Thursday, Feb. 26, 2026  •  7:30 p.m.

Weigel Auditorium
Columbus, OH
 

Program

University Band

Paul Bissler and Brooke Woods, conductors

Overture for Winds

Charles Carter (1926–1999)

Brooke Woods, conductor

Overture for Winds was given its title by the publishers. This three-part overture has remained Carter’s most popular composition for band. The opening section has a theme which is robust and rhythmic in character. The second theme, slightly slower and expressive, is a free form based on the original idea. The last section is a repetition of the opening thematic ideas, building to a final climax.

Elements

Brian Balmages (b. 1975)

1. Air
2. Water
3. Earth
4. Fire

Paul Bissler, conductor

Four short movements make up this "petite symphony" constructed in the same form as the elements of a traditional symphony: Allegro non troppo, Largo, Scherzo, and Allegro vivace. Each movement also refers to an element of nature. Movement 1, Air, is light and breathy, made up mostly of staccato notes. Water, the second movement, ripples and flows softly and gently. An homage to Holst's The Planets can be heard in Earth, the third movement. The piece concludes in an intense inferno with Fire.

— Note from the publisher

Ammerland

Jacob De Haan (b. 1959)

Brooke Woods, conductor

Ammerland depicts the lush, enchanting region surrounding the Zwischenaher Lake in Ammerland, Lower Saxony, Germany. The rural land of Ammerland boasts seemingly endless country roads and an exquisite lakeside. The sonorous sounds of Ammerland create the feeling of being carried away to this unique landscape of fields covered with sprawling meadows covered with yellow wildflower blossoms. 
 

Rocketship!

Kevin Day (b. 1996)

Paul Bissler, conductor

Rocketship! Is a fun, energetic and dynamic piece. Powerful chords and exciting harmonic changes accompany rhythmic melodic lines throughout this piece to create an exciting atmosphere. The piece takes you through an entire launch sequence for a rocket, with a satisfying ending reaching the peak and finding space.  
 

Crest of Honor

David Gillingham (b. 1947)

Paul Bissler, conductor

Commissioned by the Fresno-Madera Music Educators' Association in Central California, Crest of Honor is a concert march with a Gillingham twist. With regal brass motives, this piece shines by adding shimmering mallet percussion parts and superbly scored winds.

— Note from the publisher
 

UNIVERSITY BAND PERSONNEL
 

Collegiate Winds

Phillip Day, conductor

Ecstatic Fanfare (2012)

Steven Bryant (b. 1972)

Steven Bryant’s music is chiseled in its structure and intent, fusing lyricism, dissonance, silence, technology, and humor into lean, skillfully crafted works that enthrall listeners and performers alike. Winner of the ABA Ostwald award and three-time winner of the NBA Revelli Award, Steven Bryant’s music for wind ensemble has reshaped the genre. A prolific composer, his substantial catalogue of music is regularly performed throughout the world. Recently, his Ecstatic Waters was premiered by the Minnesota Orchestra to unanimous, rapturous acclaim. The son of a professional trumpeter and music educator, he strongly values music education, and his creative output includes a number of works for young and developing musicians.

Steven studied composition with John Corigliano at The Juilliard School, Cindy McTee at the University of North Texas, and Francis McBeth at Ouachita University, trained for one summer in the mid-1980s as a break-dancer (i.e. was forced into lessons by his mother), was the 1987 radio-controlled car racing Arkansas state champion, has a Bacon Number of 1, and has played saxophone with Branford Marsalis on "Sleigh Ride." He resides in Durham, NC with his wife, conductor Verena Mösenbichler-Bryant (Duke University).

About Ecstatic Fanfare, the composer writes:

Ecstatic Fanfare is based on music from movement I of my Ecstatic Waters. One day in May 2012, I mentioned to my wife that it might be fun to take the soaring, heroic tutti music from the earlier work and turn it into a short fanfare someday. She goaded me into doing it “immediately,” and so in a panicked three-day composing frenzy, I created this new work, which was premiered by Johann Mösenbichler with the Polizeiorchester Bayern just three short weeks later, followed immediately by my wife, Verena, conducting it with the World Youth Wind Orchestra Project in July 2012. This has to be a record time for conception-to-premiere for a large ensemble work.

The work unfolds with a flurry that can best be described as aggressive jubilation that winds down into a quiet, pure, pastoral melody marked by descending fourths in the clarinets. The use of open harmonies and descending fourths provide a sense of innocence and simplicity to this music, giving the listener something familiar to connect with, reminiscent of the music of Aaron Copland. This quiet music is eventually transformed into a powerful statement by the horns, marked “aggressive and celebratory.” This moment of celebration explodes into elation and the work rallies toward an energetic, powerful conclusion.

Entrata (2019)

Steve Danyew (b. 1983)

Steve Danyew is the recipient of numerous national and international awards for his work, and his compositions have been performed throughout the world in venues such as the Sydney Opera House, the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, and the steps of the US Capitol. 

Danyew’s work for band, Into the Silent Land, was named the winner of the 2019 Walter Beeler Memorial Composition Prize. 

In addition to composing, Danyew is a passionate educator who teaches composition lessons through his own private studio. He also teaches courses focused on helping young musicians craft their own creative careers at the Eastman School of Music’s Institute for Music Leadership. 

In 2020, Danyew and his wife, Ashley created Musician & Co. to equip 21st-century musicians with the tools and education they need to be both artists and business owners. They offer business education, a resource library, a template shop, and personalized career strategy sessions, professional writing support, and brand development for musicians who want to build and manage their own music careers.

Danyew received a BM in composition from the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami, where his primary composition teachers were Scott Stinson and Dennis Kam. In 2025 he was one of 100 Frost School of Music alumni awarded a Frost Centennial Medal in celebration of the school’s 100th anniversary. He also holds an MM in composition from the Eastman School of Music. Additionally, Danyew has served as a Composer Fellow at the Yale Summer Music School with Martin Bresnick, and as a Composer Fellow at the Composers Conference with Mario Davidovsky.

About Entrata, the composer writes:

Entrata is a gift for conductor and teacher Gary Green from his students. For 22 years, Mr. Green was the conductor of the wind ensemble at the University of Miami, inspiring countless student performers who played under his leadership, and conductors who trained under his mentorship.

I was fortunate to play saxophone in the wind ensemble under Mr. Green's direction when I was an undergraduate student studying composition. During this time, I was introduced to an incredible variety of music and began to develop an interest in writing for the wind ensemble. I learned from numerous guest composers through the wind ensemble — one memorable highlight was playing in the East Coast premiere of David Maslanka's Mass.

In 2018, Mr. Green gave me a print of a photograph he had taken of the entrance to a church in Savannah, Georgia. The striking photograph has many interesting features, and shortly after I received it, I knew I wanted to write a piece inspired by the scene. The church appears somewhat dark and mysterious, with a stone facade and arched stained-glass windows. Two items in the photograph immediately caught my imagination. First, there are beams of light streaming down from the sky, above the church. Second, the doors of the church seem to be ever-so-slightly ajar. It’s a beautiful and captivating photograph.

Entrata, Italian for entrance, is a nod to the doors in the photograph that are cracked open — mysterious and intriguing. Much of the music is inspired by Third Mode Melody, a haunting tune written by English composer Thomas Tallis in 1561. Around the same time that I began brainstorming ideas for this piece, I sang Third Mode Melody in a choir and found the melody and harmonies lingering with me for weeks. Its mysterious and haunting sounds seemed like apt inspiration for this piece.

The first half of the piece draws inspiration from the open doors in Gary Green’s photograph. In the second half of the piece, I tried to capture the beams of light shining down from above. And then at the end of the work, we return to the open doors and finally enter through the darkened doorway to find what mysteries lie within.

Country Gardens (1918/1953)

Percy Grainger (1882–1961))

Percy Aldridge Grainger was a genius whose unorthodox beliefs and lifestyle may be attributed to both his genes and his childhood environment. When his grandparents sailed from England to Australia in 1847, his grandmother tied herself to the ship’s mast during a storm so that she could witness the ferocity of the elements. His grandfather, George Aldridge, gained notoriety as a hotel keeper in Adelaide by evicting Jews and bookmakers from his hotel. Percy’s father, John Grainger, was a well-educated architect who loved music, sports, whiskey, and prostitutes. Shortly after Percy was born, his mother, Rose (Aldridge) learned that she had contracted syphilis from her husband. The disease, incurable at that time, was at least partially responsible for the death of both parents. After becoming paralyzed, John died in 1917; Rose’s constantly deteriorating mental and physical condition caused her to end her own life in 1922.

Grainger’s registered name at his birth in 1882 was George Percy Grainger — he began using his mother’s maiden name when he was about 30 years of age. As a child he studied piano with his mother and later with Louis Pabst (a pupil of Anton Rubinstein) and Adelaide Burkitt in Melbourne. In 1900, Grainger began his career as a concert pianist with sensational success in such widely separated places as England, Australia, and South Africa. His playing so impressed Edvard Grieg in 1906 that he was invited to the composer’s home in Norway. During the summer of 1907 they rehearsed Grieg’s Concerto for the Leeds Festival, but the Nordic composer died before the performance. Grainger later became known as one of the concerto’s great interpreters. 

He immigrated to America in 1914, winning acclaim for his playing. At the outbreak of World War I he enlisted as an army bandsman, learning to play and appreciate most of the wind and percussion instruments — particularly the saxophone. He also enjoyed the respite from concertizing. He taught at the Army Band School for eight months and used the time to rescore such orchestra works as Colonial Song, Irish Tune, and Shepherd’s Hey for military band. In 1918–1919 he composed the original band work Children’s March, and he became an American citizen during the same year. After his discharge from the military service in 1919, Grainger began a summer piano teaching career at the Chicago Musical College which continued until 1928. Several of his compositions and band arrangements were premiered by the Goldman Band in New York, and he frequently appeared as its guest conductor or piano soloist. 

As a composer Grainger was remarkably innovative, using irregular rhythms before Stravinsky did, pioneering in folk music collections at the same time as Bartok, writing random music in 1905, and predating Varese in experimentation with electronic music. He composed, set, arranged, and edited some 400 works; counting all the versions of these works, the number exceeds 1,000. Most of his music and memorabilia are now in the Grainger Museum in Melbourne, the Library of Congress, or the Grainger Library in his former home in White Plains, New York. In visiting Percy and Ella Grainger in White Plains during the last three years of the composer’s life, Daniel Leeson learned that the unconventional genius was a vegetarian who loved pancakes, pagan rhythms, Presley records, Berg’s Chamber Concerto, and his free music machine. With some exceptions, such as the late quartets and sonatas of Beethoven, he disliked the music of the Classical period. At the centenary of his birth the musical world was well on his way to appreciating Grainger the composer, but many years from understanding Grainger the person. 

— Biography by Norman E. Smith 

Country Gardens is an English folk tune that Cecil Sharp collected in 1908 and passed on to Grainger, who played improvisations on it during his World War I tour as a concert pianist for the U.S. Army. According to Grainger, it is a dance version of the tune "The Vicar of Bray." Once published in its original piano form, the tune brought Grainger great success. However, it was not among his favorite compositions. Later in life, despite the steady stream of income from its royalties, the fame of Country Gardens and the widespread public association of this work as being his best-known piece, the work came to haunt Grainger. Mentally, it became his albatross. He came to think of his own brilliant original music as “my wretched tone art.” He once remarked, “The typical English country garden is not often used to grow flowers in; it is more likely to be a vegetable plot. So, you can think of turnips as I play it.”

When asked in 1950 by Leopold Stokowski to make a new arrangement for Stokowski’s orchestra, Grainger obliged with a wildly satirical version that literally sticks out its tongue at the success of the little tune. In 1953, he rescored that arrangement for band. Reflecting his mood at the time, it is a bitingly sophisticated parody that was to become his only band setting of the music.

Ritmos de la Tierra (2013)

VIII. Bambuco (Colombia)

Victoriano Valencia (b. 1970)

Victoriano Valencia is a Colombian composer and music educator focused on writing and arranging works for band, choir, orchestra, musical theatre and other formats. For the past two decades, he has been a fundamental driving force behind the growth and development of band music in Colombia. His compositions and arrangements explore popular, symphonic, and contemporary material in an effort to broaden the scope of music performed by ensembles in his home country. His more than 150 works have been performed by ensembles in more than 30 countries. He currently serves as the director of the Department of Music and a full-time professor at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana de Bogotá.

Ritmos de la Tierra (Rhythms of the Earth) is a collection of 10 pieces based on Colombian and other Latin American dance patterns that explore and highlight the different rhythms and sounds present in each dance. The Bambuco is a Columbian musical genre from the Andean region and one of the country’s most internationally widespread rhythms. It is characterized by a stylized group dance in 3/4 or 6/8 time. This setting utilizes both meters to create tension and drama. Some sections oscillate between the rhythms, like America from Bernstein’s West Side Story; others use the rhythms simultaneously. The addition of an extended clarinet solo highlights the expressive, melodic characteristics of the style.

  
Monkey Business (1999/2007)

David Lovrein (b. 1963)

David Lovrien has been a member of the saxophone section of the Dallas Wind Symphony since 1991, performing on 15 of the group’s compact discs and appearing several times as featured soloist. He is also a founding member of the renowned Texas Saxophone Quartet, the first saxophone ensemble to win the prestigious Fischoff Competition in 1988. His compositions and arrangements have been performed throughout the world, and his website celebrating the life and work of John Philip Sousa is recognized as the foremost Sousa authority on the internet.

Written in 1999 for the Dallas Wind Symphony, Monkey Business is a rollicking romp from start to finish, capturing the excitement of a child’s first strip to the circus: the thrills, the laughter, the joy. Lots of comical percussion (whistle, slapstick, cowbell, etc.), in-your-face brass and whirling woodwind runs, all competing for your attention like a three-ring circus. Although it generally follows the standard march form, it takes every opportunity to “color outside the lines” and add whimsical elements such as altered scales and unexpected key modulations. 

COLLEGIATE WINDS PERSONNEL
 

Personnel

University Band

Musicians are listed alphabetically within each section.

Flute 
Macy Adams
Ananya Chadha
Maisyn Groves
Max Henderson
Ella Johnson
Alyssa Jones
Anna King
Elijah Tofte

Oboe
Connor Caviness
Lucia Cherok
Nik Henderson

Bassoon
Molly Schwartz
Robert Mullen

Clarinet
Emily Baker
Alex Blackstone
Ethan Campbell
Maddie Carney
Audra Franke
Aaron Geise
Lauren Haley
Anna Irwin
Haley Kramer
Lily Myers
Natalie Hall
Katarina Payamgis
Sydney Reeves
Ryder Robins

Bass Clarinet
Ryan Chan

Alto Saxophone
Markus Dixon
Austin Hamilton
Lily Ritenberg
Nicole Susko

Tenor Saxophone
Kirthin Rajesh    
Baritone Saxophone
Lucas Snouffer

Trumpet
Paolo Atriano
Adrian Cardenas
Gage Edwards
Bo Famularcano
Andrew Hsiung
Katherine Suttle
Anneliese Liedtke
Toby Martini
Julian Oconer
Colin Parker
Finn Paul
Isabelle Plummer
Eigan Reisted
Levi Rickenbach
Spencer Talarzyk

Horn
Caitlyn Bowers
Lila Smith

Trombone
Cameron Mills
Abigail Rutherford
Nila Sparkes
Mathew Wheeler
Lillian Widmar

Euphonium
Christine Baird
Saya Greening
Jacob Meyer
Louis Polien

Tuba
Oliver Alban
Nick Blum
Nic Digena

Percussion
Dustin Brickner
Nolan Call
Claudia Church
Noah Sims
Jaxon Stevens
Orion Stufflebeam
Ray Williams
Avery Wilt

Collegiate Winds

Musicians are listed alphabetically within each section.

Piccolo
Maryssa Hoermle

Flute
Abby Birr *
Maryssa Hoermle
Cecillia Le
Isabelle McCulloch
Allegra Tannoury
Emma Walters
Hana Winchester

Oboe
Natalie Kittle
Layla Lubic *
River Wells

Bassoon
Conner Ozatalar
Alexia Simmons *

Clarinet
Sam Baccei *
Leena Futoryansky
Connor Gibson
Nicole Gountanis
Sophia Lipowski
Becca Plympton
Holly Rasanow
Ellie Zavaglia

Bass Clarinet
Rowan Hauer *
Tori Steinbrecher

Alto Saxophone
Connor Croley
Abigail Downs
Samuel Feldstein
Blake Steele *

Tenor Saxophone
Holly Barger
Evan King *

Baritone Saxophone
Charlie Peterson

Trumpet        
Cameron Beard
Nolan Daly *
Luke Duane-Tessier
Ryan Flad
Joseph Gregg
Samantha Harvey
Alli Jones
Marlee Lawson
Brianna Nemec
Olivia Truocchio
Katie Williams

Horn
Aria Christensen
Trajan Emmert *
Lauren Palacek
MiVan Pham
Eden Piotroski
Sami Steinhauser
Randall Wiles

Trombone
Clarissa Cousart
Fernando Flores IV
Sam Harper
Raven Luman
Gavin Schooley *
Noah Schrader
Kenta Thompson
Nicholas Zahniser

Euphonium
Dominic Barnes
Sayaka Iimura *
Tori Klinger
Daniel Schiel II

Tuba
Preston Hexamer
Ryan Schoeff
Matthew Sliwinski *

Percussion 
Xander Bullinger
Garrett Campbell
Ben Hollis *
Sam Lord-Fry
Grayson Trinca

Piano
Kenta Thompson

* principal player
 

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