PROGRAM NOTES
Portrait of a Graduate
Dr. Sthitadhi Chakraborty
Loyal School of Medicine
WVHS Bands, Class of 2015
My amazing experience in the music program at Waubonsie Valley set the foundation for cultivating my abilities in communication. I would not be where I am today in fulfilling my dream to become a doctor without them. During my years in the marching band, I learned that our success was highly attributed to our tight-knit community and the student leadership. The rewarding experience of being drum major meant taking on a multitude of roles, such as reflecting the band’s collective vision, motivating the band, and serving the needs of both the individuals and the group.
To this day, I carry the lessons I learned in communication as a drum major with me and they have helped me in the variety of enriching experiences I had in college. From being a residential advisor for sophomore students in the dorms, an undergraduate research assistant at a neurology lab, and even the president of our university’s own student-led pep band, communication proved to be a vital skill in furthering myself and my abilities. I am currently in medical school at the Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine and communication is a core component of our education.
My experience in the Waubonsie Valley music program changed the way I perceived communication and it became a valuable tool for personal growth and contribution to the community.
6:30pm CONCERT
Symphonic Band & Symphonic Winds present:
"The Intersection of Art and Music"
The intersection of music and visual art provides a unique avenue for emotional resonance and intellectual stimulation. These mediums expand our understanding of human expression and cultural dialogue through their interplay. The explored instances of artistic overlap illuminate the pervasive synergy that exists, offering a profound testament to the fluid boundaries of creativity. In the end, music and visual art don’t simply intertwine—they share an essence, and one is not the same without the other.
Cloud Gate
by Timothy Loest
It has always been my hope to compose an original work that would capture the character of my favorite city, Chicago. With its rich history, diverse culture, beautiful lakefront, and magnificent skyline, Chicago is a world city.
Cloud Gate - Reflections of a City was commissioned by the Westview Hills Middle School Band in Willowbrook, Illinois. The inspiration for this work came after seeing, touching, and walking under Cloud Gate, a gigantic, highly polished, stainless steel elliptical sculpture located in Chicago's Millenium Park. Created by British artist Anish Kapoor, the 110-ton Cloud Gate stands 33 feet high, 66 feet long and 42 feet wide. With its liquid mercury appearance, Cloud Gate's reflective surface captures images of both earth and sky.
Indeed, Kapoor's Cloud Gate is a visual analog of Chicago, reflecting the city's strength, structure and energy. In it, one sees a most impressive cityscape, with the busy streets, vibrant people, and tall buildings, each pointing upward to floating clouds of optimism and never-ending dreams.
-notes by the composer
Melting Clocks
by Chad Heiny
The composer Chad Heiny says about the piece: "Melting Clocks is a quirky romp through Salvador Dalí’s painting ‘The Persistence of Memory.’ Quotes of the commissioning school’s fight song and alma mater are synthesized with bending melodies, tick-tocking elements, and a unique harmonic language."
The Persistence of Memory, by Salvador Dalí, is a well-known surrealist piece. In it, Dalí introduces the image of the soft melting pocket watch. It epitomizes Dalí's theory of "softness" and "hardness", which was central to his thinking at the time. As Dawn Adès wrote, "The soft watches are an unconscious symbol of the relativity of space and time, a Surrealist meditation on the collapse of our notions of a fixed cosmic order". This interpretation suggests that Dalí was incorporating an understanding of the world introduced by Albert Einstein's theory of special relativity. Asked by Ilya Prigogine whether this was in fact the case, Dalí replied that the soft watches were not inspired by the theory of relativity, but by the surrealist perception of a Camembert melting in the sun.
Twittering Machine
by Brian Balmages
Inspired by the 1922 artwork by Swiss-German painter Paul Klee, this ambiguous music follows the controversy presented in a painting that sets to depict a struggle between nature and machine. While there are many interpretations of Klee’s creation, it is clearly a dark representation of four birds that appear to be shackled to a wire attached to a hand crank. Further, there is a pit below the “machine” and an eerie blueish gray fog surrounding everything. The music seeks to embody this ambiguity, beginning with soft clusters of sound amid the presence of random “machine-like” sounds. As the music develops, a haunting melody appears and soon begins to transform as the music around it becomes more rhythmic and aggressive.
Twittering Machine was commissioned by the Patrick March Middle School (Sun Prairie, Wisc.) and conductor Chris Gleason. All of Gleason’s students researched the painting and offered Balmages their thoughts on its meaning and their reactions to it prior to its composition. Commissioning director Gleason adds: “In fact, it almost feels like we are on a tour of the painting exposing different parts of it sonically.” The machine slowly begins to take over the entire texture before the melody battles back (representing the possibility of nature against machines).
- note from VanderCook College of Music
Falling Water
by Timothy Broege
Although the piece Falling Water is inspired generally by waterfalls, we have taken time to connect our performance to a waterfall integrated into the amazing architecture of Fallingwater by Frank Lloyd Wright.
In Fallingwater, Wright anchored a series of reinforced concrete “trays” to the natural rock. Cantilevered terraces of local sandstone blend harmoniously with the rock formations, appearing to float above the stream below. The first floor entry, living room and dining room merge to create one continuous space, while a hatch door in the living room opens to a suspended stairway that descends to the stream below. Glass walls further open the rooms to the surrounding landscape. In 1938, Wright designed additional guest quarters set into the hillside directly above the main house and linked by a covered walkway. Fallingwater remained the family’s beloved weekend home for 26 years. In 1963 the Kaufmanns donated the property to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, together with 1,543 acres of surrounding land. It opened its door as a museum in 1964 and has since hosted more than five million visitors.
“Great architecture, like any great art, ultimately takes you somewhere that words cannot take you at all. Fallingwater does that the way Chartres Cathedral does that. There’s some experience that gets you in your gut and you just feel it, and you can’t quite even say it. My whole life is dealing with architecture and words, and at the end of the day, there is something that I can’t entirely say when it comes to what Fallingwater feels like.”
— Paul Goldberger, Pulitzer Prize-winning architectural critic
Pictures at an Exhibition
by Modest Mussorgsky
Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky composed Pictures at an Exhibition in 1874. The work is a tribute to his friend and colleague Viktor Hartmann, an artist who died one year earlier. Vladimir Stasov, an art critic who was a mutual friend and enthusiastic supporter of both the artist and composer, assembled a commemorative exhibit in St. Petersburg, and Mussorgsky’s frequent visits to the gallery were inspirational.
Mussorgsky and Hartmann were kindred spirits who shared a desire to turn away from the European training and influence that had held sway over Russian music, art, and literature. Both were intrigued by folk and popular elements of Russian history and culture, and were determined to use them in their efforts to develop a nationalistic identity in the arts. Judging from Mussorgsky’s tribute to Hartmann, music that possesses a dramatic and sweeping quality on a scale far greater than the artwork itself, the relationship between Mussorgsky and Hartmann must have been deep and powerful. The music begins with a Promenade, a noble theme that represents the composer moving through the gallery, and that returns as transition material between several of the movements. According to Stasov, Mussorgsky depicted himself “roving through the exhibition, now leisurely, now briskly in order to come close to a picture that had attracted his attention, and at times sadly, thinking of his departed friend.” As the Promenade theme returns at various points during the work, it takes on different emotional qualities, reflecting the evolving feelings of the composer as he makes his way through the exhibit.
Walking to the Sky
by Robert Buckley
An epic, cinematic approach to celebrate humankind's collective quest for wisdom, inspired by a sculpture of a group of people walking skyward into infinity. With pulsing percussion, heroic brass, haunting melodies, sudden shifts in dynamics, and dramatic key changes, everyone in the ensemble gets a chance to star in this exciting mini-movie score.
- program note from the publisher
8:00pm CONCERT
Concert Band & Wind Symphony
Denbridge Way
by James Swearingen
Denbridge Way is a great example of an instrumental form that emerged during the nineteenth-century, referred to as the concert overture. Concert overtures are not drawn from a stage work or opera, but rather, are stand-alone works to be programmed as an overture in a concert hall.
James Swearingen is an American composer and arranger. He holds a Master’s Degree from the Ohio State University and a Bachelor's degree from Bowling Green State University and is Professor of Music Emeritus, Department Chair of Music Education at Capital University, Columbus, Ohio
Foundry
by John Mackey
The idea with Foundry was to make a piece that celebrates the fact that percussionists have this ability to make just about anything into an "instrument." Snare drums and bass drums are great, but why not write a whole piece featuring non-traditional percussion -- things like salad bowls and mixing bowls and piles of wood?
In some cases, I was specific about what instrument to play (timpani, xylophone, etc.). With many of the parts, though, I only described what sound I wanted (play a "clang" — a metal instrument, probably struck with a hammer, that creates a rich "CLANG!" sound), and allowed the percussionist to be creative in finding the best "instrument" to make the sound I described.
It won't be surprising that Foundry, for concert band with "found percussion," much of it metallic, ends up sounding like a steel factory. The composer thanks the required 10–12 percussionists for allowing his ridiculous requests to continue. Clang.
- program note by composer
It is the Hobbit Frodo who is assigned to carry out this task, and to assist him a company, the Fellowship of the Ring, is formed under the leadership of Gandalf, the wizard, which includes the Hobbits Sam, Peregrin and Merin, the Dwarf Gimli, the Elf Legolas, Boromir and Aragorn, the later King. The companions are secretly followed by Gollum, who does not shun any means, however perfidious, to recover his priceless ring. However, the companions soon fall apart and , after many pernicious adventures and a surprising dénouement, Frodo and Sam can at last return to their familiar home, The Shire.
- notes from the composer
Prelude, Siciliano and Rondo
by Malcolm Arnold, arr. John Paynter
This work was first written in 1963 for brass band under the title Little Suite for Brass. Paynter's arrangement for wind bands includes woodwinds and additional percussion but retains the breezy effervescence of the original work. All three movements are written in short, clear, five-part song forms. The A-B-A-C-A is instantly apparent to the listener while giving the composer's imaginative melodies a natural, almost folklike, settings. The Prelude begins bombastically in a fanfare style but reaches a middle climax and winds down to a quiet return of the opening measures, which fade to silence. The liltingly expressive Siciliano is both slower and more expressive than the other movements, thus allowing solo instruments and smaller choirs of sound to be heard. It also ends quietly. The rollicking five-part Rondo provides a romping finale in which the technical facility of the modern wind band is set forth in boastful brilliance.
- from "Program Notes for Band"
Council Oak
by David R. Gillingham
On the Seminole Hollywood Reservation in Florida, on the corner of U.S. 441 and Stirling Road, stands the "Council Oak" tree. During the long history of the struggle of the Seminole tribe in Florida, this oak tree was of special significance. When the Seminole tribe was faced with termination by the United States government, leaders of the tribe began meeting regularly underneath this great oak tree, which helped to breathe new life back into the Seminole tribe. In 1957, the U.S. Congress officially recognized the Seminole Tribe of Florida.
Council Oak, commissioned by the Florida Bandmasters Association, was inspired by the significance of this tree and by the poetry of Moses Jumper Jr., who wrote a poem by the same name which chronicles the history of the Seminoles as told by the oak tree. The thematic material is taken from four songs of the Seminoles as officially recorded by Frances Dunsmore in his book Seminole Music and archived in the Bureau of American Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution. Additionally, I have composed a new theme, which I call the Song of the Council Oak which is indicative of Seminole and Native American melodic/rhythmic style.
- program note by composer