Sunday, March 16, 2003, 2:30 PM
Robert C. Smithwick Theater
Foothill College, Los Altos Hills, CA
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| Title | Composer |
| Northern Star Fanfare | Libby Larsen |
| Spring Festival | Chen Yi |
| Reflections On The Hudson | Nancy Bloomer-Deussen |
| Mystery On Mena Mountain | Julie Giroux-West |
| 'Tis A Gift | Anne McGinty |
Roberta Howe, Conductor |
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Spirit of Freedom |
Tracey Rush |
| La Tumba de Alejandro Garcia Caturla |
Shelly Hanson |
| Ave Maria | Giuseppe Verdi Barbara Buehlman, Arr. |
| Spirals | Anne McGinty |
| Odyssey | Kimberly Archer |
| The Girl I Left Behind Me | Leroy Anderson |
The Northern Star Fanfare was written for the 1987 inauguration of Minnesota Governor Rudy Perpich. This short brass fanfare has percussive rhythm patterns of the trumpets against the warmer color of the horns and lower brass.
Libby Larsen was born on Christmas Eve 1950 in Wilmington, Delaware. She still lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where her family moved when she was 3. In that year, she remembers watching her sister play the piano and enjoying its sound and vibrations. When her sister finished, she climbed on the stool and composed a series of clusters which she rearranged and wrote down for her mother’s approval. She learned to sing and sight read starting in the first grade at Christ the King School in Minneapolis. Ms. Larsen earned her Bachelor, Masters, and Doctoral degrees at the University of Minnesota, studying composition with Dominick Argento. In 1973, she co-founded the Minnesota Composers Forum, now the American Composers Forum. She has composed over 200 works spanning the genres from orchestra, band, and choir to intimate chamber and solo voice and instrumental music. She has a 16 year old daughter.
Spring Festival was written in 1999 to honor the most important Chinese celebration of the year, Chinese New Year or Yüan Tan, a fifteen-day festival that begins on the first day of the lunar new year. Usually falling between the end of January and the beginning of February, it marks the end of winter when spring is close at hand. Drawing on the folk ensemble work Lion Playing Ball, the composer used the rule of the Golden Section to structure the work. This rule is based on the ratio of phi (1:1.61803). This is the ratio of the first 45 measures (the Golden Section) of this work to its total length. Chen Yi employed the Golden rule two more times within this passage, determining the entries of the trumpet and clarinet sections following the Oriental percussion instruments that open the work, ringing in the New Year. The sections following each Golden Section are called the Negative Sections, but the normal connotation doesn’t apply to rhythmic syncopation and crisp phrasing that convey the style and spirit of the music.
Chen Yi was born in Guangzhou, China, on April 4, 1953. She started learning violin and piano when only 3. The Cultural Revolution forced her family’s relocation to the countryside and interrupted her studies. She spent two years in a labor camp. She explains: “Classical music was forbidden during the Cultural Revolution, but I tried hard to continue playing. Even when I worked for twelve hours a day as a laborer, carrying hundred-pound rocks and mud for irrigation walls, I would play both simple songs to farmers along with excerpts from the standard western classical repertory. It was during that period that I started thinking about the value of individual lives and the importance of education in society.” Returning to the city in 1970, she was inspired by her experience with traditional Chinese music to include it into her compositions. She became the concertmaster and composer for the Beijing Opera Troupe. She later graduated from the Central Conservatory of Beijing (B.A. 1983; M.A. 1986) with the honor of being the first woman in China to receive a Master of Arts in Composition. In 1986, Dr. Chen came to the United States to continue her musical training, earning a D.M.A. from Columbia University in 1993. She is the winner of numerous awards and grants with compositions for orchestra, band, chorus, and solo instrument. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland.
Reflections On The Hudson is one of Ms. Bloomer Deussen’s environmental compositions inspired by the beauty of nature. Subtitled “An American Poem”, it was written when the composer lived in New York City, while she sat on a park bench overlooking the Hudson River in Manhattan. She tells that it depicts both internal reflections as well as actual reflections in the water. While it has no specific program, its meaning can be found in the feelings it produces in the listener. The steady flow of the river, conveyed by the music, is punctuated with the daily boat traffic. Mid-day activity, including ships’ whistles, gives way to the calm flow of the evening. Meter changes and measure lengths convey the sense of interplay of the river’s currents. Originally scored in 1993 for orchestra and premiered by the Nova Vista Symphony of Los Altos, California, it has been transcribed for concert band by Virginia Allen, the first woman to command and conduct an active duty military band that included women. The Foothill Symphonic Winds performed her Women of the Podium March in 2001. The transcription is dedicated to the Bicentennial of the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York.
A native of New York, Nancy Bloomer Deussen (b. 1931) attended Juilliard School of Music for two years and is a graduate of The Manhattan School of Music. She also holds a second bachelor's degree from the University of Southern California (USC) School of Music with a major in Music Education. She has had extensive graduate work at USC School of Music, San Jose State University, University of California at Los Angeles, and Long Beach State University. Her teachers of composition were Vittorio Giannini, Ingolf Dahl, Lukas Foss and Wilson Coker. Now residing in Palo Alto, California, Bloomer Deussen is an associate faculty member of the music department at Mission College in Santa Clara, where she directs the chorus and teaches piano and music theory. She has composed for band, chorus, orchestra, chamber groups, and flute, clarinet, and violin solos. She has won or been a runner up in a number of national composition competitions.
This composition, written in 1985, is based on a legend told in the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas sparked by the disappearance of two children in the area in 1940. The composer provided the following comments:
According to that legend, the children, having heard old stories, set out to meet the angels, who were believed to live in the clouds that hang in the sky above Mena Mountain. As the work opens, the sun is rising over the mountain top with the main theme representing the power of the mountain itself. The children begin their climb up the mountain. They continue climbing and begin to tire just as they reach the cloud line. The two wander through the foggy morning air and just as they are about to turn back, the mist clears and before them stand 200 white-robed angels, singing and playing golden instruments. The angels call out, entreating the children to join them. As the children walk on the clouds toward the host, a jeweled crown is placed on each child’s head, then they accompany the angels up to heaven. As the piece closes, the clouds rise and float slowly out of sight leaving Mena Mountain as it was before.”
Julie Giroux-West was born in 1961 in Fairhaven, Massachusetts and raised in Phoenix, Arizona and Monroe, Louisiana. She received her formal education from Louisiana State University and Boston University. She has studied composition with John Williams, Bill Conti and Jerry Goldsmith, to name a few. Although an accomplished performer on piano and horn, her first love is composition. She began playing the piano at the age of three and published her first piece at the age of ten. In 1985, she began composing, orchestrating, and conducting music for television and films and now has over 100 film and television credits. She has received three Emmy Awards. Giroux-West currently resides in Jackson, MS, coexisting with 3 chihuahuas, 1 pomeranian, 1 chow, 1 slobber-hound-gas machine (mutt), 7 cats of varying colors and temperament, 17 birds in an aviary and too many fish to count. An avid animal rescue member who ends up keeping more than she should, Julie composes in between feedings! Her hobbies include: gardening, model building, cooking, and collecting.
This composition was commissioned by the Montoursville (PA) Area High School Band in memory of three band students who lost their lives aboard TWA Flight 800 on July 17, 1996. The composer wrote:
‘Tis A Gift, based on the familiar Shaker song “Simple Gifts,” is a celebration of the insuppressible and eternal spirit of humanity. This composition is written in three distinct sections, each representing a different characteristic of the human spirit. The first section illustrates the innocence of youth, with an eagerness to experience all life has to offer. Based on small motifs from the song, this section is lighthearted and joyous with a contrasting, songlike interlude. The second section, a simple yet powerful interpretation of “Simple Gifts,” depicts the gift of understanding and the willingness to forgive. The third section symbolizes the courage to persevere and eternal optimism, a playful and free-spirited romp, again using motivic elements from the song. A brief coda, based on the introduction, concludes this piece in high spirits.
Anne McGinty (b. 1945) became interested in music as a flute student in her home town of Findlay, Ohio. She entered Ohio State University, where she studied flute under Donald McGinnis. She left to pursue a career in flute performance with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra. Returning to college, she received her B.M. (summa cum laude) and M.M from Duquesne University. Active as a composer, flute instructor, guest conductor, and clinician, she also co-owns Queenwood Publications with her husband, John Edmondson. Besides music, her interests include weight lifting, reading murder mysteries, learning to play the bagpipes and nurturing her two cats, Starz and Stripes.
Guest Conductor Roberta “Bobbie” Howe has been teaching beginning elementary school bands in area schools for the past five years. She holds a B.A. in English and a Multiple-Subject Education Credential from San Jose State University. Ms. Howe studied clarinet with Robert Borbeck and woodwinds under Victor Morosco. She has been principal bass clarinetist of the Foothill Symphonic Winds for the past eight years. She performs and conducts regularly with various local community theater groups.
Spirit of Freedom opens with a brass fanfare augmented with a scale-like accompaniment by the woodwinds. A theme then appears in a slower, hymn-like section before reappearing at the original tempo. Originally written in 1997 for orchestra, the concert band version was commissioned by the Beaumont High School Band, Beaumont, California.
Tracey Rush was born in 1955 in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. She received her BS in Music Education from Bob Jones University, where she studied with Dwight Gustafson, and has completed her coursework for her Masters of Music Education from the University of Northern Iowa. She has taught music at Northeast Iowa Community College since 1955 and has a private studio of about 25 string and composition students. In addition to being the principal violist for the Dubuque Symphony, Ms. Rush serves as the Executive Director of the Northeast Iowa School of Music. She lives in Dubuque with her husband and two sons.
This work is a tribute to the young Cuban composer Alejandro Garcia Caturla (1906-1940) who studied with Nadia Boulanger but was later assassinated while presiding as a judge. It opens with a haunting English horn cadenza followed by harmonic shifts, intense soli writing and driving Cuban rhythms that sweep through the ensemble. La tumba literally translated means “tomb”, but in the tradition of the French tombeau or memorial. It also refers to a large conga drum, prominent in this orchestration.
Shelley Hanson, a Twin Cities composer, arranger, teacher, and professional musician, has an affinity for writing and performing folk music. Her band, Klezmer and All That Jazz, recorded traditional and original music for the audio book version of the Yiddish play The Dybbuk. Ms. Hanson received a Ph.D. in Performance, Music Theory, and Music Literature from Michigan State University. She is a member of the Minneapolis Pops Orchestra and serves on the faculty of Macalester College.
In 1888, the Gazzetta Musicale in Milan published what it called an “enigmatic scale” of unusual intervals and invited composers to harmonize it in some fashion. Verdi took up the challenge by using the scale as a basis for a motet in 16th-century style on the traditional Ave Maria text. The scale first appears in the bass line and it is followed in progression by the alto, tenor, and soprano lines. This composition, the first of the Four Sacred Pieces for chorus, was first performed in April 1898.
Giuseppe Verdi (1813 - 1901) was born in Roncole, Italy, into a family of small landowners and taverners. At 7, he was helping the local church organist. At 12, he was studying with the organist in nearby Busseto, where he became the assistant in 1832. A grocer in Busseto saw Verdi’s potential and offered to pay for his education at the Milan Conservatory. The Conservatory rejected him, so he studied privately in Milan for two years, before returning to Busseto to pursue his musical career and to marry the grocer’s daughter. An early opera enjoyed success at La Scala. Between 1838 and 1840, he lost his wife and two children. In despair, he vowed never to compose again. Friends persuaded him to begin writing and his Nabucco in 1842 marked his real beginning of a spectacular career. Hailed as a national hero, Verdi has made a significant mark in the operatic literature with his operas Rigoletto, La Traviata, Aida, and Othello.
Arranger Barbara Buehlman received her BME (1959) and MME (1960) degrees from Northwestern University. After graduation, she taught in the Round Lake, Illinois, schools until 1983, when she became an administrator of the Mid-West National Band and Orchestra Clinic. She was active with the Northshore Concert band, serving as its Business Manager from 1962 until her death in 1997. She was a co-author of the “Band Plus” Method Books with James Swearingen.
The composer describes Spirals as her “attitude” piece and comments:
Spirals represent the shapes of life, the unfolding of dreams, the advancement to a higher level. Spirals are the symbols of women; yet we all travel around the spiral, never returning to exactly the same place. Spirals express our vitality for life, with twists and turns representing the ongoing transition in our lives. The inspiration for the creation of this piece came from these words and the feelings they impart.
The composer wrote: “Odyssey is a theme and variations modeled after Elgar's Enigma Variations. Composed in the winter of 1998, it is a tribute to composer/arranger Robert S. Thurston - one of my teachers. Odyssey started out as a mere exercise. I tried a march first. That was so much fun, and so well received, that I decided to do a series of variations and connect them. Following a brief introduction, Odyssey is composed of four variations in contrasting styles: Ballad, March, Chorale, and Mixed Meter. Although the theme is never stated verbatim, the ballad appears at both the beginning and end because it is most similar to the theme in style and form.”
Kimberly K. Archer studied trumpet at Florida State University and received her Bachelor of Music Education in 1996. She composed Symphony No. 1 “For those taken too soon...,” which was premiered at her alma mater in 2001. Ms. Archer was commissioned by the Kappa Kappa Psi and Tau Beta Sigma Northeastern Division to compose a work for their convention. She now lives in Syracuse, New York.
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