Fanfare Ritmico celebrates the rhythm and speed (tempo) of life. Writing this work on the eve of the move into the new millennium, I found myself reflecting on how all things have quickened as time has progressed. Our lives now move at speeds much greater than what I believe anyone would have ever imagined in years past. Everyone follows the beat of their own drummer, and those drummers are beating faster and faster on many different levels. As we move along day to day, rhythm plays an integral part of our lives, from the individual heartbeat to the lightning speed of our computers. This fanfare celebrates that rhythmic motion, of man and machine, and the energy which permeates every moment of our being in the new century.
This work was commissioned by The Women’s Philharmonic as part of The Fanfares Project. It was premiered in 2000 by the Women’s Philharmonic, Apo Hsu, conducting. The wind ensemble version of Fanfare Ritmico was commissioned by the Alpha Lambda Chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia Fraternity at Illinois Wesleyan University, receiving its world premiere on April 21, 2002, by the Illinois Wesleyan Wind Ensemble, Steven W. Eggleston, conducting.
-Program Note by Jennifer Higdon
All or Nothing enacts a progression from attack to sustain, highlighting the process’ consistencies and inconsistencies, and asking if the concept of having “all” or “nothing” is desired. The inquiry stems from recent research into social uniformity and particularly through the social model of disability, which states that people are disabled by barriers in society rather than by impairment or difference. Therefore by asking if all or nothing is desired, I hope to illuminate overriding challenges in such a polarizing categorization, as well as utilize the singular body of the symphony band, an optimal instrumentation to execute such differences.
All or Nothing was commissioned by and dedicated to Ball State Symphony Band and Dr. Caroline Hand, made possible by the ASPiRE Junior Faculty Creative Arts Award.
-Program Note by Molly Joyce
From the Sky Far Whispers was inspired by A.R.D. Fairburn’s poem, The Runner, from which the title and movement names are drawn. Published in 1929, the text extolls the sensual joys of running and the aural feast awaiting those who dare to sprint through untamed landscapes. The choice of this particular poem is a tribute to the concerto’s dedicatee, Andrew Hudson, an avid runner and seeker of sonic delicacies. Spanning about 23 minutes, From the Sky Far Whispers adopts the tripartite structure of the traditional concerto form, complete with a moderate-slow-fast tempo scheme.
The first movement, “I have heard soft lutes sob their ecstasies,” begins with a solitary clarinet intoning a simple ascending melody, which subsequently grows, transforms and entangles itself within the gradually-awakening ensemble. This pastoral introduction soon gives way to a pointillistic and contrapuntal exploration of the initial melody, culminating with a “false” cadenza before returning to the pastoral sound-world and closing with the “real” cadenza.
The second movement, “I have heard the ocean’s song rise like a flame,” adopts the Baroque variation form known as the passacaglia, with the soloist switching to the bass clarinet. Traditionally, this form consists of a short repeated bass-line with ever-changing variations as the line repeats; but this particular passacaglia consists of 17 pitches that continually rise with each repetition, like the rising flame of the ocean’s song. Over time, the notes in the repeated series begin to change in duration, tempo, range, and instrumentation until this ever-escalating series runs into itself, resulting in a kind of contrapuntal collision that leads into the final, climactic repetition.
The final movement, “There are songs that beat and throb along the blood,” is another tribute to Andrew Hudson – in this case, his love for pop-punk. Breaking from the pastoral and stately nature of the previous movements, the third movement features the bass clarinet and ensemble making sounds that are more at home in a basement rock show than a concert hall. This movement has the fastest speeds, the loudest chords, the gnarliest sounds, and a sub-4-minute run-time that sticks to the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nature of punk rock.
-Program Note by Pierce Gradone
In 1980, the Mid-American Conference Band Directors Association commissioned Pulitzer Prize winner Joseph Schwantner to write a follow-up work to his landmark ...and the mountains rising nowhere of 1977. The resulting work, From a Dark Millennium, received its premiere by the University of Northern Illinois Wind Ensemble in 1981. A re-working of a material from his chamber work, Music of Amber, this marked the only occasion in which Schwantner borrowed earlier material for a subsequent work. This work draws from a poem by Carol Adler:
From a Dark Millennium has come to be seen as the second movement in a trilogy of sorts for wind ensemble including …and the mountains rising nowhere (1977), and In evening’s stillness… (1996) – bookends to From a Dark Millennium (1980). Although Schwantner does not consider From a Dark Millennium to be programmatic, he does admit that, “the mysterious and shadowy atmosphere ... springs from images drawn from a brief original poem that forms the poetic backdrop for the work. The poem helped to stimulate, provoke, and enhance the flow of my musical ideas.”
As a composition, From a Dark Millennium is a model of economy, spun out from the material heard in the first measure: a re-ordered “octatonic scale” [F, F#, Ab, A, B, C, D, Eb] – a scale that ascends by alternating half-steps and whole-steps. The work features several of Schwantner’s “hallmark techniques,” the most apparent of which are a prominent, almost soloistc piano, and several large-scale percussion parts.
- Program Note from State University of New York, Potsdam, Crane Wind Ensemble concert program, 14 February 2018
The end of the 60s into and through the 70s saw the era of the “blaxploitation” film – a genre of filmmaking aimed at African-American audiences which put us in leading roles of stories that often followed antiestablishment plots. These films were often controversial due to their exaggerated bravado, hypersexuality, and violence. Noticing the lucrative potential of blaxploitation films, Hollywood began to market these films to a wider audience. Though low budget, they possessed an exciting, raw, soulful quality unlike any other genre up until that time, and from these films were born some of the most iconic characters (Shaft, Dolemite, Foxy Brown, and Cleopatra Jones, to name a few) and soundtracks ever created, written by some of the biggest names in African-American popular folk music of the day and since, including Issac Hayes, Curtis Mayfield, James Brown, and Marvin Gaye.
The Low-Down Brown Get-Down is the soundtrack for a nonexistent blaxploitation film. It pulls from various sounds and styles of African-American folk music, such as funk, R&B, soul, early hip hop, the blues, and even film noir to stitch together its “scenes.” The title pulls from and is inspired by “post-jive” African-American Vernacular English (AAVE). The word “Brown” in the title, in addition to its reference to none other than the Godfather of Soul, James Brown, whose most-famous licks and bass lines pepper the intro and recur throughout the piece, also refers to the melanin of the people who created these sounds.
This piece unapologetically struts, bops, grooves, slides, shimmies, head bangs, and soul claps its way straight through its thrilling “chase scene” finale. It was my intention with the creation of this piece to go full steam ahead on bringing African-American folk music to the concert stage to take its place amongst all other types of folk music that have found a comfortable home in this arena. May this work push back against notions of “sophistication,” “appropriateness,” and “respectability” that have been codified in the concert music setting for a century and more.
-Program Note by Omar Thomas
Jonathan Caldwell is director of bands and assistant professor of conducting at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro where he conducts the Wind Ensemble and Symphonic Band and teaches undergraduate and graduate conducting. Prior to his appointment at UNCG, Caldwell held positions at Virginia Tech, the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point, and Garner Magnet High School (Garner, NC).
Ensembles under Caldwell’s guidance have performed for the College Band Directors National Association Southern Division, the National Band Association–Wisconsin Chapter, and in Carnegie Hall. His writings have been published in the Journal of Band Research and the Teaching Music Through Performance in Band series. He has given presentations for the Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic, the College Band Directors National Association, the Internationale Gesellschaft zur Erforschung und Förderung der Blasmusik (IGEB), and music educator conferences in North Carolina and Virginia.
Caldwell received a Doctor of Musical Arts in conducting from the University of Michigan and a Master of Music in instrumental conducting from the University of Maryland, College Park. He holds a Master of Arts in Teaching and a Bachelor of Music in performance from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
1st Lieutenant Darren Y. Lin joined “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band in July 2019 as a percussionist. He was appointed Assistant Director in July 2021 and commissioned to his current rank in January 2022.
1st Lt. Lin is a 2009 graduate of Hershey High School in Pennsylvania. He earned a bachelor’s degree in percussion performance and a teacher’s certificate in 2014 from the University of Michigan (U-M) in Ann Arbor; a master’s degree in percussion performance and literature in 2016 from the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester in New York; and pursued additional studies at the New England Conservatory in Boston. His principal percussion teachers were J. William Hudgins of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Michael Burritt of the Eastman School of Music, and Joseph Gramley and Jonathan Ovalle of U-M. He also has studied conducting with Christopher James Lees, Michael Haithcock, and Rodney Dorsey.
Prior to joining “The President’s Own,” 1st Lt. Lin was an active educator and performer. He was the adjunct instructor of percussion at Lebanon Valley College in Annville, Pa., and performed frequently with the Buffalo Philharmonic in Buffalo, N.Y., the New Haven Symphony in Connecticut, and the New World Symphony in Miami. He has performed under the batons of conductors like Valery Gergiev, Michael Tilson Thomas, Andris Nelsons, and JoAnn Falletta. He is equally at home performing contemporary music, having performed with the NakedEye Ensemble and both founding and leading the group [sunflower]. He has worked closely with composers Steve Reich and John Luther Adams, and has premiered works by Dave Hollinden, Molly Joyce, Angélica Negrón, Randall Woolf, and Chris Vu.
Performances by Andy Hudson have been hailed as “a treat for the listener” (IAWM Journal) and have been praised for “an uncommon singularity of purpose, technical virtuosity, youthful vigor and a mature sensitivity.” (The Clarinet) An “inspiring” (MMR) and “fearless” (Cacophony) performer, he has appeared in Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, at Chicago’s Symphony Center, as a concerto soloist at The Midwest Clinic and has performed widely across the US, Canada, Europe, and Africa. Andy has been featured at national and international gatherings of the College Music Society and the International Clarinet Association, and in 2011 appeared at the Worlds Congress of the International Alliance for Women in Music. He has been a top prizewinner at the MTNA National Woodwind Competition and has received other prizes in the Vandoren Emerging Artists Competition, the US Army Band’s National Collegiate Solo Competition, the Luminarts Foundation Fellowship Competition, and many more. Andy has recently performed as guest principal clarinet of the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra and the North Carolina Opera, and he frequently joins the clarinet section of the North Carolina Symphony and the Greensboro Symphony. He was appointed Bass/3rd Clarinetist of the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra in 2020; other festival appearances include the Lucerne, Bang on a Can, Hot Air, and Great Lakes Chamber Music festivals.
A noted interpreter of contemporary music and “truly a performer for the moment” (Cultural Voice of North Carolina), Andy has premiered and commissioned more than a hundred works to date and has performed with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on their MusicNOW series, at the New Music Gathering, and with Ensemble Dal Niente, Miami’s Nu Deco Ensemble, the Chicago Composer’s Orchestra, and the Grossman Ensemble (with whom he can be heard on the album Fountain of Time). Andy also performs with The Zafa Collective and earspace, and was a founding member of the trio F-PLUS. He is currently clarinetist and co-Artistic Director with the international sextet Latitude 49, with whom he can be heard on the albums The Bagatelles Project and Wax and Wire (called “a must-have album for any lover of contemporary music” by The College Music Symposium). Andy is regarded as a leading ambassador for the music of our time and his books Elements of Contemporary Clarinet Technique and SPACE BASS: Advanced Explorations for Bass Clarinet are co-authored with composer Roger Zare and published on Conway Publications. You can also read his writing in The Piano Magazine, The Clarinet Journal, The College Music Symposium, and the 2022 pedagogical handbook ‘The Clarinet Studio Companion.’ An established pedagogue, he has often given guest masterclasses at schools such as the San Francisco Conservatory, South Korea’s Inje University, Egypt’s Cairo Conservatory, the Boston Conservatory, the Chicago College of Performing Arts, Northwestern University, the University of Miami, and many more.
Currently on faculty at the University of North Carolina Greensboro, Andy was appointed the NC State Chair for the International Clarinet Association in 2019. Since 2010, he has served on the Artist-Faculty of the Tennessee Valley Music Festival in Huntsville, AL, where he teaches high school students from across the Southeastern United States and Costa Rica and performs as Principal Clarinet of the Festival Orchestra. Andy earned his DMA in Clarinet Performance with a Cognate Certification in Music Theory from Northwestern University, where he also earned his MM. He earned his BM from Columbus State University’s Schwob School of Music. Andy is an Artist-Clinician for Buffet Crampon and an Ambassador for Rovner Products; he performs exclusively on Buffet clarinets and Rovner ligatures. His primary teachers have included Steve Cohen, J. Lawrie Bloom, and Lisa Oberlander.
When he’s not practicing, Andy enjoys running, reading, playing guitar, eating local food, listening to baseball on the radio, and collecting obscure instruments.