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.  

Giroux began composing commercially in 1984 when Oscar-winning composer Bill Conti hired her as an orchestrator for the North & South 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 a total of 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." 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 three fanfares Giroux wrote in 2003.

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. These works 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; 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 visit the band almost every time he went to Nagoya and built a lasting friendship with them.

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.

Dmitri Shostakovich was one of the most prominent composers 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. 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. 

Shostakovich undeniably made beautiful music, including 15 symphonies, many chamber works, nine operas, several song cycles, three ballets, and a large quantity of film music.

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.