BOLIVAR, MO --Southwest Baptist University Music Department presents “Winds and Friends” Thursday, October 16, at 7:30 p.m. featuring music performed by the SBU Symphonic Winds and chamber ensembles. Works by Sousa, Fillmore, Markowski, and Whitacre are featured by the 55-member Symphonic Winds along with compositions performed by brass, woodwind, and percussion chamber groups. The free public performance will be held at Pike Auditorium on the SBU campus.
The Symphonic Winds music for this performance depicts a variety of styles and emotions. With its many unexpected melodic and rhythmic changes, Henry Fillmore’s His Honor march was written in 1933 for the mayor of Cincinnati, who impressed Fillmore with his sense of humor as well as his executive ability. The music of October is intended to evoke a serene and peaceful representation of the composer’s favorite month. Eric Whitacre states: “Something about the crisp autumn air and subtle changes in light always make me a little sentimental.”
Michael Markowski’s Shadow Rituals, the 2006 winner of the Frank Ticheli Composition Contest, is “rhythmic, energetic, and challenges the performer to constantly stay engaged in the music. The piece is a dark and mystical dance – a reflection of something primitive or ancient.” Concluding the concert is the patriotic Fugue on Yankee Doodle, which is a compilation of three different John Philip Sousa publications of “Yankee Doodle”. The arrangers have placed all three in a unifying order, simulating an opening, exposition, development, and finale that most certainly would have delighted and amused Sousa, the March King.
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