Baylor Wind Ensemble to Perform on April 21

by Richard Veit

The Baylor University Wind Ensemble will present its final concert of the 1997-98 academic year at 8 p.m. Tuesday in Jones Concert Hall of the Glennis McCrary Music Building. Guest soloist for the concert will be Kathryn Steely, instructor of viola on the Baylor music faculty. The Wind Ensemble is conducted by Michael Haithcock, professor of conducting and director of bands.
Opening the concert will be the overture to Le Roi d'Ys, an opera by 19th-century French composer Édouard Lalo. This exciting overture was written in 1879, but the complete opera was not premiered until May 7, 1888, in Paris. The Wind Ensemble will present it in a transcription by Dutch composer Piet Stalmeier.
Martin Mailman is professor of music and coordinator of composition at the University of North Texas. His three-movement work from 1988, For precious friends hid in death's dateless night, was inspired by the sonnets of William Shakespeare.
In addition to being one of the most innovative of all tonal composers in the first half of the 20th century, Paul Hindemith was an accomplished violist and a member of the renowned Amar String Quartet. His Viola Concerto is subtitled "Der Schwanendreher," due to the employment of a German folksong ("Seid ihr nicht der Schwanendreher?") in its third movement. Steely will be the soloist in this work, which dates from the year 1935.
Composer Frank Ticheli is professor of music at the University of Southern California and composer-in-residence of the Pacific Symphony Orchestra. He wrote his Blue Shades in 1996 on a commission from a consortium of 30 concert bands, of which Baylor University's was one. The work pays tribute to the "Big Band" traditional jazz which Ticheli heard while growing up during the 1960s near New Orleans.
This concert by the Baylor Wind Ensemble is free and open to the public.