The students in Frenship ISD’s Heritage Middle School band have been given the opportunity of their young music careers thanks to the Concert Band of the Texas Tech University School of Music. The TTU Concert Band will join the HMS program in a combined concert on Tuesday, October 25 at 7:30 p.m. in Texas Tech’s Hemmle Recital Hall. Admission to attend is free.
Heritage Band Director and Texas Tech School of Music Education alumnus David Biel will share conducting privileges with TTU Concert Band Director Duane Hill during the show.
“We are very excited to be performing with Texas Tech and for the students to have the musical experience of seeing the goal of their musical careers,” said Biel. “This bridges the gap between their first or second years in a band to what it’s like to be in a band in college. This context will provide the students in the Heritage Middle School Symphonic Band with the context of what we’re working on in class.
“As an alumnus, it’s an honor and a musical milestone to conduct one of the bands that I was a member at Hemmle Recital Hall.”
Biel will conduct the opening and closing works of the program; first, Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev’s ecstatic “March, Op. 99” and then the cherished Fight Song of Texas Tech University. The Fight Song will be performed by both bands together.
In addition to the TTU Fight Song, the combined bands will deliver performances of Pavel Chesnokov’s Salvation is Created, an arrangement of theme highlights from the score to the motion picture Guardians of the Galaxy, and the Heritage Fight Song.
The Concert Band will be featured in two contemporary works. Michael Markowski’s recently composed Brooklyn Air will offer a vivid sonic portrait of the New York City borough. Then, TTU graduate percussion student James Pendell will be the timpani soloist for the Concert Band’s rendition of Michael Daugherty’s “lovably irreverent” Raise the Roof, a concerto for timpani and orchestra that was set for concert band in 2007.
(News release from Frenship ISD)
