The Texas Tech University School of Music will host a concert featuring the Symphonic Wind Ensemble at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday (Oct. 3) in Hemmle Recital Hall. Director of bands Sarah McKoin and graduate conducting assistant Skye Brown will conduct the performance.
The Symphonic Wind Ensemble’s performance, “Celebrations & Remembrance,” will present several works commemorating specific events or memorializing important composers and musical luminaries. Two of the pieces were originally written for wind band, and the other three works are arrangements of music originally written for orchestra.
One such arrangement is Dmitri Shostakovich’s “October.” The work was arranged for band by School of Music alumnus Preston Mitchell and was originally written to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the revolutionary uprising of the Bolsheviks in 1917 – the so-called “October Revolution.”
Shostakovich wrote “October” under expectation by Soviet leadership for him to compose a work in celebration of this anniversary, but it hints at a deeper, personal commitment against at-home communism by quoting previous works of his that celebrated the death of Stalin and fighting against oppressive regimes.
The brief “Requiem” by contemporary American composer David Maslanka was written in response to the horrors of the Holocaust during World War II. It is performed on this program in memory of Maslanka himself, who died in August.
The overture to Gioachino Rossini’s opera “The Italian Girl in Algiers” is a fleet-footed and enthusiastic piece that departs from the seriousness of the rest of the program. It was chosen for the performance due to the upcoming 150th anniversary of the composer’s death. Brown will direct a performance of Ron Nelson’s band piece “Resonances I” as a celebration of the artistry of winds, brass, and percussion taking the stage together.
The concert is free and open to the public. There will be a reception following the concert in the main hallway of the School of Music in order to allow the audience, student musicians, honored guests, and faculty to celebrate the students’ accomplishment.
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CONTACT: Sarah McKoin, director of bands, professor of music, School of Music, Texas Tech University, (806) 834-8848 or sarah.mckoin@ttu.edu
(News release from Texas Tech University)
