Department of Music
SOU Symphonic Band: Celebrating a Centennial of Band Music
12/04/2008
SOU Symphonic Band: Celebrating a Centennial of Band Music
(Ashland, Ore.) – The Southern Oregon University (SOU) Symphonic Band will present its fall term concert on Thursday December 4, at 8 pm in the SOU Music Recital Hall. The Southern Oregon Symphonic Band will join the SOU band in a collaborative performance.
The Southern Oregon University Symphonic Band's music selections will feature compositions by women. Four talented female composers have been chosen whose music spans most of the twentieth century.
Selections include the twentieth-century composition Three Negro Dances by African American female composer Florence Price. This work, composed in 1938, was originally composed for piano and arranged for band by Erik Leidzen.
Dr. Shelly Hanson's work titled Seis Manuel was written in 2003. Seis Manuel is a dance in Puerto Rican style and is the third movement of a four-movement suite titled Islas y Montañas featuring dance music from the Americas. Dr. Hanson's music has been performed throughout the United States, Europe, Latin America and Asia. As a clarinetist, she is an active performer and is a member of the Minneapolis Pops Orchestra.
Composer Elena Roussanova Lucas grew up in Russia and is currently a faculty member at the Boston University College of Fine Arts where she teaches theory and composition. She has quickly emerged as a prolific composer for band. Serenade for Winds is an elegant and lyrical piece, set in a chorale style.
Nancy Galbraith has been actively composing music since the late 1970s, creating instrumental and vocal music known for its rich harmonic texture, rhythmic vitality, emotional and spiritual depth, and wide range of expression. She is currently a professor of composition at Carnegie Mellon University. Her work, with brightness round about it was composed in 1993. The work was inspired by the text from the old testament book of Ezekiel. "As I looked, behold, a stormy wind came out of the north, and a great cloud, with brightness round about it, and fire flashing forth continually, and in the midst of the fire, as it were gleaming bronze . . . from the midst of it came the likeness of four living creatures." The piece is a melodic tonal depiction, capturing the mood of the text on which it was inspired.
Also featured is a newly discovered work for band by one of America's most honored composers, Howard Hanson. Hanson composed Triumphal Ode for Military band in 1918 while he was a faculty member in the music department at the College of the Pacific in San Jose, California. Triumphal Ode was one of Hanson's earliest compositions and published postmortem in 2008.
Concluding the program will be the march Fairest of the Fair composed in 1908 by John Philip Sousa (1854–1932). The University Symphonic Band is pleased to share this concert with the Southern Oregon Symphonic Band under the direction of Bill Norfleet. The Southern Oregon Symphonic Band is comprised of community musicians from the Rogue Valley. The band will feature SOU music major Nicklas Waroff performing the Concertino for Saxophone and Band by Jerry Bilik.
Tickets for this performance are $10 for general admission and free for students. Tickets and season passes may be purchased by calling 541-552-6101 or at the Music Box Office prior to the performance. For more information, please visit Southern Oregon University’s Music Department website at http://www.sou.edu/music.
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