Baylor's Symphonic Band To Perform Feb. 19

by Richard Veit

The Baylor University Symphonic Band will perform its first concert of the spring semester at 8 p.m. Monday, Feb. 19, in Jones Concert Hall. The program will be conducted by Jeffrey Grogan, assistant professor and associate director of bands. Also appearing will be guest conductor James Croft, director of bands at Florida State University, as well as Baylor graduate student conductor Paul Sikes.
A fanfare by David Gillingham will open the concert. As its title implies, New Century Dawn was written in anticipation of the millennium celebrations.
Croft will conduct the next piece, his own transcription of Johann Sebastian Bach's "Who Puts His Trust in God Most Just."
Then Sikes will lead the 57-member Symphonic Band in a performance of Vincent Persichetti's Symphony No. 6. This symphony for band was commissioned by Washington University in Saint Louis and premiered in that city at the 1956 convention of the Music Educators National Conference.
Following John Philip Sousa's famous march, The Thunderer, the Symphonic Band will play the appropriate movement, "after The Thunderer," of Ira Hearshen's Symphony of Themes of John Philip Sousa.
Concluding the concert will be the fourth movement, "March to the Scaffold," of Hector Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique. It was transcribed for wind band by Mark Rogers.
The Symphonic Band program will be preceded at 7 p.m. by a performance by the Baylor University Concert Band. Both concerts are free of charge and open to the public. For more information, call the Baylor University School of Music at 710-3991.