REPERTOIRE
REVIEW OF SELECTED PREMIERES 2005-2007
WIND
PREMIERES 2005-2007
Killarney
was the second WASBE Conference at which I was accepted to give an overview of
new works in the previous two years. As before, my thanks are due to the
many conductors and composers who sent information and sometimes scores and CDs
of new works of significance premiered since the last WASBE Conference in 2007.
With over 250 works proposed, my lecture merely skimmed the surface. If anyone
needs more information, please get in touch at timreynish@tiscali.co.uk
and I will try to respond as soon as possible. An additional excitement was the
joy of attending four superb conferences, in
ROLE
FOR WASBE
It has been a
fascinating and sometimes frustrating task to put together this biennial listing
of new works for wind ensemble, fascinating because of the wealth of great music
being composed, frustrating because of the lack of information sometimes
available. Both WASBE and CBDNA give generous space to previews or reports
of new pieces, but rarely do they give information on duration, orchestration
and publication, so that the busy band director might well decide to save time
and programme something that he or can find easily in the library. I have very
few other contacts, with
OUTLINE
OF LECTURE
My lecture
concentrated on six areas
A-Z
OF CONTEMPORARY WIND MUSIC
MAJOR
COMPOSERS
REYNISH
COMMISSIONING PROJECT
WORKS
BY WASBE COMPOSERS & PUBLISHERS
THE
JAZZ ELEMENT - CROSSOVER
BCM
& JOHN MACKEY
One of the few
things I remember from Geography was the teasing question “compare and
contrast the climate of
A
IS FOR ALARCON – and MARCO POLO
The
Dutch conductor and publisher, Frank de Vuyst, is editor for the major Spanish
publisher, Piles, and also conductor of one of the principal Spanish wind
orchestras. Frank sent me this summer a great video recording of the 2006
Certamen in Valencia, with a performance of Marco
Polo by Luis Alarcon, premiered by Banda Sinfónica de la Unión
Musical Utielana conducted by Frank. I played the audience in with this DVD,
with its extraordinary range of colour, featuring as it does a number of ethnic
wind, string and percussion instruments. This is to my mind a major addition to
our repertoire. The sheer
virtuosity of Spanish bands and the cut-throat competition in their contests
results in some wonderful music. Frank de Vuyst has sent a scores of Marco
Polo and Preludio y Danza
Z IS FOR ZYMAN –
and CYCLES
Samuel Zyman is a distinguished
teacher from Juilliard, one of three Mexican composers to be included this year.
I first came across Zyman’s work when I joined a consortium put together by
Gary Ciepluch to commission his Duo Concerto. Cycles was
premiered in 2005 and is now available on a fine recording by Steven
Steele and
MAJOR COMPOSERS
As a rough guide
to “great” composers, I simply
took a list of the winners of the Grawemeyer Award as a kind of blueprint for
those whom WASBE might be inviting to write:-
Currier, Kurtag, Tsontakis, Unsuk Chin, Saariaho, Kernis, Boulez, Ades,
Tan Dun, Simon Bainbridge, Tcherepnin, Adams, Takemitsu, Husa, Joan Towers,
Chinary Ung, Penderecki, Corigliano, Birtwistle, Ligeti and Lutoslawski are all
award winners. Most of them are either dead or have never written for wind. When
Frederick Speck was asked to put on a concert at Carnegie Hall including wind
music by these “great” composers, he struggled to find repertoire – a pair
of fanfares byLutoslawski and Takemitsu, a new commission from Karel Husa, a
CBDNA commission from Joan Tower, all of which he programmed brilliantly at
WASBE, and an arrangement of a movement by John Corigliano, though he might have
chosen a work by Chinary Ung, Grand
Spirals. So a survey of
composers of international stature who have contributed to our genre in the past
two years will be sadly very brief. Since
David Chaitkin
Celebration
Karel Husa
Cheetah
Christopher Rouse
Wolf Rounds
Steven Stucky
Hue and Cry
As usual there
seems to have been little or no national or international press covering these.
However, Fred Speck was at Conference and performed Cheetah in his concert with
DAVID
CHAITKIN
It is 16 years
since WASBE last featured music by David Chaitkin, his Summersong was programmed in the 1991 WASBE Conference, played by
the BBC Philharmonic conducted by Gunther Schuller. I find a wonderful
luminosity and lyricism in his music and a refreshing delight in colour.
Chaitkin wrote to me recently about his latest piece.
My
new Celebration
for winds was indeed premiered on March 4 by the
To this tiny
group I would add two other works which I think have stature. First I would like
to play part of Gleams from the Bosom of
Darkness by the Israeli composer, Lior Navok. His music was described
recently by the Boston Globe as colorful,
haunting, accomplished and exciting. Gleams
actually dates from 2002, but its premiere is recent. It is an extraordinary
bit of writing and one of the most exciting finds for me in this two years.
Richard
Danielpour is another New Yorker, one of the most distinctive voices of the
American scene – the first movement of his Voice
of the City was premiered in 2005, and I very much hope that he will finish
the second movement and that we can hear the whole work this Fall. In the first
movement, jazz elements, hints of Bernstein in the funky accompaniment, perhaps
of
OPERA
– BANDANNA & THE SCARECROW
Perhaps
the most exciting wind ensemble events of the past two years has been in
the field of opera with one major recording of Daron Hagen’s Bandanna
and a series of productions of Joseph Turrin’s The Scarecrow.
I was contacted
during the year by Joseph Turrin with details of The Scarecrow. You can
hear the whole opera on his website, http://www.josephturrin.com/music.html
This is a major
addition to the repertoire, the overture itself would make an excellent concert
number, and the first line of the first aria must bid to be one of the most
memorable ever.
WHEN
I WAS A YOUNG WITCH, THE WOMEN SNARLED AT ME
The other is the
release of a recording of Bandana
with
Hagen's
masterful score captures the rage, intrigue, and tender resignation of the
tale."
Jerry Young, Austin
American Statesman, 2/99
"You
will find Bandanna's weave most intricate."
Andrew Osborn,
"Sonorous,
highly-varied, rhythmically gripping, dramatic music; one can scarcely imagine
another living composer pulling it off."
"The
drama is powered by a strong emotional thrust, most of it conveyed in the form
of popular song, and leads to a shattering climax."
Read
WILLIAM
REYNISH COMMISSIONING PROJECT
Since
Berkeley,
Michael
Slow Dawn
OUP
Carroll,
Fergal
Blackwater
Maecenas
Hesketh,
Kenneth
Vranjanka
Faber
Hesketh,
Kenneth
Cloud of Unknowing
Schott
Horne,
David
Waves and Refrains
Boosey & Hawkes
Jackson,
Timothy
Passacaglia
Maecenas
Marshall,
Christopher
Resonance
Maecenas
McNeff,
Stephen
Image in Stone
Maecenas
Pütz,
Marco
Trumpet Concerto
Bronsheim
Roxburgh,
Edwin
Elegy for
for solo oboe and ensemble
Maecenas
Roxburgh,
Edwin
Aeolian Carillons
Maecenas
Nine pieces are
by professional composers with no particular attachment to the wind ensemble
world, and of these, three are attached to British orchestras as composer in
residence, Michael Berkeley to the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Stephen
McNeff to the Bournemouth Symphony and Kenneth Hesketh to the Royal Liverpool
Philharmonic where he was preceded by David Horne. McNeff and Berkeley have a
burgeoning international reputation in the opera house. Edwin Roxburgh has
recently completed a massive opera, Chris Marshall’s international reputation
is largely based on his choral music, while Timothy Jackson follows a
renaissance-like career as composer, conductor, natural and modern horn player,
jazz pianist.
Two then are
more involved with wind music, though not exclusively; Fergal Carroll is a
conductor in Ireland with one of the military bands, Marco Pütz is a fine
saxophone player and teacher in Luxembourg, and is perhaps best known as a
specialist in wind music, usually for amateur bands.
WORKS
FOR THE PROFESSIONAL WIND ENSEMBLE
It is tempting
to divide these recent commissions into two genres. In the first we might
include those “serious” works aimed at the “professional” wind ensemble,
Slow Dawn, Cloud of Unknowing, Waves and
refrains, Resonance, Image in Stone and
Elegy for Ur.
Michael
Berkekey’s Slow Dawn is short,
cogent and wonderfully austere, sharing the sound world perhaps of Judith
Bingham’s Bright Spirit. David
Horne is one of the brightest talents in
Horne's
music can be viewed both as a response, and as a reaction, to modernism. His
language has evolved naturally from the classically-orientatated modernist
masters, exploring essentially abstract musical ideas. Yet Horne deploys these
with an attractive lyricism, an impressionistic ear for instrumentation, and
with invigorating energy
EDWIN
ROXBURGH
The young Edwin
Roxburgh was described by Nadia Boulanger as the new Stravinsky, but I think
that a career as a composer was too narrow for him, he is a fine professional
oboist, was a teacher at the Royal College of Music where he for many years
conducted the contemporary group, and he brings these skills to his composition
Eddie was a featured composer at BASBWE – celebrating his 70th
birthday this year, the BASBWE conference played all three of his works for
wind, Time’s
Harvest, An Elegy for Ur and
Aeolian
Carillons. The
oboe concerto, An
Elegy for Ur, is a
wonderfully understated, haunting rhapsody on the destruction of one of the
world’s oldest cities,
Kenneth Hesketh has emerged
during this decade as one of the most exciting new talents in the wind world.
Many of you will know Danceries and
the bright and breezy Masque, getting
to know his Dances for Diaghilev, a wonderful swirling score of impressionistic
colourings. His Cloud of Unknowing
inhabits that world, perhaps the same kind of continuous expression through
sound that we find in Debussy’s Jeux
or Schoenberg’s Erwartung with very
little development. Part of my commissioning scheme is to attract composers of
international importance liker Horne, Hesketh, Gorb
and Roxburgh, to write challenging music with no holds barred, but also
to invite them to contribute easier pieces for the less experienced players.
This is extremely hard and not everyone accepts the challenge. One who has is
Hesketh , an essentially practical
composer who like Adam Gorb and Dana Wilson writes for less experienced players
without patronizing, setting them the same musical problems as in the works for
more mature players. He followed Cloud of
Unknowing with a wonderful score of terrific Balkan energy, Vranjanka.
As with all his score4s, there are
challenging parts for second and third players, and a teasing set of variations
mainly in 7/8 on a Serbian love-song.
Cloud of Unknowing
2005
Published Schotts
Vranjanka
2006
Published Faber
Chris Marshall
is a New Ze
Sometimes
the single-minded pursuit of originality severs too many links with the past.
Without existing music as a reference point, communication may be lost. By the
same token, a composer who restricts himself to the techniques and aesthetics of
the past is irrelevant. The challenge, as I see it, is to produce music that is
recognisably of our time, yet also timeless.
His first work, Aue,
was commissioned by the WASBE Schools Network, and here again we find an
Ivesian montage of melodies and rhythms. He paints a picture of the
At the climax,
his reminiscences of a missionary great grandfather resolve onto a 19th
century hymn melody – (shades of the myriad of wind and brass band works which
are based around Salvation Army hymns or Southern Harmonies!) but Chris is
amazing skilful in his set of variations, and finally the piece dissolves into a
magically beautiful ending. As with his great grandfather’s sermons in the
forest, the song of the birds overwhelms the music.
2005
Resonance
2007
Renascence
The second may
be considered as works aimed at the less experienced group which is looking for
more of an intellectual, emotional and technical challenge than is often
afforded by wind repertoire I am of
course massively biased, but I do think that each and every work written for me
recently represents a valuable addition to the repertoire, and many of these
works are able to stand alongside earlier major commissions such as Adam
Gorb’s Dances from Crete or
Christopher Marshall’s L’Homme Armé.
Another work by Roxburgh, the exciting efflorescent Aeolian Carillons, and an extraordinarily moving Passacaglia
by Timothy Jackson which has a Brahmsian spaciousness, couched in a contemporary
idiom.
We were very
proud and honored to have an entire programme dedicated to William played in
Elder
Conservatory Wind Ensemble,
Conductor Bob Hower
L’Homme Armé
Christopher Marshall
Song of Lir
Fergal Carroll
Bright Spirit
Judith Bingham
Symphony for
William
Derek Bourgeois
Dances from
MUSIC
FOR YOUNG BANDS
Writing
expressive, lyrical music for young bands without being patronizing,
condescending and sentimental, is difficult; few of even our most distinguished
colleagues manage it. Adam Gorb manages it usually, and one composer who writes
well is Fergal Carroll, who has followed his Song of Lir with another effective Irish piece, Blackwater.
A third, though not in my
commissioning series, was premiered recently and is called Silverwinds. All three are published by Maecenas.
The most recent
work my commission series is by Marco Pütz who was the featured composer in the
BASBWE Conference held in Glasgow
WORKS FEATURED IN GLASGOW
Putz, Marco
Trumpet Concerto
Pütz, Marco
Die Judenbuche
Putz, Marco
Derivations
Pütz, Marco
Flute Concerto
Pütz, Marco
Choralis Tonalis
The
Irish Youth Wind Ensemble gave the public premiere of his Trumpet Concerto with
John Wallace, and this is a fine three movement work, typical of Marco’s style
which is traditional and yet challenging. It starts with a cadenza, followed by
an intense introduction which breaks into the traditional allegro.
CONCERTOS
As
I was putting this lecture together, I reflected that there were very few
concerti to report but gradually I came to the conclusion that it is in fact
something of a vintage two years. Most of these concertos are referred to later
in the lecture but I would like to draw attention to a composer who made a
strong impression on Adam Gorb and myself in
NEW
CONCERTI
An
Elegy for
Liquid
Gold
Dana Wilson
Clarinet
12.40
The
Avatar
Dana Wilson
Bassoon
16.00
Concerto
Mike Mower
Saxophone
22.14
Horn
Concerto
Simon Wills Horn
16.41
Trumpet
Concerto
Marco Pütz
Trumpet
19.00
Passagi
Steven Gryc
Trombone
22.42
Trombone
Concerto Martin
Ellerby
Trombone
15.06
Dance
Diversions
Ralph Hultgren
Trombone
Black
Fire
Nigel Clarke
Violin
26.02
Marimba
Concerto
Zecharaiah Goh
Marimba
13.21
Concerto
Saxophones Eddie Mora
Bermudez Saxophone
Quartet
Concerto
Hermann Regner
Piano
11.00
WASBE
COMPOSERS WRITING FOR SCHOOL BANDS
Writing
for High School students is an immense challenge – how to engage their
interest and challenge them intellectually but write enjoyable music with being
patronizing. I am glad I am not a composer. In the library you will find scores
and a CD of music by a member of WASBE, Thomas Rohrer, Director of Bands at the
Carroll,
Fergal
Silverwinds
Ellerby,
Martin
Tales from Andersen
Hultgren,
Ralph
Jessie’s Well
Hultgren,
Ralph
My Sister’s Tears
Nitsch,
Jason
Elegy for a Ghost Town
Nitsch,
Jason
On the Banks of the
Rohrer,
Thomas
Transcontinental
One
British composer who has carved a new life and career in Spanish band music is
Derek Bourgeois, who many years ago was largely responsible for taking the
British Brass band music into the 20th century.
Four Mallorcan Folk Songs
Concerto for Bass Trombone
Felanitx Fiestas
The well of the Moon
Band Land
He
now lives in
WASBE
COMPOSERS – MARTIN ELLERBY
I have
always felt that WASBE should be taking care of its composers, making sure that
we have easy access to information about their works, and conversely composers
should be contacting WASBE as a central source for information. There are two
composers on the Board at present, Martin
Ellerby who incidentally is fifty this year, and
Last year Martin rescored his miniature Symphony Natalis
for wind and it was premiered by the Royal Marines.This is a dramatic work,
typical of his music for the last few years with strong contrasts. Here is the
opening, perhaps reminiscent of Paris
Sketches in its emotional content and scoring. This has been a
productive two years for Martin
Ellerby,
Martin
NeapolitanSerenade for flute
Ellerby, Martin
Trombone Concerto
Ellerby,
Martin
Chivalry – a Tone Poem
Ellerby,
Martin
The Canticle of the Sun
Ellerby,
Martin
Terra Australis
Ellerby,
Martin
Tristan Encounters
Ellerby,
Martin
Mass of St Thomas Aquinas
Ellerby,
Martin
Commemorations
Ellerby,
Martin
The Cries of London
Ellerby,
Martin
Tales from Andersen
Ellerby, Martin
Prelude from Hampstead Heath
Ellerby, Martin
Natalis, wind band version
Natalis
is one of the first publications in the new Maecenas series, Accolade.
The second is an
arrangement by Martin of Prelude for Hampstead Heath, which has proved very
popular in its brass band version His
Trombone Concerto is in three
movements, an extremely energetic first, a heartfelt elegy as a second and a
third which returns to the extraordinary high spirits of the first.
Many of his
works have been written for the Coldstream Guards or the Royal Marines,
including the most recent, Commemoration,
premiered two weeks ago. Martin is now General editor for Studio Music, and two
new works from their catalogue which have been brought to my attention are by
Nigel Clarke. In a few weeks, the Royal Military School of Music, Kneller Hall,
will premiere Nigel’s work written to celebrate their 150th
anniversary, Fanfares and Celebrations. The
same composer’s Black Fire for violin and concert band was recorded recently by the
Royal Marines in
ADAM
GORB
Despite a hectic
year teaching and traveling, Adam Gorb has written three strongly contrasting
works as well as a work for the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra.
I was lucky
enough to hear his very moving piece for choir, soloists and brass, Scribblings
on a Blank Wall. The drama of it made me think that it is time that he wrote
an opera. This is a rare piece in the choral repertoire, a work which escapes
the somewhat cloying style of the
English choral tradition.
Adrenaline
City
Studio
Sunrise
& Safari
Maecenas
Scribblings
on a Blank Wall
Maecenas
This
Spring saw the premiere of Sunrise and
Safari commissioned by the Singapore Youth Band Festival. The score is on
the Maecenas stand. In this he
introduced a little aleatoric bird song, but was asked to notate it with bar
lines, thus making it far more difficult. Perhaps the answer is the path taken
through the
The third piece
is the very virtuosic Adrenaline City, a
sort of son or cousin of Awayday and
Metropolis, incredibly energetic and unfortunately for conductors in 10/8;
commissioned last year by the US Army..
DANA WILSON AND
ADAM GORB
At a funeral
recently, composer Giles Swayne spoke of
composition which challenges the intellect while engaging the heart. It is
interesting that so much of the wind music of the last two years achieves this,
often in crossover styles. Writing
in the vernacular utilizing jazz and pop elements has been very much part of the
art of those two WASBE stalwart composers, Adam Gorb and Dana Wilson and I would
love to get them both round a table for a discussion since both are essentially
practical in their approach to composition, writing music which will test the
finest ensemble without over-taxing that important element the audience.
Dana has written three works in the past two years which are important
additions to our repertoire. . Both Dana and Adam write marvelously for
professionals like Larry Coombs and the US Military Academy, Gail Williams or
Evelyn Glennie, but they also write some of their best music for amateur and
students. Last summer Dana wrote a work to celebrate the career of Frank
Battisti, Day Dream This is a work of
sixteen minutes in three movements, dedicated to Frank
who asked that it should be playable by ensembles of varying abilities.
After a first movement in which Dana portrays a dramatic sunrise, he
moves on to a second movement typifying Youth.
Dana uses a kind of written out aleatoric technique where the wind
players are invited to play ostinati at whatever speed they prefer, giving a
blurred effect against which very tight funky rhythms are in sharp contrast.
For
me, the harmonic procedures of the finale bring to mind the mature Richard
Strauss. What Strauss never quite discovered was the jazz potential of the
bassoon. Dana achieves some funky
fagot playing in his three movement concerto The Avatar, written for
There was no
time to do more than mention three other fine concerti, for horn by Simon Wills,
and for trombone by Stephen Gryc and Martin Ellerby
The
practicalities of composition are so important, none of the ivory tower stuff
for Adam nor Dana, nor indeed for the Austrian composer Hermann Regner of the
EDUARD
OERTLE & WASBE
I have always
felt that WASBE should be actively encouraging the commissioning of new music,
and so I was delighted to be invited to Stuttgart by Eduard Oertle to talk about
my own commissions in memory of William, but also to hear three fine concerts,
one which featured the world premiere of the Sinfonietta by Axcel Ruoff, played
by the Blaserphilharmonie Heilbronn. I knew of this composer already from Leon
Bly, a cello concerto and a piano concerto, but it was good to hear a piece
live. A menacing introduction features an omnipresent ostinato figure, and it
gives way to a section of wonderful lyricism
MUSIC
FOR AMATEURS
As usual many
works were written in Europe for amateur performance and these included a fine Sinfonietta
by Oliver Waespi. Waespi many will remember from works played in
Sinfonietta no 2
Moving Sculptures
Temples
Festive Impressions
What is
important for wind music as a genre is to involve other composers and artists
who do not specialize in the medium. One such is Carl Rütti better known for
his choral music His Ground for Band
was premiered in
ENGLISH
LYRICISM
Far away in
atmosphere is the lyrical rhapsody of Daniel Basford, a young composer who
graduated recently from the RNCM and who handles wind orchestration with a sure
touch. Songs
and Refrains was premiered in 2005 and will be published later this Autumn
by Maecenas. It is a four movement
suite of twenty minutes very much in the English pastoral tradition and perhaps
in the faster movements reminding us of Gordon Jacob in his handling of folk
song.
COMPETITIONS
WASBE
composers have been very active in competitions Internationally
Luis Serrano Alarcon 1st in
Corciano
Ferrer Ferran
1st in Romualdo Romenco
Jose Suner Oriola Audience prize
Tokyo
Jukka Viitasaari 1st Concorso
Pernice
Jukka Viitasaari 2nd in
Lambersart
and
also in UK in the annual British Composer Award
2004
Adam Gorb
Towards Nirvana
2005
Ian Gardiner Toccata,
Canzona & Ricecare
2006
Andy Scott
Dark Rain
CONTEMPORARY
MUSIC
FROG’S EYE
I am
always grateful to WASBE conductors and
publishers who send me information about premieres that they rate as important.
Gary Ciepluch, one of the few current WASBE members who attended the first
international Conference back in 1981, wrote in about
several works including an extraordinary piece by Monica Houghton, a
nightmare tonepoem One
Morning in September written after 9/11
One
conductor extremely active in the contemporary field if Fred Harris at MIT and I
recently received a wonderful recording of compositions by Evan Ziporyn, a
member of Bang on a Can. Part of the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, this disc
Frog’s Eye on CA 20140 includes this very imaginative work for soprano and
wind ensemble, The Ornate Zither and the
Nomad Flute.
Like Fred Harris
at MIT, . Cindy Johnson-Turner at Cornell has premiered several great pieces
this year. One composer she
has enthused about is XI WANG who won a Morton Gould ASCAP award this year
JAZZ
AND THE WIND ENSEMBLE
Another composer
Cindy introduced is a professor at the University of San Pedro in Costa Rica,
Eddie Mora, whose Concerto for Four Saxophones is his second work for wind band.
It is is a sprawling three movement work which straddles several styles. The
second movement starts with the quartet in a driving minimalist allegro, later
underpinned by percussion and becoming really funky, while the finale begins
with a languid laid-back tune
Another
interesting crossover piece was sent to me by Gordon Brock of the University of
North Florida, a work entitled Scatter
Down Light by Gary Smart.
A
unique musician, composer-pianist Gary Smart performs, composes and improvises
music that reflects an abiding interest in Americana, world musics and jazz, as
well as the western classical tradition
While there is a
wealth of music available, we must continue commissioning, and I was delighted
to be in touch with Andrew Gekoskie, Director of Bands at Langley High School.
Andrew heads up one of the
most vibrant High School programmes in the united states; with a series of
important commissions. There most recent was Mosaico
Mexicano which they premiered in Carnegie Hall this Spring.
Crossover
is becoming more and more part of our musical language, as it becomes less and
less important to be be modern. One WASBE member who is investigating a whole
tranch of exciting new musical sounds is Mike Christianson with the Gotham Wind
Symphony who describes the most recent disc from Gotham Wind symphony
This is our Americana –
the version where we celebrate New York as the important cultural font it is,
the version where we recognise jazz as the great artistic contribution it is
(within every wind ensemble is a jazz band – literally).
There
are two commissions on the disc from the band, and my favorite is a great 7
minute Prelude by guitarist James Chirillo, which reminds me of those sweet
little pieces by the Gerry Mulligan Quartet – Prelude
to A Minor Insenistivity
Another
jazzer from the other side of the Continent getting very involved in wind
ensemble is Fred Stride who has
built up a fine connection with Pacific Symphony Wind Ensemble under its
conductor Marc Crompton, resulting in three new works since Singapore, a
Saxophone concerto, Trajectories for trumpet and wind, and Seaquam.
There
were several works reported by Robert Grechesky of Butler, including a Spring
Serenade by Eric Ewazen and Prayer
by Michael Schelle which was played at the last CBDNA Conference. I am
grateful to Tony Houghton, Ralph Hultgren, Philip Robinson, Robert Rumbelow, Ken
Thompson, Philip Wagner, Christian Wilhjelm and others for sending information
about premieres.
BCM
and OSTI
I would like to
end with a look at a group who I think will make a difference to our programmes.
Most composers are poor at self-promotion, but this is a criticism that cannot
be leveled at a group of five young American composers who are contributing
hugely to our repertoire. The four who make up BCM are Steven Bryant, Jam
Bonney,
Jonathan Newman
and Eric Whitacre. I have added to
this group John Mackey and his publishing house, Osti.
BCM
began at the Juilliard School where 3 of the composers met while studying with
John Corigliano. Their credo:
Our
goal is to create music for the wind ensemble medium not bound by traditional
thought or idiomatic cliché.
STEVE
BRYANT
They often write
in what we Europeans might think of as a typical American style, noisy and
brash, but they usually combine this style with a sense of self-deprecating
humour missing in some of their colleagues.
Radiant Joy
Dusk
Suite Dreams
Steve Bryant
speaks for them all when he says:
Here's what I really
want to achieve when I compose:
I strive to write
music that leaps off the stage (or reaches out of the speakers) to grab you by
the collar and pull you in. Whether through a relentless eruption of energy, or
the intensity of quiet contemplation, I want my music to give you no choice, and
no other desire, but to listen.
JIM
BONNEY
Jim Bonney is
into electronics and really experimental noises; I particularly enjoyed this
recent quotation from him:
I’ve
become very fond of eschewing the creative confines of both “highbrow” and
lowbrow music and simply creating nobrow music
Threnody
Watercolors
Sticks &
Stones for drumset and band
JONATHAN NEWMAN
I think that
all five of them can write quiet music which is full of sentiment without being
sentimental. One of the lasting memories of the CBDNA conference in Ann Arbor
was of a beautifully paced and b
Avenue X
New work for solo flute & Ensemble
ERIC WHITTAKER
Eric Whitaker has been very busy this year with an opera
which opens this summer – for information go to his website. His gentle
transcriptions from his choral pieces are becoming extremely popular and make a
welcome change of pace to hard-hitting programnmes.
JOHN MACKEY
Meanwhile over the past two years, a fifth young composer,
John Mackey, burst on to the scene with the prize winning Red
Line Tango of 2004, followed by Turbine,
surely two of the noisiest tunes in the repertoire. In Strange Humors and music for other ensembles he is showing a more
lyrical side to his work.
Turbine
Turning
Strange Humors
The
encouraging thing about this group of composers is that they all have a
formidable technique, they have the wildest imagination and wackiest sense of
humour, most of them are Juilliard trained and I believe that they will show the
way for a new generation of young excellently trained composers who might
provide us with a vast pyramid music for wind ensemble, wind orchestra, wind
band, some of which might rival the great masterpieces of the past.
Thinking
of masterpieces of the past, I would like to end with reference to three
composers born one hundred years ago. The contribution from two of them was
limited to a single work each for wind ensemble, both very distinguished.
Music
for Wind and Brass
Elizabeth Maconchy
Sinfonietta
Willem van Otterloo
The
third is a composer who never
bothered at all with self-promotion, publication or a career. Here is part of A
Children’s Plea for Peace by the great underestimated, under-rated
maverick composer, Alec Wilder. You will find more information about his music
on my website.
Children’s Plea for
Peace
by
Alec Wilder