and underscored his reputation as an experimenter by putting jazz on the syllabus and inviting Duke Ellington as a guest lecturer. Twice, he was offered honorary doctorates of music but turned them down, explaining, "I feel that my music must be regarded as a product of non-education."

Children's March "Over the Hills and Far Away" is one of the earliest works written for piano and wind band and the first of many such works by Percy Grainger. Written while Grainger was serving in the American Army as a bandsman, it was intended to make full use of all the instrumental resources available at Fort Hamilton, where he was stationed. The First World War ended in November 1918 before Grainger had the chance to perform the work as originally planned. Its first performance did not take place until June 1919 at Columbia University, featuring the Goldman Band conducted by the composer, with Ralph Leopold playing the piano part. It was subsequently published in an edition that allowed it to be used by the wind section of the symphony orchestra, with the piano part being cued into the wind parts. Another innovation in this score calls for certain members of the band to sing or "vocalize" in two passages where they are not employed with their instruments.

With the dedication "for my playmate beyond the hills," she is believed to be a Scandinavian beauty with whom the composer corresponded for eight years but did not marry because of his mother's jealousy.

Dmitri Shostakovich was one of the most prominent to emerge from the Soviet Union in the 20th century. His relationship with the Soviet government, especially Soviet premier Joseph Stalin, defined nearly every aspect of his life. He was born in St. Petersburg and grew up in the last years of tsarist rule in Russia. The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 came when Shostakovich was 11, but its influence stayed with him for the rest of his life. His rise to fame came at the hands of an aide to Leon Trotsky, a father of the revolution. Shortly thereafter, Trotsky’s exile and the death of Vladimir Lenin left Stalin in charge, and he ruled with an iron fist and no patience for dissent or criticism of any kind. The arts were to reflect the official reality of Soviet existence, and thus “Formalist” works (that is, any work that displayed hints of modernism or abstract content) were at least frowned upon, if not banned outright. Shostakovich made something of a game of pushing as far towards this line as possible, sometimes even drifting past it. He was officially denounced by the regime twice, only to later rehabilitate his reputation through new, more apparently pro-Soviet works. At times, the regime used him as a mouthpiece, and he seemed only too willing to comply. Yet his works often show signs of weariness or outright contempt for his government. His controversial memoir, Testimony, seems to confirm the notion that Shostakovich did not wish to support the Soviet regime. However, the memoir’s emergence 4 years after his death and the murky circumstances of its creation, not to mention its appearance at the height of the Cold War, all call into question its truthfulness. No matter the facts of his life or his political allegiances, Shostakovich undeniably made beautiful music, including 15 symphonies, an equal number of string quartets, large quantities of film music, and two operas which he held dear for his entire life.

This popular wind band work by the Soviet-era composer Dmitri Shostakovich was originally composed in 1943 as the third movement from his suite entitled My Native Leningrad. Shostakovich titled this movement "Dance of the Youth." This movement of the suite was seemingly intended to lighten the suite.