Swinging Into Summer

Star Spangled Banner: Francis Scott Key, arr. Thomas Palmatier

Is the national anthem of the United States. The lyrics come from "Defence of Fort M’Henry," a poem written in 1814 by the 35-year-old lawyer and amateur poet Francis Scott Key after witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry by British ships of the Royal Navy in the Chesapeake Bay during the Battle of Fort McHenry in the War of 1812.

The poem was set to the tune of a popular British song written by John Stafford Smith for the Anacreontic Society, a men's social club in London. To Anacreon in Heaven, with various lyrics, was already popular in the United States. Set to Key's poem and renamed The Star-Spangled Banner, it would soon become a well-known American patriotic song. With a range of one octave and one fifth (a semitone more than an octave and a half), it is known for being difficult to sing. Although the poem has four stanzas, only the first is commonly sung today.

Festival (De la Homiga de Fuego) by Brian Beck

  Festival (2025) captures the flash and brilliance of a Spanish pas a doble. Brian Beck writes changing meters throughout with chromaticisms and exciting rhythmic interplay between instruments and sections. The piece honors the Fire Ant Festival, a city-wide celebration held every October in Marshall, Texas. The festival is held in town square with vendors, food, and concerts. The festival features live entertainment on a main stage throughout the day, expanded children’s area with monster inflatables and carnival rides, a TourDeFireAnt long distance bike ride, The FireAnt 5K, Annual Toddler Trot, Kids K, FireAnt Festival parade, Diaper Derby, Gurning contest, Chicken Chunkin’ contest, Kids Dance Off, Annual Cupcake contest, scavenger hunt, and hundreds of vendors that are for the young and old alike.

Salvation is Created by Pavel Tschesnokoff / Arranged by Bruce Houseknecht

  Pavel Tschesnokoff was one of the prominent Russian composers of sacred choral works during his time. Salvation is Created (1912/1957) is a fine example of the choral literature of the Russian Orthodox Church. It is one of a cycle of ten Communion hymns and is based on a Ukrainian (Kievan) chant melody. It is appointed for a Divine Liturgy (Eucharist Service) celebrated on Fridays, the day in the Orthodox calendar that the Church commemorates the Lord’s Crucifixion and Death on the Cross. However, in practice it was sung at Sunday Divine Liturgies after the proper Communion Hymn. Salvation is Created  is one of the very last sacred works Tschesnokoff composed before being forced to write secular works by Stalin. An interesting fact is that the composer never heard Salvation is Created performed, but his children heard it years after his death. The text was taken from verse 12 of Psalm 74. The English translation is: “Salvation is created in the midst of the earth, O God. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.” Bruce Houseknecht arranged the work for band in 1957.

Lord of the Rings Mvmt. I. Gandalf by Johan de Meij

  Johan de Meij’s first symphony, The Lord of the Rings, is based on the trilogy of the books by J.R.R. Tolkien. This book has fascinated many millions of readers since its publication in 1955. The symphony consists of five separate movements, each illustrating a personage or an important episode from the book. The first movement, Gandalf (The Wizard), is a musical portrait of the wizard Gandalf, one of the principal characters of the trilogy. His wise and noble personality is expressed by a stately motif which is used in a different form in movements IV and V. The sudden opening of the Allegro vivace is indicative of the unpredictability of the grey wizard, followed by a wild ride on his beautiful horse, “Shadowfax”.  

Out Where the West Begins by Kirk Vogel

  “Out Where the West Begins” is a poem written by Arthur Chapman first published in 1917 in his book Out Where the West Begins: And Other Western Verses. Out where the handclasp’s a little stronger, Out where the smile dwells a little longer, That’s where the West begins; Out where the sun is a little brighter, Where the snows that fall are a trifle whiter, Where the bonds of home are a wee bit tighter, That’s where the West begins. Out where the skies are a trifle bluer,  Out where the the friendship/s a little truer, That’s where the West begins; Out where a fresher breeze is blowing, Where there’s laughter in every streamlet flowing, Where there’s more of reaping and less of sowing, That’s where the West begins. Out where the world is in the making, Where fewer hearts in despair are aching, That’s where the West begins. Where there’s more of singing and less of sighing, Where there’s more of giving and less of buying, And a man makes a friend without half trying, That’s where the West begins. Out Where the West Begins (2023) was commissioned by Jennifer Grice and her family in dedication to the wonderful lives lived of her late Grandmother, Clarice Guenther and her late Grandfather, Wesley Guenther on her maternal side. The world premiere was performed by Central Washington University Symphonic Winds and the Colorado premiere was performed by Doherty High School with Clarice Guenther in the audience. 

Benny Goodman: King of Swing Arranged by Paul Murtha

Benny Goodman (1909-1986) was an American clarinetist and the first celebrated bandleader of the Swing Era. He was named the “King of Swing” by Time magazine in 1937. The following year the Benny Goodman band along with musicians from the Count Basie and Duke Ellington bands made history by being the first jazz band to ever play in Carnegie Hall.  Benny played the clarinet at a very young age and played professionally in bands in Chicago by the age of 11. At the age of 14 he quit school to pursue his career in music. He supported his family by playing in bands when his father died when he was just 15. He moved to Los Angeles at the age of 16 to play in the Ben Pollack Band where he was a featured soloist. At the beginning of the Great Depression Benny left LA to record and do radio shows in New York City. John Hammond, a jazz promoter, helped launch his recording career and set Benny up to record with drummer Gene Krupa and trombonist Jack Teagarden. This recording session started the national popularity with Benny Goodman. He later married John Hammond’s sister and had two daughters who became a concert pianist and a cellist. He led his first band as the bandleader at the age of 25 in 1934. The band played music with roots in southern jazz forms including Ragtime and Dixieland and was arranged more than improvised. He eventually secured a weekly spot for his band on NBC’s radio show, Let’s Dance, and was taped with a live studio audience. This gave his music accessibility that appealed to the American public on a wide scale and had the kids dancing. The following year started the beginning years where Benny was known as King: the Swing Era. When teenagers and college aged students started inventing new dance steps to the new music Benny’s band became popular across the county. When America became involved in World War II the Swing Era started to end. Musicians were drafted and gas rationing put a limit on touring bands. After the Swing Era, new forms of music emerged, such as bop and rock and roll. Benny continued to perform with the original sound of the Swing Era. However, he did try his hand at more classical styles while performing as a soloist with major orchestras and playing concerts until his death. Benny Goodman was honored by the Kennedy Center for his lifetime achievement in swing music. He received an honorary doctorate degree in music from Columbia University. He also received a Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement.  Great quotes from Benny Goodman: “Swing can’t be written, you gotta play it. You gotta make it happen.” “It takes the black keys and the white keys both, to make perfect harmony.” “Creativity grows out of two things: curiosity & imagination.” “If you want to do something, you do it anyways, and handle the obstacles as they come.” “People have often said to me, ‘You’re so relaxed when you play.’ Relaxed my elbow. It’s practice.” “After you’ve done all the work and prepared as much as you can, what the hell, you might as well go out and have a good time.” “If I have something I want to do, I make a business of doing it.” “I remember Glenn Miller coming to me once, before he had his own band, saying ‘How do you do it? How do you get started? It’s so difficult.’ I told him, I don’t know but whatever you do, don’t stop. Just keep on going.”

Danzón No. 2 by Arturo Márquez / Transcribed by Oliver Nickel

  The composer writes; The idea of writing the Danzón No. 2 (1994) originated in 1993 during a trip to Malinalco with the painter Andrés Fonseca and the dancer Irene Martínez, both of whom are experts in salon dances with a special passion for the danzón, which they were able to transmit to me from the beginning, and also during later trips to Veracruz and visits to the Colonia Salon in Mexico City. From these experiences onward, I started to learn the danzón’s rhythms, its form, its melodic outline, and to listen to the old recordings by Acerina and his Danzonera Orchestra. I was fascinated and I started to understand that the apparent lightness of the danzón is only like a visiting card for a type of music full of sensuality and qualitative seriousness, a genre which old Mexican people continue to dance with a touch of nostalgia and a jubilant escape towards their own emotional world; we can fortunately still see this in the embrace between music and dance that occurs in the State of Veracruz and in the dance parlors of Mexico City. The Danzón No. 2 is a tribute to the environment that nourishes the genre. It endeavors to get as close as possible to the dance, to its nostalgic melodies, to its wild rhythms, and although it violates its intimacy, its form and its harmonic language. It is a very personal way of paying my respects and expressing my emotions towards truly popular music. Danzón No. 2 was written on a commission by the Department of Musical Activities at Mexico’s National Autonomous University and is dedicated to my daughter Lily.                                            - Arturo Márquez  

Mambo from West Side Story by Leonard Bernstein / Arranged by Michael Sweeney

  Leonard ‘Lenny’ Bernstein was an American composer, conductor and pianist with a long and successful musical career. He wrote the musical West Side Story in 1957 and it quickly became one of his most popular works. Bernstein re-imagined Shakespeare’s famous tragedy Romeo and Juliet updating it and moving it to New York City with a gang warfare setting. The Montagues and Capulets from Romeo and Juliet are replaced in the musical by the two gangs; the Jets (whites) and the Sharks (Puerto Ricans) and Romeo and Juliet are replaced by Tony and Maria. The musical was conceived by Jerome Robbins with Bernstein writing the music, Stephen Sondheim writing the lyrics, and Arthur Laurents writing the book. West Side Story was performed in New York with approximately 772 performances in two years before it went on national tour. In 1960 Bernstein extracted nine excerpts from the musical to assemble them into a single piece for orchestra titled Symphonic Dances from West Side Story.   Bernstein wrote ‘Mambo’ as a fast-paced Cuban inspired dance because it would make you want to move. For him, music wasn’t about writing or reading notes on a page, but instead about how it made you feel physically. The musical had dance throughout as a crucial role and adapting the music for concert only was challenging. The orchestration calls for vibrant instrumental combinations, a huge percussion section, and vocals from the performers to enhance the rhythms. In ‘Mambo’ it shifts the narrative focus from a love story to gang conflict. We hear the rivalry between the Jets and the Sharks in a competitive dance between the gangs with its Cuban inspired rhythms. Michael Sweeney arranged Mambo from West Side Story (2013) for concert band.  

Pink Lemonade by A. J. Weidt / Arranged by Nicholas Contorno

  AJ. Weidt wrote Pink Lemonade for solo banjo in 1921 and was music that alluded to the popular circus acts of the roaring twenties era. It was arranged for band by R.E. Hildreth the same year. Nicholas Contorno published his arrangement for band in 2010.   Before circuses had pre-recorded music every circus had a live circus band that ranged from half a dozen musicians to a large ensemble. Circus music developed from fast polkas, gallops, and can-cans. The low brass section is prominent in circus music. Circus music is usually played at very fast tempos to add to the excitement of the acts. Circus marches are also called “screamers”. The most prominent composer of circus music was Karl L. King with his famous Barnum & Bailey’s Favorite march. Other screamer composers that not only wrote but performed in and directed circus bands were Karl L. King, Henry Fillmore, Frederick Jewell, Arthur W. Hughes, and Charles E. Duble. John Philip Sousa was not known for writing for this idiom however he wrote one circus march titled On Parade.   Underneath the title of Pink Lemonade it states ‘A Circus Parade March or One-Step’. The one-step is a ballroom dance consisting of a series of unbroken rapid steps in 2/4 time that was popular at the beginning of the Twentieth century. The one-step is executed with the dancer walking on every other beat smooth and steady or quickly while running on each beat. The one-step movement is danced on the balls of the feet with a smooth but pep movement and straight legs (no bent knees). One of the most popular one-steps was the turkey trot with some others being the bunny hug and the castle walk. The one-step is usually danced to march type music and eventually gave way to the original quick-step.  

Summertime from Porgy and Bess by George Gerswhin / Arranged by Robert Longfield

Porgy and Bess is an English-language opera by American composer George Gershwin, with a libretto written by author Dubose Heyward and lyricist Ira Gershwin. ‘Summertime’ is one of the arias in the opera and was written by Heyward. Porgy and Bess was originally a novel by Heyward called Porgy and written in 1925. Later it was produced by Heyward into a play using the same name Porgy. After Gershwin read the novel, he proposed to collaborate on operative version with Heyward. They started working on the opera in 1934 and he first version of the opera was performed in 1935. After Gershwin’s death, Porgy and Bess was adapted as a film in 1959.   The libretto of Porgy and Bess tells the story of Porgy, a disabled black street beggar living in the slums of Charleston. Porgy tries to rescue Bess from the clutches of Crown, her violent possessive lover, and Sportin’ Life, her drug dealer. The opera plot follows the stage play.   As Gershwin states, “Porgy and Bess is a folk tale. Its people naturally would sing folk music. When I first began work on the music, I decided against the use of original folk material because I wanted the music to be all of one piece. Therefore, I wrote my own spirituals and folksongs. But they are still folk music-and therefore, being in operatic form, Porgy and Bess becomes a folk opera.”  

Music from the Incredibles by Michael Giacchino / Arranged by Jay Bocook

  The Incredibles is an American 2004 animated superhero film that was written and directed by Brad Bird. It was produced by Pixar for Walt Disney Pictures. The film earned $632 million worldwide and was the fourth highest grossing film in 2004. The sequel, Incredibles 2, came out in 2018 and a third sequel has a scheduled release date of 2028.   Bird developed The Incredibles from his boyhood comic books and spy films along with memories from his personal family life. In the film, set in a retro-futuristic version of the 19060s, married superheroes Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl assume mundane lives as Bob and Helen Parr. They live a quiet suburban life with their three children after the government outlaws all superheroes and bans all super-powered activities. Mr. Incredible secretly returns to a life of adventure and saving people. He is summoned to an island to battle an out-of-control robot where he gets in trouble and his family must come to the rescue.   Michael Giacchino composed The Incredibles orchestral score. Giacchino has also composed music for the Pixar films Up, Ratatouille, and Coco along with the Star Trek reboot series, Jurassic World and the Marvel Cinematic Universe including Doctor Strange and Spider-Man. Jay Bocook’s arrangement of Music from The Incredibles (2004) captures the energetic feel of the film score using exciting jazz-inflected rhythms and fast pace tempos.   

Godzilla Eats Las Vegas! by Eric Whitacre

Godzilla Eats Las Vegas (1996) was commissioned by the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Wind Symphony. It has been performed throughout Japan, North America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and by The United States Marine Band The President’s Own.