Thursday, March 14, 2024 | 7:30 pm | Wentz Concert Hall | Naperville, Illinois
With Special Guests, the Warren Township High School
Symphonic Winds & Concert Winds,
Mr. Lawrence Rogers and Mr. Kurt Gros, conductors
From the Music Director
Welcome to the third 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 third 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 two 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 Warren Township H.S. Concert Winds
Mr. Kurt Gros, conductor (click for biography)
Fanfare Esprit
Carol Brittin Chambers (b. 1965)
Commissioned by the Curtis, Ereckson and the Ford Middle School Bands in Allen, TX, 2022, the general meaning of “esprit” is liveliness, vivaciousness, or sprightliness. People with esprit are described as full of life, joy and vigor. When used in the phrase “esprit de corps,” it is describing those feelings of pride and loyalty shared by members of a group, which of course describes musical ensembles perfectly.
When setting out to write this piece, my goal was to write an energetic fanfare and opener that is not only fun but also has a bit of a flourish. Nothing starts a concert out better than a bold, lively fanfare, paired with tuneful, memorable melodies and countermelodies. I hope you enjoy Fanfare Esprit!
– Program note by the composer
Illumination
David Maslanka (1943-2017)
“Illumination” — lighting up, bringing light. I am especially interested in composing music for young people that allows them a vibrant experience of their own creative energy. A powerful experience of this sort stays in the heart and mind as a channel for creative energy, no matter what the life path. Music shared in community brings this vital force to everyone. Illumination is an open and cheerful piece in a quick tempo, with a very direct A-B-A song form.
Illumination: Overture for Band was composed for the Franklin, Massachusetts, public schools. The commission was started by Nicole Wright, band director at the Horace Mann Middle School in Franklin, when she discovered that my grandnephew was in her band. The piece was initially to have been for her young players, but the idea grew to make it the center of the dedication concert at the opening of Franklin’s new high school building. Rehearsals of Illumination were actually the first musical sounds made in their fine new auditorium.
–Program note by the composer
Shadow Rituals
Michael Markowski (b. 1986)
Shadow Rituals was written for the first Frank Ticheli Composition Contest in 2006. It won first prize in Category 2 – Young Band. The piece begins with the percussion section, and shortly after we hear the first theme played by the clarinets. The first theme is later heard in the flutes and bells before returning to the clarinets. Most of Shadow Rituals is related to the opening section, and the majority of the motives heard throughout are related to the first theme.
The second theme is very syncopated and is first heard in the horns and is followed by a development section. The piece then has a brief moment of release as the flutes sustain a unison pitch. Then the third theme is played by a solo euphonium. The third theme is presented in canon in the bassoon, alto sax, and clarinets. The third theme is a perfect palindrome; if you played it backwards it would sound exactly the same. The first theme returns before a coda, but has been altered to fit a 6-beat pattern instead of a 5-beat pattern. This alteration is presented by the trumpets, over which an augmentation of theme one is expressed by the woodwinds. Shadow Rituals ends with a brief statement of the first theme by the woodwinds, and a brief statement of the second theme by the winds and brass.
– Program note by the composer
Personnel
Click to view members of the Warren Township H.S. Concert Winds
Short Break- Ensemble Change
The Warren Township H.S. Symphonic Winds
Mr. Lawrence Rogers, conductor (click for biography)
Velocity
Robert Sheldon (b. 1954)
This brief musical essay seeks to portray velocity in all of its forms. From breathtaking speed to brutal force, from the flowing elegance of flight to the heart-pounding thrill of a reckless drive. Full of rhythmic intensity, Doppler effects and technical flair, you’re about to embark on a musical ride you won’t soon forget!
– Program note by the composer
Lux Aurumque
Eric Whitacre (b. 1970)
According to composer Eric Whitacre, “Lux Aurumque began its life as an a capella choral work that I wrote in the fall of 2000. When the Texas Music Educators Association and a consortium of bands commissioned me to adapt it for symphonic winds, I rewrote the climax and included the grand ‘Bliss’ theme from my opera Paradise Lost. Lux Aurumque received its premiere at the 2005 conference of the Texas Music Educators Association, and is dedicated with deep admiration for my dear friend Gary Green.”
Commissioned by the Texas Music Educators Association for their 2005 All-State Band, Lux Aurumque is a lush and poignant adaptation of one of Eric Whitacre’s most popular choral works. Simple triads melt from one chord to the next, creating a slowly evolving wash of aural color. For his chorale setting, Whitacre had the original poem by Edward Esch (b. 1970) translated into Latin by Charles Anthony Silvestri. Here is Esch’s original poem:
Light,
warm and heavy as pure gold
and the angels sing softly
to the new-born baby.
– Program note from Wind Band Literature
Incantation and Dance
John Barnes Chance (1932-1972)
Incantation and Dance came into being during Chance’s residency at Greensboro. He wrote it in 1960 and originally called it Nocturne and Dance — it went on to become his first published piece for band. Its initial “incantation,” presented in the lowest register of the flutes, presents most of the melodic material of the piece. Chance uses elements of bitonality throughout the opening section to create a “sound world mystically removed from itself.” This continues as the dance elements begin to coalesce. Over a sustained bitonal chord (E-flat major over an A pedal), percussion instruments enter one by one, establishing the rhythmic framework of the dance to come. A whip crack sets off furious brass outbursts. When the dance proper finally arrives, its asymmetrical accents explicitly suggest a 9/8 + 7/8 feel, chafing at the structure of 4/4 time.
– Program note from Wind Band Literature
Personnel
Click to view members of the Warren Township H.S. Symphonic Winds
Intermission (12 minutes)
The Naperville Winds
The Fanfare from “La Péri”
Paul Dukas (1865-1935)
Paul Dukas suffered from a lack of self-confidence and was very critical of his musical output. As a result, he destroyed the manuscripts of all but seven large and five small works. Luckily, he kept what is now his best known composition, the symphonic scherzo L’apprenti Sorcier (The Sorcerer’s Apprentice). He also came very close to destroying the manuscript of his ballet music La Peri (The Fairy), which was rescued by his a close friend before he could dispose of it.
In 1912, as a means to give the typically noisy audiences of the day time to settle into their seats, Dukas wrote The Fanfare from La Péri as a last-minute addition, a prelude, for the premiere performance of the ballet La Péri. This was the last of his works that he allowed to be published.
– Program note by the Vista Ridge High School Wind Ensemble concert program, 19 December 2014
Fascinating Ribbons
Joan Tower (b. 1938)
Tower moved to Bolivia when she was nine years old, an experience which she credits for making rhythm an integral part of her work. For the next decade Tower’s talent in music, particularly on the piano, grew rapidly due to her father’s insistence that she benefit from consistent musical training. Tower’s relationship with her mineralogist father is visible in many aspects of her work, most specifically her “mineral works” including Black Topaz (1976) and Silver Ladders (1986). She returned to the United States as a young woman to study music, first at Bennington College, in Vermont, and then at Columbia University where she studied under Otto Luening, Jack Beeson, and Vladimir Ussachevsky and was awarded her doctorate in composition in 1968.
Since 1972, Tower has taught at Bard College, where she is Asher Edelman Professor of Music. She has served as composer-in-residence with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s since 1997 and at the Deer Valley Festival in Utah since 1998, a title she also held for eight years at the Yale/Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. Other accolades include the 1998 Delaware Symphony’s Alfred I. DuPont Award for Distinguished American Composer, the 2002 Annual Composer’s Award from the Lancaster (PA) Symphony, and an honorary degree from the New England Conservatory (2006). “Tower has truly earned a place among the most original and forceful voices in modern American music” (The Detroit News).
Concerning this work, Tower wrote, “I am happy to be finally entering the band world — a generous and hard-working world that has generated so many excellent wind, brass, and percussion players. It seems also to be a place of people that actually love living composers! Since this was my first foray into the band world, I decided that a short piece would be the wisest course. In naming the piece, I noticed that there are many contours of motives that are shaped in curved “ribbon” patterns. I immediately thought of the word “fascinating.” And the ending dotted-rhythm reminded me of Gershwin’s Fascinating Rhythms — hence the title. It is dedicated to Jack Stamp, that intrepid “stalker” of composers who will not give up until he gets a band piece from them. I should know; it took him five years to get me to write one!”
– Program note by the composer
Aegean Festival Overture
Andreas Makris (1930-2005)
trans. Albert Bader
Andreas Makris obtained his first violin “by accident” when one day, during World War II, his father traded the family’s ration of salt and olive oil to a man who begged him for the items, offering his violin. “So, for a month we had our bean soup without olive oil, and I began to play the violin,” Makris would later explain.
Makris continued his music studies at the National Conservatory in Greece and, beginning in 1950, in the U.S. on a Rockefeller Grant at the Phillips University in Enid, Oklahoma. He attended the Kansas City Conservatory in Missouri from 1951 to 1953 and graduated from the Mannes College of Music in New York in 1956 with Artist honors. Additional musical training followed at the Aspen Music Festival in 1956 and 1957 and at the Fountainbleau School in France where in 1958 Makris studied composition with Nadia Boulanger.
In 1958 Makris won a position with the Dallas Symphony and in 1959 moved to the St. Louis Symphony after a successful audition. In 1961, at the invitation of conductor Howard Mitchell, Makris joined the first violin section of the National Symphony Orchestra, where he would remain for 28 years. Over the years, the NSO would go on to perform many of his works, under Mitchell, Antal Dorati, Mstislav Rostropovich and Leonard Slatkin. In 1970 Makris became the first composer to have his work premiered at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall and later would compose a work honoring the 25th anniversary of the Kennedy Center.
While both melodies and rhythms of the Aegean Festival Overture have been undoubtedly influenced by the Greek folk music, there is nothing which has been taken directly from the folk music, and it is all original. If one looks through the pages of the Aegean casually, one would at once see a definite characteristic, and that is irregular and multiple rhythms.
To quote the composer: “Concerning the melodies, they are all original, but my memories from Greece, the climate, sky, beautiful sea, the gaiety and sorrow of the Greek people undoubtedly have contributed to the general character of these melodies. The elaborate clarinet cadenza is a shepherd’s inspiration but obviously too sophisticated to actually be played by the lonely shepherd.”
– Program note from Texas A&M University Wind Symphony concert program, 24 November 2019
Toccata Marziale
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
Ralph Vaughan Williams was an English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also a collector of English folk music and song: this activity both influenced his editorial approach to the English Hymnal, beginning in 1904, in which he included many folk song arrangements set as hymn tunes, and also influenced several of his own original compositions.
Vaughan Williams spent most of his life in London. He studied the viola, piano and organ, and he wanted to compose, but his family discouraged him from an orchestral career. He graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge, and studied composition at the Royal College of Music, as well as organ and piano with several teachers, Although he also studied abroad with Max Bruch and Maurice Ravel, his style remained individual and English. He was appointed organist at Lambeth, and his interest in English folk music dates from his stay there. He became good friends with Gustav Holst, and they often shared their works in progress with each other. His work on the English Hymnal greatly influenced his musical career.
He joined the Royal Army Medical Corps in France during World War I. From the 1920s onward, he was in increasing demand as a composer and conductor. He composed simple pieces and grand orchestral works and is considered the outstanding composer of his generation in England. According to Hubert J. Foss in The Heritage of Music, “In Vaughan Williams we hear the historic speech of the English people. What he gives us in music is the language of the breakfast table. It is also the language that Shakespeare wrote.”
Toccata Marziale, written in 1924, was Vaughan Williams’s second work for military band and is one of the most significant contributions to the wind band literature. The word “toccata” comes from the Italian toccare, meaning “to touch,” hence its association with the early Baroque virtuoso keyboard pieces written by Frescobaldi and others. Toccata Marziale is a contrapunctal masterpiece for wind ensemble, in which textures are juxtaposed in massed effects with large sections of winds and brasses. A rhythmic vigor, as suggested by the title, permeates the piece, and Vaughan Williams’s brilliant scoring reveals the fundamental properties of the band’s sonority and its instrumental virtuosity and color.
– Program note by Frederick Fennell
Three Images
Mvt. 1, Spring
Joel Love (b. 1982)
These three movements all explore their own sound worlds. The first movement, Spring, begins with three simple melodic movements, is through-composed, and is meant to depict a verdant springtime landscape in which people/animals are playing. The Golden Hour is a meditation on the image of the sun setting (or rising). In photography, the term “the golden hour” refers to the time just before and after sunrise/sunset, during which daylight is reddish and soft. Lastly, Bed Monsters is an unbridled rondo that is evocative of someone or something being chased by a predator. The title comes from my wife, Amelia, who thought it sounded like a monster lurking under the bed (from her childhood…).
This piece was premiered on March 12, 2016, at Texas Tech University during the 2016 North American Saxophone Alliance National Conference. It was commissioned by the Kenari and Barkada quartets.
– Program note by composer
Poem
Charles Tomlinson Griffes (1884-1920)
trans. Robert Webb
Whitney Bowden, Flute Soloist (click for biography)
Charles Tomlinson Griffes (17 September 1884, Elmira, N.Y. – 8 April 1920, New York City) was an American composer for piano, chamber ensembles and voice.
After early studies on piano and organ in his home town, Griffes went to Berlin to study with pianist Ernst Jedliczka at the Stern conservatory. While there, Griffes also enjoyed a brief but influential mentorship by composer Engelbert Humperdinck. On returning to the U.S. in 1907, he became director of music studies at the Hackley School for boys in Tarrytown, New York, a post which he held until his early death of influenza thirteen years later.
Griffes is the most famous American representative of musical Impressionism. He was fascinated by the exotic, mysterious sound of the French Impressionists, and was compositionally much influenced by them while he was in Europe. He also studied the work of contemporary Russian composers (for example Scriabin), whose influence is also apparent in his work, for example in his use of synthetic scales.
Charles Tomlinson Griffes composed Poem for Flute and Orchestra for Georges Barrère, the celebrated flutist for whom Edgard Varèse later wrote his famous Density 21.5. It was completed and first performed in 1919, shortly before Griffes collapsed from exhaustion due to influenza.
The piece opens with a melody sounding in the low strings before passing to the solo flute. A second theme, announced by the flute, adds a sense of oriental mystery, something found often in Griffes’ music. These themes are transformed in several lively dance-like episodes, but the languorous mood of the opening returns and the work concludes in tranquil reverie.
– Program Note from Seattle Symphony CD, “Through the Looking Glass“
Twelve Seconds to the Moon
Robert W. Smith (1958-2023)
Robert W. Smith was an American composer, conductor, arranger and educator. He attended high school in Daleville, Alabama, after which he left for Troy State University, where he played lead trumpet in the Sound of the South Marching Band. While at Troy, he studied composition with Dr. Paul Yoder. Upon his graduation from Troy State with a Bachelor of Music Education degree, Smith pursued his musical career in South Florida, where he earned the master’s degree in media writing and production from the University of Miami, while studying with Dr. Alfred Reed.
Twelve Seconds to the Moon was commissioned by the Air Force Band of Flight, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, Colonel Richard A. Shelton, Conductor. It is a celebration of man’s conquest of the sky and the heavens above. While the Wright Brothers’ first manned flight lasted a mere twelve seconds, astronauts were soon walking the surface of the moon. Robert W. Smith’s spectacular sonic adventure stretches the envelope with some of the most exotic and adventurous scoring for percussion and winds ever achieved. Searing and blistering musical lines merge with explosive percussion to make this one of the most sensational works for wind ensemble or concert band in concert band literature today.
– Program note from publisher
Personnel
Click to view members of The Naperville Winds
Thanks To Our Sponsors
Corporate Sponsor
Corporate Partner
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
Melissa Hickok (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
Cain Anderson (NCC MUED student, flute), Stage Manager
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
Pete Ellman, Ellman’s Music Center
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
Laura Cooper
Christopher Drennan
Jennifer Holloway
Collin Trevor