A pair of the Baylor University School of Music’s major instrumental ensembles, the Symphonic Band and the Wind Ensemble, will perform on Monday, November 25, beginning at 7:30 p.m. in Jones Concert Hall, located within the Glennis McCrary Music Building. The Symphonic Band is led by Associate Director of Bands Isaiah Odajima, while the Wind Ensemble performs under the baton of Director of Bands J. Eric Wilson. Special guest will be composer Ryan Lindveit, one of whose works will be presented by each of the two bands.
Opening the program will be the Symphonic Band’s performance of Paul Dukas’s fanfare Pour précéder “La Péri” from 1927, conducted by Assistant Director of Bands Steve Dailey.
Graduate conductor Nathan Taylor will lead the Symphonic Band in Ronald Lo Presti’s Elegy for a Young American from 1964, a response to the tragic assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Guest composer Ryan Lindveit’s Mysterious Butterflies from 2018 will come next. This piece, commissioned by the Big 12 Band Directors Association, takes its title from Recollections of My Life by the founder of neuroscience, Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852-1934).
German composer Paul Hindemith wrote his brilliant three-movement Symphony in B-flat in 1951, after being approached by the U.S. Army Band to guest conduct the band.
The Wind Ensemble’s portion of the concert will begin with Gustav Holst’s 1928 band arrangement of the organ Fugue à la Gigue, BWV 577, by Johann Sebastian Bach, and that will be followed, by Holst’s Hammersmith: Prelude and Scherzo, Op. 22, from 1930.
Ryan Lindveit’s 2016 work, Like an Altar with 9,000 Robot Attendants, was inspired by Ray Bradbury’s chilling, post-apocalyptic short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” from 1950.
Graduate conductor Hannah Morrison will be on the podium for Ye Banks and Braes o’ Bonnie Doon from 1936 by Percy Grainger, and the program will close with Awayday, English composer Adam Gorb’s 1996 homage to the great American musical comedies of Broadway.
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.