Symphonic Band Presents Chamber Concert Feb. 3

by Richard Veit

The Symphonic Band Chamber Music Players, a 41-member nucleus of the Baylor University Symphonic Band, will perform "Music for Chamber Winds and Percussion" at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 3, in Jones Concert Hall. The chamber configuration is designed to present works that were conceived by their composers on a smaller scale.
The program will open with the familiar fanfare to La Péri, a ballet from 1912 by French composer Paul Dukas, followed by the four-movement suite Old Wine in New Bottles by English composer Gordon Jacob. The work is a setting of four early English songs, "Wraggle Taggle Gypsies," "The Three Ravens," "Begone Dull Care" and "Early One Morning."
The chamber group then will perform Crown of Thorns, composed by David Maslanka after he viewed a plant known as the "crown of thorns" at the New York Botanical Gardens.
"The music's imagery is Christian, but the experience transcends religion and is universal, at times sober and reflective, but more often filled with a liberated energy and joy," Maslanka said.
The concert will close with a work from 1885 by French composer Charles Gounod, his Petite Symphonie ("Little Symphony"), which is scored as a nonet, much like some of Mozart's wind serenades -- pairs of oboes, clarinets, horns, and bassoons, and a single flute.
The concert is free and open to the public. For more information, call the Baylor School of Music at 710-3991.