The Sinfonians (1960)
Clifton Williams (1923-1976)
This work was commissioned by the Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia Fraternity of America. It was the first in a series of instrumental pieces to be commissioned by the Sinfonians and was dedicated to Archie N. Jones, former president of the fraternity and later director of the organization’s foundation. Williams conducted the first performance of The Sinfoniansat the fraternity’s national convention in Cincinnati, Ohio in July 1960. The march opens with an extended fanfare introduction before the horns state the familiar Sinfonian theme: “Hail Sinfonia! Come, brothers, hail!” The melody is then completed, embellished, and extended in the style of the composer. This is one of Wiliams’ most well-known and beloved works. —Program notes taken from Program Notes for Band
Old Home Days, 4. Slow March (1954-1979)
Charles Ives (1874-1954)
arr. Jonathan Elkus
Charles Ives wrote material that was largely based on an Americana theme, taking melodies from familiar folk tunes. The songs and sketches in assembled in Old Home Days reflect Ives’ lifelong love of familiar tunes and home-grown music making. Old Home Days is a suite in five movements. “Slow March”, the earliest surviving song by Ives, was composed for the funeral of a family pet. Inscribed “to the Children’s Faithful Friend”, it opens and closes with a quotation from the Dead March from Handel’s oratorio Saul. —Program notes by arranger Jonathan Elkus
Marche des Parachutistes Belges (1945/1975)
Pieter Leemans (1897-1980)
arr. Charles Wiley
While he was serving his year of military duty at the end of World war I, Leeman’s regimental commander asked him to compose a march; it was begun but never finished. Near the end of World War II, he was having dinner with a group of paratroopers and was again asked to compose a march. As the group commander, Major Timmerman, drove him home that night, the march theme came to mind, and he wrote out all the parts after reaching home. The trio of the march originated from a march written for an NIR radio contest. After only winning the consolation prize, the march was abandoned and is known with the competition designation V. A quiet, unaggressive essay in the easy-paced European style, it is set in the form of a “patrol”, the music marches on from the distance, plays, and passes. Friends told him later that they had heard the march at a circus in France, a wedding in India, and a military music pageant in the United States. The arrangement most often heard in the United States was made by Charles Wiley at the request of his Lamar University (Texas) band students. —Program notes taken from Program Notes for Band
Air for Band (1956)
Frank Erickson (1923-1996)
Several generations of band members have developed their ability to lay a sustained line, to listen for the moving part, and to improve their intonation while playing this work since it was first published in 1956. While not difficult to play technically, Air for Band takes careful rehearsing to get the results the piece deserves. The composition begins softly and in a minor key, and by gradually adding instruments and increasing the dynamics and range, the climactic section is reached approximately halfway through. Erickson then uses the opening melody to create interesting rhythms and dialogues between sections on the way to a modulation to a major key and another crescendo leading to a maestoso ending. —Program notes taken from Program Notes for Band
Hounds of Spring (1981)
Alfred Reed (1921-2005)
The Hounds of Spring was commissioned by, and dedicated to, the John L. Forster Secondary School Concert Band of Windsor, Ontario, Canada, and its director, Gerald A. N. Brown. The world premiere was in Windsor on May 8, 1980, conducted by the composer. This exciting, rhythmic overture for band is in the fast-slow-fast format of the early 18th century Italian opera overtures. The composer’s purpose was to capture the twin elements (exuberant, youthful gaiety and the sweetness of tender love) found in the following excerpt from Atlanta in Calydon, written in 1865 by the English poet Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909). When the hounds of spring are on winter’s traces, The mother of months in meadow or plain Fills the shadows and windy places With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain; Where shall we find her, how shall we sing to her, Fold our hands round her knees and cling? O that man’s heart were as fire and could spring to her, Fire, or the strength of the streams that spring! And soft as lips that laugh and hide The laughing leaves of the trees divide, And screen from seeing and leave in sight The god pursuing, the maiden hin. —Program notes taken from Program Notes for Band
Flourish for Wind Band (1939/1972)
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958)
Ralph Vaughan Williams composed Flourish for Wind Band in 1939, during a period of profound uncertainty in Europe at the outbreak of World War II. Though brief in duration, the work carries a sense of grandeur and ceremonial strength that reflects both national pride and quiet resilience. The piece was later adapted for wind band in 1972, expanding its accessibility within the wind repertoire. True to its title, Flourish is built around bold, declarative gestures and antiphonal brass writing. Brilliant fanfares and confident harmonic statements dominate the texture, supported by firm rhythmic drive and noble melodic contours. The music unfolds in a compact arch, projecting dignity and clarity rather than complexity. Vaughan Williams’ harmonic language—firmly tonal yet enriched with modal inflections—gives the work a distinctly English character. Even in this concise ceremonial work, his hallmark warmth and breadth of sonority are evident. The scoring allows the ensemble’s brass and woodwinds to shine in balanced, resonant blocks of sound. Though lasting only a few minutes, Flourish for Wind Band serves as an effective concert opener or ceremonial statement. Its confident brilliance and stately optimism continue to make it a favorite in the wind band repertoire, embodying both celebratory spirit and steadfast resolve.
"Chicago 2012" from Alternative Energy (2012)
Mason Bates (b. 1977)
Alternative Energy is a multi-movement symphony for wind ensemble and electronics by American composer Mason Bates. Completed in 2012, the work explores humanity’s evolving relationship with energy production across four imagined eras and locations. Each movement represents a distinct sound world shaped by both acoustic instruments and electronic elements. The opening movement, “Chicago 2012,” transports listeners to a bustling contemporary urban landscape. Set in the present day, the music evokes the constant motion, mechanical rhythm, and layered sonic environment of a major American city. Driving ostinatos in the percussion and low winds create an industrial pulse, while brass and woodwind lines interlock in propulsive, syncopated figures. The electronics—subtle yet essential—add atmospheric textures and rhythmic reinforcement, blending seamlessly with the acoustic ensemble. Bates, who often draws inspiration from both classical tradition and club culture, infuses the movement with high energy and kinetic momentum. The music alternates between tightly controlled rhythmic grooves and expansive, soaring gestures, suggesting both the power grid’s ceaseless hum and the human vitality that fuels the city itself. Harmonically vibrant and rhythmically charged, “Chicago 2012” captures the optimism and complexity of modern technological life. As the first movement of Alternative Energy, “Chicago 2012” sets the stage for the symphony’s broader narrative—one that ultimately imagines a post-industrial future and reflects on the sustainability of our energy choices. Bold, contemporary, and cinematic in scope, the movement stands as a striking example of 21st-century wind band writing.
Ecstatic Waters (2009/rev. 2025)
Steven Bryant (b. 1972)
Composed in 2009, Ecstatic Waters is a large-scale work for wind ensemble and electronics by American composer Steven Bryant. The piece explores the fluid, transformative power of water as both a physical and metaphorical force—at times serene and luminous, at others overwhelming and ecstatic. Revised in 2025, the work continues to evolve in its electronic elements and sonic detail while maintaining its sweeping emotional arc. Structured in five interconnected movements, Ecstatic Waters unfolds as a journey from stillness to exhilaration. The opening sections shimmer with layered textures and electronically enhanced sonorities, suggesting depth and quiet motion beneath the surface. Gradually, rhythmic energy builds as flowing lines become more urgent and harmonies intensify. Bryant’s characteristic clarity of orchestration allows brilliant colors to emerge, with glistening percussion, luminous sustained winds, and bold brass gestures creating a constantly shifting soundscape. Electronics play a central role in the work, blending seamlessly with the acoustic ensemble. Rather than functioning as a separate layer, the electronic sounds expand the ensemble’s palette—adding resonance, sparkle, and spatial depth. In climactic moments, the music surges forward with driving rhythms and radiant harmonic intensity, capturing the sensation of water in powerful motion. Bryant’s writing balances accessibility with sophistication. Rich harmonies, propulsive rhythms, and vivid timbral contrasts combine to create a work that is at once cinematic and deeply expressive. In its final moments, Ecstatic Waters culminates in a brilliant outpouring of sound, embodying the exhilaration and transformative energy suggested by its title. A landmark of contemporary wind repertoire, Ecstatic Waters continues to captivate performers and audiences alike with its immersive sonic world and emotional immediacy.
Manifestos (2019)
Paul Dooley (b. 1983)
Manifestos (2019) was commissioned by the wind bands of the Big 12 Conference including Texas Christian University and Bobby Francis, Iowa State University and Michael Golemo, University of Texas at Austin and Jerry Junkin, Texas Tech University and Sarah McKoin, Oklahoma State University and Joseph Missal, The University of Kansas and Paul Popiel, University of Oklahoma and Shanti Simon, West Virginia University and Scott Tobias, Kansas State University and Frank Tracz and Baylor University and Eric Wilson. A three-movement work, Manifestos finds primary inspiration in the early twentieth-century avant-garde movement known as Futurism. According to the composer, “I first encountered the artwork in my doctorate when taking a class called "Music in Modernist Movements” taught by the great Jane Fulcher. Futurism, which started in Italy, is associated with technology, speed and violence.” What made the Futurists (and other avant-gardes) prominent in their time was the proliferation of their manifestos, the widely circulated proclamations to the world on how they sought to completely abandon and obliterate all of Italy’s storied artistic past and shape a new world order. The Futurists envisioned a world that celebrated the wonders of dynamism, motion, youth, the vibrancy of the urban city, the industry of factories, and the various technological achievements of modern man, primarily the automobile and the airplane. The movement’s founder, Filippo Marinetti, announced the birth of Futurism with a manifesto published on February 20, 1909. I. Aero-Poem The Futurists obsessed over the modern technology of the early twentieth-century, especially the internal combustion engine found in the car and the airplane. Beginning in 1929, they sought to glorify man’s achievement of flight and immortalize it through as many artforms as possible, publishing manifestos on aerial painting, architecture, sculpture, music…and even aerial perfume. Futurist writers were the first group to follow the artists with other experiments in aerial expressions. In 1931, Marinetti published a Manifesto of Aeropoems (Manifesto dell’aeropoesia) to exhort Futurist poets to capture with words what visual artists prolifically captured with paint and brush, and they responded in kind with numerous poems celebrating the success of man to soar “far from the earthly feminine tic-toc.” In his article, The Poetics of Flight: Futurist “Aeropoesia,” Italian Futurist scholar Dr. Willard Bohn says, “Evoking the physical and psychological sensation of flying, Marinetti and his fellow poets described not only what they felt but how it affected them. Attempting to describe what they saw from their aerial perspective, they indulged in verbal pyrotechnics and experimented with various visual effects.” Dooley’s first movement, Aero-Poem, is a musical representation of aeropoesia. Within eighty-eight measures, he vividly captures the repeating sounds of the airplane’s piston engine in action, the weightless feeling of both pilot and passenger as they rise upwards from the bonds of earth, and the glorious achievement of the marriage between man and machine in their triumphal defiance of gravity. II. Futurist Flowers Within Filippo Marinetti’s original ensemble of Futurist followers, no one stands out for exerting influence over a multiplicity of artistic genres more than the versatile Italian artist, Giacomo Balla. He was a painter, sculpture, author, actor, tool maker, clothing and costume designer, furniture creator, musical instrument designer, set designer for Igor Stravinsky, scientist who studied light and the motion of humans, animals and machines, as well as an observer of the photographic innovations of the day. He truly earned the title, according to Virginia Dortch Dorazio, of the “Color Magician.” In his 1915 manifesto, Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe (Ricostruzione futurista dell'universo), Balla expressed his imaginative vision of the artificial Futurist Utopian landscape which, he believed, would eventually supersede the natural. He envisioned a world flourishing with dazzling colors, where new types of abstract plants and animals would be the norm, including a robotic “metallic animal” and “transformable magical flowers” which would go outdoors within a Futurist garden, or indoors as houseplants. This concept gave birth to the whimsical Futurist Flowers (Fiore Futurista), ten sculpture pieces conceived by Balla between 1918 and 1925 as part of his Il Gardino Futurista. As Valerie J. Fletcher summarizes in her book, Dreams and Nightmares: Utopian Visions in Modern Art, “The geometric shapes of these brightly painted flowers correspond to lines of force, and can be assembled into a variety of compositions, implying an altogether new nature over which man can exercise total control, reshaping nature’s organic forms into geometric terms.” The sculptures are currently housed in the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Dooley’s second movement, Futurist Flowers, is a sixty-four measure serenata that captures the fanciful imagination of Balla’s magical landscape. Uniquely orchestrated with instrumental color combinations, modality and rhythm, the performer and listener alike will find themselves strolling through a reimagined garden of joy. III. Star Dancer + Her School of Dance The name of French painter and writer Francis Picabia is one that any serious student of art concerned with twentieth-century painting will immediately recognize. Though not an official member of the Futurist movement, his work influenced many of the Futurists who were associated with his art and theories.“Picabia is thought as one who formulated the concept of abstraction in art, not through theoretical discourse, but through convincing and powerfully self-revealing works.”[8].He was also a prolific poet and writer credited with at least three manifestos published in his magazine, 391. Picabia experienced many transitions in his artistic development. He was first an ardent convert to Impressionism, then Neo-Impressionism, then a Fauvist turned Cubist. even an Orphic-Cubist who later became a Dadaist, eventually rejecting Dadaism in the early 1920’s and turning to Surrealism. He always sought to find his own artistic voice through the synthesis of various styles and is credited with being the artist who introduced the avant-garde to the United States. As one art reviewer commented, “To have outfutured the Futurists, to have outcubed the Cubists – that is the achievement of Picabia, the latest “Thing” in modern French art.” In early 1913, during his Cubist/Orphic phase, Picabia and his wife undertook their first transatlantic voyage to New York to participate in the famous Armory Show 291, hosted by Alfred Stieglitz. While on board, he first observed a rehearsal of the renowned French actress and dancer, Stacia Napierkowska. From this encounter, Picabia created several abstract works, one of which was Star Dancer and Her School of Dance (Danseuse étoile et son école de danse), a painting that immortalizes Napierkowska, who was traveling to perform at the new Palace Theater in New York. Star Dancer and Her School of Dance presents the Cubist’s perception of Napierkowska and her fellow cast members dancing with wild abandonment.Picabia’s wife later spoke of this rehearsal and claimed that the dancer shocked the other passengers due to the star’s bare feet and scant clothing.[10]She also reported something particularly humorous to Picabia: the rehearsal was being observed by a Dominican priest, which amused Picabia to the point of including him in the painting. The painting now resides in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art as part of the Alfred Stieglitz Collection. Within Dooley’s Star Dancer + Her School of Dance, the longest of the three movements with one hundred sixty-one measures, the composer paints a musical picture of a disciplined, ever-moving ballerina sur les pointes, occasionally framed with a descending repose or Pas de deux that, in turn, extends an invitation to other sections to join along. The movement eventually increases in speed and technical furor as the Corps de ballet of instruments begin to compete for prominence, pirouetting into a finale that becomes a Tour de force of Bacchanalian proportion!