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Saturn Sky
In our 13 year history, the Winnipeg Wind Ensemble has been involved in two prior recording projects. The first, a compilation of graded literature for use by school bands, was conducted by Glenn D. Price and underwritten by St. John's Music Ltd. The second was a demo recording of band arrangements and transcriptions by Texas music publisher Harold Gore. When the idea came up for the band to make a third recording, we decided that the repertoire should be chosen from our recent concert programs and represent a variety of styles and moods. Each member of the band was asked to fill out a survey naming their ten favourite selections performed over the past four years. Through this democratic process came a rather eclectic mix of works, some lighter some heavier, some older, and some newly written, such as the evocative title work, Saturn Sky: Sunrise, composed by one of the ensemble's own members and premièred by the Winnipeg Wind Ensemble. Some are transcriptions and some are original works for band. Many of the selections are familiar standards in the repertoire, while others are less known. Our wish is that the music be entertaining, exciting, and representative of what can be accomplished when talented players with a love of music unite for a common purpose. Enjoy! Leonard Bernstein Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990), one of this century's most remarkable musicians, was a charismatic figure from the time he became the first American born conductor of a major American symphony orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, until his death in 1990. Bernstein seemed to express such unparalleled vitality in so many capacities - composer, conductor, pianist, and above all, teacher - someone with the gift of communicating and making music more accessible. The sparkling Overture to Candide (1957), transcribed by Clare Grundman (1913 - 1996), is frequently performed and ably reflects the brash optimism and tunefulness of it's composer. Jan Bach Jan Bach, born in Illinois in 1937, attended the University of Urbana where he received the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in composition. He has written for a number of musical genres, including orchestral, chamber, theatrical, as well as music for wind ensemble. The source for the four arrangements included in his Praetorius Suite (1984) is Terpsichore (1612), the only secular work of Michael Praetorius (1571 - 1621) that has survived to the present day. This Renaissance composer is perhaps best known for the Christmas Madrigal Lo, How a Rose Ere Blooming. During his lifetime, however, he composed over one thousand sacred works based on Protestant Hymns, and was a frequent collaborator with Martin Luther in contributions to the Latin liturgy. Revered as a gifted organist, Praetorius was also an early musicologist, his Syntagma Musicum remains our chief resource for knowledge of Renaissance musical instruments. Terpsichore is a collection of dances popular around the turn of the seventeenth century. From his own account, we know that Praetorius often rearranged the dances from this collection for the instruments of his day, and so it is fitting that Jan Bach has 'freely arranged' these once again for the modern wind ensemble. Jean Baptiste Arban Variations sur Le Carnival de Venise evokes an era before radio, movies, television, the internet and other mass media, where the outdoor band concert was one of the main forms of entertainment available. At these weekly concerts in the park, community and professional bands would feature marches, orchestral transcriptions, and band members as soloists, often playing variations on traditional melodies. Jean Baptiste Arban (1825 - 1889) wrote many such arrangements for cornet, The Carnival of Venice being among the most famous. This particular version was first recorded in 1994 by Wynton Marsalis and the Eastman Wind Ensemble, arranged and conducted by Donald Hunsberger. David Taubner It is a special treat for our ensemble to have a composer within it's ranks. String bass player David Taubner (born 1951) began his musical career at the age of twelve, when a piano appeared in his home, and by age thirteen was composing on the keyboard. He studied composition with Robert Turner, first privately and then at the University of Manitoba School of Music. His writing career came to a halt for about twelve years during which he taught piano and classical guitar and played piano, guitar and electric bass is various blues and jazz bands. For the next several years he took time to establish a career in computers while raising a family. He has spent recent years re-learning the art of music composition and writing mainly for small ensembles such as flute and piano and string quartet, but more recently exploring larger forces as in Saturn Sky: Sunrise (1997, revised 1998). In David's own words, '[Saturn Sky] was originally conceived as a tone poem in three movements for full orchestra, of which Sunrise is the first. [It was] suggested to me that this movement might work well for wind ensemble, so I then transcribed it, and the band gave it a reading. I was unhappy with the result - it was after all my first effort for band, and there were still many things I was learning about how to write for an ensemble that had no string section - but it was all instructive. I felt that the original idea was too difficult for me to make work with my limited experience, so I took the primary melody and totally rewrote the piece with only band instruments in mind. The piece begins with the bass clarinet playing the theme upon which all subsequent musical ideas are based. " Percy Grainger The Australian Percy Grainger (1882 - 1961) is one of the most interesting characters in the history of twentieth century music. A prolific and inventive wind ensemble composer, he was a pioneer in folk melody collection and many of his most memorable works for band are folk song settings, such as Irish Tune From County Derry (1909), also known by the title Danny Boy, and Children's March - 'Over the Hills and Far Away' (1919). The latter work is an example of Grainger's habit of writing substantial parts for piano in his orchestral and band works. Being a concert pianist, Grainger meant those parts for himself when the music was premièred, and they add an interesting colour to the texture of the ensemble. Norman Dello Joio Norman Dello Joio (born 1913) received his earliest musical training from his father on the organ and also with Pietro Yon, the famed organist of St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City. After composition studies at both Juliard and Yale where he came under the influence of Paul Hindemith, Dello Joio went on to establish himself as one of the foremost figures in American music. According to the composer, Fantasies on a Theme by Haydn (1968) 'is based on a theme from a composition for piano by Joseph Haydn. The subtly conceived theme, I concluded, offered an opportunity to fantasize in the musical language of today. The three movements are a constantly varied examination of Haydn's basic idea. The bubbling humour of the first and third fantasies flank a second, which is intensely lyrical. In the final sense, it is my homage to a composer who will always remain contemporary. ' George Gershwin George Gershwin (1898 - 1937) occupies a unique place in the history of American music. A gifted writer of popular songs, musical comedies, piano concertos and other art music, he was able to combine the styles of tin Pan Alley and Carnegie Hall in a way which seemed perfectly clear to him, but never quite right to many music critics of the time. In today's cultural climate of 'cross-over' artists and greater blending of artistic styles, history has been kind to Gershwin. He is now given full credit for a successful synthesis of popular and serious art forms, bringing listeners of both to a common ground. Gershwin's legacy, and his mastery of American song os masterpiece, Porgy and Bess (1935). Having aspired to write the Ameri- Shop: odax
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