Thursday, October 9, 2025
7:00 PM
Kopleff Recital Hall
Festival Prelude and March (1913/2022)
Gena Branscombe | 1881 - 1977
Arr. Damali Willingham
Southeastern U.S. Premiere
“As a force of musical nature, Gena Branscombe established her place in the world through her compositions, conducting and leadership. Her life is an inspiring record of a woman of great ability who carved...a viable musical career…when American composers were just coming into their own in this country.”
Laurine Elkins-Marlow, Gena Branscombe: American Composer and Conductor, A Study of Her Life and Works; Doctoral Dissertation - 1980
October (2000)
Eric Whitacre | B. 1970
October is my favorite month. Something about the crisp autumn air and the subtle change in light always make me a little sentimental, and as I started to sketch I felt that same quiet beauty in the writing. The simple, pastoral melodies and subsequent harmonies are inspired by the great English romantics (Vaughan Williams and Elgar) as I felt that this style was also perfectly suited to capture the natural and pastoral soul of the season. I'm quite happy with the end result, especially because I feel there just isn't enough lush, beautiful music written for winds.
October was commissioned by the Nebraska Wind Consortium, Brian Anderson, Consortium Chairman. October was premiered on May 14th, 2000, and is dedicated to Brian Anderson, the man who brought it all together.
- Program Note by composer
Grammy Award-winning composer and conductor, Eric Whitacre, is among today’s most popular musicians. A widely respected conductor, Eric has worked with the world’s leading choirs and orchestras including the Minnesota Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2024, he conducted Mozart Requiem alongside his own pieces with The Louisville Orchestra. His collaboration with Spitfire Audio resulted in a trail-blazing vocal sample library which became an instant best-seller and is used by composers the world-over. Major classical commissions have been written for the BBC Proms, Minnesota Orchestra, Rundfunkchor Berlin, The Tallis Scholars, VOCES8, cellist Julian Lloyd-Webber and the Philharmonia Orchestra, Chanticleer, National Symphony Orchestra/Kennedy Center, Kantorei, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, National Children’s Chorus of America and The King’s Singers.
Othello Suite (1909/1922/2025)
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor | 1875 - 1912
Arr. Frank Winterbottom
ed. Braeden Weyhrich
World Premiere
1. Dance ed. Braeden Weyhrich
2. Children’s Intermezzo
3. Funeral March
4. The Willow Song
5. Military March
Composed in 1909, Coleridge-Taylor was commissioned by great English actor and theatre impresario Herbert Beerbohm Tree to composer incidental music for His Majesty’s Theatre London production of the Shakespeare play.
This suite comprises five movements from the incidental music. The composer put together the suite soon after the 1912 production, but sadly it’s not often performed today. The incidental music is operatic and grand in style, with both funeral and military marches, along with lyrical, intimate moments of haunting melodies, racing dances and a lilting ‘Children’s Intermezzo’ that evokes calm and innocence.
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was born in London, the son of a West African father and English mother. Early in his life, his father, a doctor, unable to make a success in Britain, returned to Sierra Leone. The boy showed talent on the violin from the age of five, and by 1890, with generous backing from a Presbyterian choirmaster, entered the Royal College of Music, studying with Charles Villiers Stanford. Elgar called him “far and away the cleverest fellow going among the younger men”. The Hiawatha trilogy made his name and performances were so plentiful that with Mendelssohn’s Elijah it held second place only to Messiah in the hearts of choral societies the length of the country. He died in Croydon at the age of only 37 before his full potential as a composer could be fulfilled. [from Good Music Publishing]
Blue Shades (1997/2020)
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
Frank Ticheli is an American composer of orchestral, choral, chamber, and concert band works who was born in Monroe, Louisiana. Ticheli is well known for his works for concert band, many of which have become standards in the repertoire. In addition to composing, he has appeared as guest conductor of his music at Carnegie Hall, at many American universities and music festivals, and in cities throughout the world.
CONDUCTOR
Braeden Weyhrich
Braeden Weyhrich is a Master of Music student and graduate assistant at Georgia State University, where she studies wind band conducting with Dr. Robert Ambrose. Before graduate studies, she was the Band Director at Hinton Community School in northwest Iowa, where she taught and administered all aspects of the band program for students in grades 5-12. She was also the Associate Conductor of the Siouxland All-America Concert Band, Librarian for the Sioux City Municipal Band, and a member of several district and state-wide committees of the Iowa Bandmasters Association. Braeden is a part of The Access Collective, a program piloted in Iowa and soon to expand nationally which works to assist band directors in connecting their students to other people and cultures through music.
Braeden holds a Bachelor of Music in Music Education and an Honors College Degree from Oklahoma State University, where she graduated magna cum laude and was recognized as an OSU Alumni Association Outstanding Senior. Her organizational affiliations include Tau Beta Sigma, Sigma Alpha Iota, and Women Band Directors International.