Thursday, March 6, 2025 | 7:30 pm | Wentz Concert Hall | Naperville, Illinois
With Special Guest
The Maine West High School Wind Ensemble
Mr. Bernie Gerstmayr, conductor
From the Music Director
Welcome to the fourth season of The Naperville Winds, an organization comprising musicians from across Chicagoland (and beyond) who share one common mission–to perform the finest wind band literature available at the highest level possible. This ensemble coalesced quickly; the energy and excitement at the first rehearsal on August 26, 2021 was palpable, and, immediately after rehearsal, it was clear that we were at the beginning of a truly special journey.
The road to today’s performance hasn’t been easy. In order for a major ensemble to establish itself in the time of COVID, it must overcome myriad challenges. We faced these head-on, knowing full-well the daunting challenges we’d face, and we overcame them all, together. The collective “brain trust” of the ensemble–through each member’s experience, outside-the-box thinking, and quick problem solving skills–has allowed us to deftly navigate around the detours and roadblocks and continue on our path, unwaveringly, toward our shared goal. Our fourth season is, therefore, not just a celebration of music, but a testament to the resilience of the human spirit.
It has been an absolute joy to make music with the members of The Naperville Winds over the past four years. I am humbled by the collegiality, selflessness, energy, and of course, talent, that each member brings to the table. I strongly believe that The Naperville Winds will soon be a household name for lovers of wind band repertoire throughout the nation and the world. I sincerely hope you will support us throughout this incredible journey!
Sincerely,
Sean Kelley, D.M.A.
Music Director, The Naperville Winds
Repertoire
The Maine West High School Wind Ensemble
El Camino Real
Alfred Reed (1921-2005)
arr. Robert Longfield (b. 1947)
El Camino Real (translated meaning: “The Royal Road” or “The King’s Highway”) was commissioned by, and is dedicated to, the 581st Air Force Band (AFRES) and its commander, Lt. Col. Ray E. Toler. Composed during the latter half of 1984 and completed in early ’85, it bears the subtitle “A Latin Fantasy.”
The music is based on a series of chord progressions common to countless generations of Spanish flamenco (and other) guitarists, whose fiery style and brilliant playing have captivated millions of music lovers throughout the world. These progressions and the resulting key relationships have become practically synonymous with what we feel to be the true Spanish idiom. Together with the folk melodies they have underscored, in part derived by a procedure known to musicians as the “melodizing of harmony,” they have created a vast body of what most people would consider authentic Spanish music.
The first section of the music is based upon the dance form known as the Jota, while the second, contrasting section is derived from the Fandango, but here altered considerably in both time and tempo from its usual form. Overall, the music follows a tradition three-part pattern: fast-slow-fast.
The first public performance of El Camino Real took place on April 15th, 1985, in Sarasota, Florida, with the 581st Air Force Band under the direction of Lt. Col. Ray E. Toler.
– Program note by composer
Elements
Brian Balmages (b. 1975)
This short four-movement work is written in the same form as a traditional symphony, hence the subtitle Petite Symphony. Each movement depicts one of four elements: air, water, earth and fire. The first movement, Air, features a four-note motif that continues uninterruptedly throughout the movement. The voices and textures surrounding the motif evolve and change as the work progresses, but the original four notes remain the same. The second movement, Water, represents a quiet body of water. The dips and crests in the music represent droplets of water interrupting the smoothness of the surface, creating small ripples across the otherwise peaceful water. Earth, the third movement of the work, depicts the rapid spinning of the earth itself. The movement draws musical inspiration from Mercury, the Winged Messenger from Holst’s The Planets (“Rather ironically…”, the composer writes, “…because earth was the only planet excluded from his work”). The movement is constructed in ABA form, wherein the A section returns almost in its entirety, which “symbolizes the earth’s recurrent spinning on its axis.” The fourth and final movement, Fire, depicts raging intensity of fire. This movement is the most aggressive and harmonically complex. As the work progresses, the four-note motif from Air returns, symbolizing Greek philosopher Empedocles’ idea that both fire and air are “outwardly reaching” elements.
– Program note from The Ohio State University University Band concert program, 29 September 2022
The Clapping Song
Randall Standridge (b. 1976)
What do you get when you mix symphonic motivic development, a touch of a country hoedown, and a hint of jazz, all tied together with clapping from the ensemble? You get the The Clapping Song, of course. This unique composition is as much fun to play as it is hard to describe.
– Program note by composer
Personnel
Click to view members of the Maine West High School Wind Ensemble
Intermission (10 minutes)
The Naperville Winds
Magnolia Star
Steve Danyew (b. 1983)
Magnolia Star was a train that ran from New Orleans to Chicago with the famous Panama Limited in the mid-20th century. This work evokes train travel with driving rhythms and train-like sonorities, and also uses the blues scale.
– Program note from publisher
When I was playing saxophone in my middle school jazz band, we started every rehearsal the same way –- with an improvisation exercise that our director created. It was a simple yet brilliant exercise for teaching beginning improvisation and allowing everyone in the band a chance to “solo.” As a warm-up at the opening of each rehearsal, the whole band played the blues scale ascending, resting for one measure, descending, and resting for another measure. During the measures of rest, each member of the band took turns improvising a solo. Looking back, this exercise not only got the band swinging together from the start of rehearsal, but it made improvisation, a daunting musical task to many, seem within everyone’s abilities.
This experience was my introduction to the blues scale, and I have long wanted to write a piece inspired by this group of pitches. In Magnolia Star, I explore various ways to use these pitches in harmonies, melodies, and timbres, creating a diverse set of ideas that will go beyond sounds that we typically associate with the blues scale. I didn’t want to create a “blues” piece, but rather a piece in my own musical voice that uses and pays homage to the blues scale. Nearly all of the pitches used in Magnolia Star fit into the concert C blues scale. It is interesting to note that embedded within the C blues scale are both a C minor triad, an E-flat minor triad, and an E-flat major triad. I explore the alternation of these tonal areas right from the start of the piece, and continue to employ them in different ways throughout the entire work.
Another influence was trains and the American railroad. The railroad not only provides some intriguing sonic ideas, with driving rhythms and train-like sonorities, but it was also an integral part of the growth of jazz and blues in America. In the late 19th century, the Illinois Central Railroad constructed rail lines that stretched from New Orleans and the “Delta South” all the way north to Chicago. Many Southern musicians traveled north via the railroad, bringing “delta blues” and other idioms to northern parts of the country. The railroad was also the inspiration for countless blues songs by a wide variety of artists. Simply put, the railroad was crucial to the dissemination of jazz and blues in the early 20th century. Magnolia Star was an Illinois Central train that ran from New Orleans to Chicago with the famous Panama Limited in the mid-20th century.
– Program Note by composer
Roma
Valerie Coleman (b. 1970)
A nation without a country is the best way to describe the nomadic tribes known as gypsies, or properly call, the Romani. Their traditions, their language (Roma), legends, and music stretch all over the globe. from the Middle East, the Mediterranean region, and the Iberian peninsula, across the ocean to the Americas.
Roma is a tribute to that culture, in five descriptive themes, as told through the eyes and hearts of Romani women everywhere: Romani Women, Mystic, Youth, Trickster, and History. The melodies and rhythms are a fusion of styles and cultures: malagueña of Spain, Argentine tango, Arabic music, Turkish folk songs, 3/2 Latin claves, and jazz.
– Program note from score
At Night, At a Bar
Chang Su Koh (b. 1970, Osaka, Japan) is a Japanese composer and arranger.
Koh graduated from the Osaka College of Music with a degree in composition and entered the Musik Akademie der Stadt Basel. He studied composition with Kunihiko Tanaka and Rudolf Kelterborn, and conducting with Jost Meier.
He has been awarded the Asahi Composition Prize, the Master Yves Leleu Prize from the First Comines-Warneton International Composition Contest, Second Prize from the Suita Music Contest Composition Section, and honorable mentions from the Nagoya City Cultural Promotion Contest and the Zoltán Kodaly Memorial International Composers Competition.
Presently, Koh teaches at Osaka College of Music and ESA Conservatory of Music and Wind Repair Academy, and is a member of the Kansai Modern Music Association.
Blue Shades
Frank Ticheli (b. 1958)
In 1992 I composed a concerto for traditional jazz band and orchestra, Playing with Fire, for the Jim Cullum Jazz Band and the San Antonio Symphony. I experienced tremendous joy during the creation of Playing with Fire, and my love for early jazz is expressed in every bar of the concerto. However, after completing it, I knew that the traditional jazz influences dominated the work, leaving little room for my own musical voice to come through. I felt a strong need to compose another work, one that would combine my love of early jazz with my own musical style.
Four years, and several compositions later, I finally took the opportunity to realize that need by composing Blue Shades. As its title suggests, the work alludes to the blues, and a jazz feeling is prevalent — however, it is not literally a blues piece. There is not a single 12-bar blues progression to be found, and except for a few isolated sections, the eighth-note is not swung.
The work, however, is heavily influenced by the blues: “Blue notes” (flatted 3rds, 5ths, and 7ths) are used constantly; blues harmonies, rhythms, and melodic idioms pervade the work; and many “shades of blue” are depicted, from bright blue, to dark, to dirty, to hot blue.
At times, Blue Shades burlesques some of the clichés from the Big Band era, not as a mockery of those conventions, but as a tribute. A slow and quiet middle section recalls the atmosphere of a dark, smoky blues haunt. An extended clarinet solo played near the end recalls Benny Goodman’s hot playing style, and ushers in a series of “wailing” brass chords recalling the train whistle effects commonly used during that era.
Blue Shades was commissioned by a consortium of thirty university, community, and high school concert bands under the auspices of the Worldwide Concurrent Premieres and Commissioning Fund.
– Program note by composer
Bamboo Shoots and City Streets
Benjamin Barker (b. 1995)
This piece is an exploration of the blend between tradition and urbanization, inspired by bamboo shoots I saw growing in the middle of the pavement while on a walk with a friend. I wondered what it would sound like to tell the story of the resilience and adaptability of these bamboo shoots as they continue to grow and adapt in an ever-urbanizing environment.
I explored this concept by blending genres of music that represent both tradition and urbanization. Tradition is represented through the sounds of traditional Japanese music forms (such as gagaku or taiko), while urbanization is represented through the inclusion of elements of pop, rock, metal, and jazz. The piece begins in the midst of a forest of bamboo shoots. With each sudden percussive impact a new shoot bursts through the ground. The woodwinds and xylophone assist us in moving forward while weaving through the narrow spaces between bamboo stalks. As the texture thins out and moves outside of the forest, we are suddenly thrust into an urban landscape.
The next section features stereotypical city sounds: car horns via muted trumpets, passing traffic in the trombones, and a general sense of busy hurriedness represented through the constantly moving and evolving textures. The string bass, drumset, low brass, and low reeds are frequently treated as a jazz rhythm section. It is also in this section that we are exposed to the introduction of the main theme of this piece (first seen in the horns at measure 44). This theme, for me, brought to mind the image of bamboo swaying in the wind, and returns multiple times in several environments throughout the piece, displaying the many places this bamboo is able to adapt and flourish. While the soundscape painted here sounds largely urban, it is important to note that the majority of material in this section is based on traditional Japanese music forms: The initial rhythmic figure in the horns and saxophones is derived from solo shamisen music, the woodwinds regularly interrupt phrases with shakuhachi-like motivic elements, many of the harmonies featured later in the section are directly taken from gagaku, and the initial “bamboo forest” triplet figures found in the xylophone and woodwinds in the beginning are hidden within the jazz saxophone solis. As all of these sounds and textures develop, they grow increasingly urgent and intense, building to an overwhelming extent.
Next, an escape into the countryside. The busyness and complexity of the city disappears, and we are able to reflect on the beauty of the bamboo in its more natural habitat. A modified form of our original bamboo forest theme, cognizant of a river, is developed in sequence to build into a new presentation of the main theme (rhythmically modified with transposed pitches, but otherwise the same). This restatement of the main theme is accompanied by the nostalgic sounds of a fuurin (wind chime), shakuhachi-like figures in the flutes, more fragments of the bamboo forest theme, and harmony that I largely associate with pop and rock music. We come to a full realization of the beauty of this scenery in measure 140, and then return to our sequential river texture from before which fades into a serene stillness.
Suddenly, in a very unexpected location, we are thrust back into the bamboo forest theme once again. This is the bamboo in the pavement: defiant and resolute. Taiko drums set an underlying determination that drives this section forward while an assortment of battle cries in the brass intermingle with the familiar sounds of festival music in the woodwinds. This section ebbs and flows, growing into a shameless metal groove before thrusting us, once more, into a majestic and powerful resurgence of the main theme. This theme reminds us of tradition’s firm roots that have persisted and adapted through an ever-urbanizing environment, continuing to grow in power and intensity up to the very last note.
– Program note by composer
Personnel
Click to view members of The Naperville Winds
Thanks to Our Sponsors
Corporate Partner
$1001 and Greater
Full Circle Creative & Media Services
Gold Sponsor
$500 to $1000
Michael & Caroline Kelley
Sean Kelley
Silver Sponsor
$250 to $499
Bruce Spitzer
Bronze Sponsor
$100 to $249
Friends of The Naperville Winds
$1 to $99
Special Thanks To:
The Naperville Winds Leadership Team
Rudi Schwerdle (trombone), Logistics Chair
Ethan Dunk (trumpet), Music Manager
Lori Foster (clarinet), Public Relations Chair
Barb Holland (flute), Secretary
Nate Dickman (trumpet), Treasurer
Crystal Szewczyk (flute), Fundraising Chair
Jennifer Wojcik (flute), Editor
Claudia Andrews (Horn), Melissa Hickok (Clarinet), Ken Kelly (Clarinet), Band Representatives
Tim Chernobrov (contrabass clarinet), Jim Cross (trumpet), David Stickley (trumpet), Setup Crew
NCC Student Front-Of-House Volunteers
Jan Bauers
Shannon Blonski
Joie Fagaragan
Alexa Gangoso
Ray Gray
Fernand Padua
Faith Rios
Liliana Saucedo
Cami Scott
Maddy Travnicek
Daniela Velazquez
Olivia Wegner
Special Supporters
Susan Chou, Chairperson, NCC Department of Music
Lawrence Van Oyen, NCC Director of Bands
Joe LaPalomento, NCC Instructor of Percussion
Stephen M. Caliendo, NCC Dean, College of Arts & Sciences
NCC Conference Services & Fine Arts Offices
Brianna Avalos
Jennifer Berozek
Andrew Butler
Christopher Drennan
Collin Trevor