The Baylor University Symphonic Band will present a concert on Friday, February 6, beginning at 7:30 p.m. in Jones Concert Hall, located within the Glennis McCrary Music Building. This 70-member ensemble of brass, woodwind, and percussion players is led by Associate Director of Bands Isaiah Odajima.
Opening the program will be a piece from 2009 by American composer David Biedenbender. Luminescence is based on fragments from the German melody “Ermuntre dich, mein schwacher Geist,” best known as the hymn “Break Forth, O Beauteous Heavenly Light.”
Next, the Symphonic Band will play “Chester” from American composer William Schuman’s New England Triptych, music dating from 1957. Originally a church hymn by William Billings, “Chester” was adopted by the Continental Army as a marching song.
American composer Ian Dicke wrote his Song of the Telegraph in 2010. It was inspired by a painting of that name by artist Charles Ephraim Burchfield (1893-1967). The work is in three movements, played continuously and without pauses between them.
The program will close with a concert piece by nineteenth-century French composer Gabriel Parés, his Richilde Overture from 1894. This dramatic work, in standard overture style, is strongly late romantic, and it remains the composer’s most popular creation for band.
This concert is free of charge and open to the public. For more information, call the Baylor University School of Music at 254-710-3991.