Baylor's Wind Ensemble Prepares for Kansas City

The Baylor University Wind Ensemble, eyeing a tour date in Kansas City on Feb. 21, will present the same program four days prior at 8 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 17, in Jones Concert Hall of the Glennis McCrary Music Building.
The program, titled "Now and Then," features music ranging from as far back as 1910 (Karl L. King's "Melody Shop"), right up to last year (Daron Hagen's "Night, Again" and Charles Rochester Young's "Tempered Steel").
Also included are a pair of jazz-flavored pieces that were written some 70 years apart, George Gershwin's "Second Prelude" and "Blue Dawn into White Heat" by Gunther Schuller.
Aaron Copland's "Variations on a Shaker Melody," so familiar from his use of the same thematic material in the ballet "Appalachian Spring," also will be included.
The concert will conclude with William Schuman's "New England Triptych," a suite based on three tunes by 18th-century composer William Billings. The movements, evoking images of colonial and revolutionary America, retain the titles of the Billings originals, "Be Glad, Then, America," "When Jesus Wept," and "Chester."
Baylor's highly acclaimed Wind Ensemble, considered for a Grammy Award nomination for its recent compact disc of music by Steven Stucky, is conducted by Michael Haithcock, professor of conducting and director of bands.
This concert is free and open to the public. For more information, call the Baylor School of Music at 710-3991.