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BOLIVAR, Mo. — The Southwest Baptist University Department of Music will present “Winds and Friends,” featuring the SBU Wind Symphony, at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, March 8, in Pike Auditorium on the Bolivar campus.
Conducted by Dr. Brian K. Hopwood, professor of music and director of instrumental studies, the Wind Symphony will perform works by Boysen, Grainger, Nelson, Milburn and Smith. Guest ensemble will be the Springfield Glendale High School Wind Symphony – Troy Cronkite, conductor.
The Wind Symphony will open with two related compositions that are distinctively Irish. “Kirkpatrick Fanfare,” by Andrew Boysen, is based on the first seven notes of the Irish folk song, “O Danny Boy,” but in a setting that rhythmically “hides” this connection. It reveals the folk song’s final melodic statement during the dramatic conclusion.
The oft-performed “Irish Tune from County Derry” is one of four settings (mixed voices, piano, strings and band) of “O Danny Boy,” by composer Percy Grainger. The work features Grainger’s love of counterpoint and technique of burying the melody occasionally within the texture. This technique is reminiscent of the late Romantic style of Edvard Grieg, to whom this work is “lovingly and reverently dedicated.”
The program continues with a suite of dances written in Renaissance style, “Courtly Airs and Dances,” by American composer Ron Nelson. Based on four well-known church hymns, Dwayne Milburn composed “American Hymnsong Suite.” Written for the Army Ground Forces Band, Fort McPherson, Ga., which Milburn led and conducted, the work was premiered by Milburn’s band on Sept. 11, 2003, in a joint concert with Columbus State University (Georgia) commemorating the two-year anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The four movements, titled “Prelude on Wondrous Love,” “Ballad on Balm in Gilead,” “Scherzo on Nettleton,” and “March on Wilson” are all American in origin.
“Declaration Overture,” by Missouri composer, Claude T. Smith, will be performed jointly by both bands and will conclude the concert.
The performance is free and open to the public.
For more information, contact Hopwood, at (417) 328-1647 or bhopwood@SBUniv.edu.
*Published: 2-26-18
