Thursday, April 20, 2023 • 8 p.m.
Weigel Auditorium
Columbus, OH
WIND SYMPHONY
Russel C. Mikkelson, conductor
GRADUATE STUDENT CONDUCTORS
Sarah Baker
Dustin Ferguson
Josh Reynolds
SPECIAL GUEST
Joel Puckett, composer-in-residence
Joel Puckett is a composer leaving both audiences and the press buzzing. His music has been described as “soaringly lyrical” (Minneapolis Star Tribune), “Puccini-esque” (Wall Street Journal), and “containing a density within a clarity, polyphony within the simple and – most importantly – beautiful and seemingly spiritual” (Audiophile Audition). Parterre Box recently proclaimed, “Puckett should be a household name” and the Philadelphia Inquirer’s David Patrick Stearns mused, “if the name Joel Puckett isn’t etched into your brain, it should be.” In 2011 NPR Music listed him as one of the top 100 composers under 40 in the world.
Hailed as “visionary” (Washington Post) and “an astonishingly original voice” (Philadelphia Inquirer), his music is performed by the leading artists of our day and is consistently recognized by organizations such as the American Composers Forum, BMI, Chorus America, National Public Radio, and the American Bandmasters Association.
Puckett’s music attracts diverse performers and listeners through its emotional energy and commitment. Melding tradition with innovation, his distinctive style grows from his power to create transcendent experiences using charismatic musical language.
PROGRAM
Overture to Candide
Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990) / Clare Grundman
Josh Reynolds, guest conductor
Opening on Broadway on December 1, 1956, Candide was perhaps a bit too intellectually weighty for its first audiences and closed after just 73 performances. Bernstein was less concerned over the money lost than the failure of a work he cared about deeply. The critics had rightly noted a marvelous score, and Bernstein and others kept tinkering with the show over the years. With each revival, Candide won bigger audiences. In 1989, the already seriously ill Bernstein spent his last ounces of vital energy recording a new concert version of the work. “There’s more of me in that piece than anything else I’ve done,” he said.
The sparkling overture captures the frenetic activity of the operetta, with its twists and turns, along with Candide’s simple honesty. From the very beginning, though, the overture was a hit and swiftly became one of the most popular of all concert curtain raisers. Brilliantly written and scored, flying at breakneck speed, it pumps up the adrenaline of players and listeners alike. It features two of the show’s big tunes: the sweeping romantic one is Candide’s and Cunégonde’s love duet “Oh Happy We,” while the wacky up-tempo music is from Cunégonde’s fabulous send-up of coloratura soprano arias, “Glitter and Be Gay.”
Let My Love be Heard
Jake Runestad (b. 1986)
Dustin Ferguson, guest conductor
On the evening of Friday, November 13, 2015, a series of coordinated terrorist attacks occurred in the city of Paris, France, and the northern suburb of Saint-Denis. The attacks, which were perpetrated by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), resulted in the deaths of 130 civilians and injured 413 others. Among the victims was Nohemi Gonzalez, a junior design major at California State University–Long Beach, who was spending a semester studying in Paris at the time.
Let My Love Be Heard is a powerful choral work that was originally written for Choral Arts Northwest. However, in the wake of the 2015 attacks in Paris and Beirut, the piece has taken on new meaning. Jonathan Talberg, conductor of the choir at Cal State Long Beach, led his singers in a performance of the piece during a memorial vigil for Nohemi Gonzalez. The following day, instead of rehearsing holiday music, the choir rehearsed and recorded Let My Love Be Heard as a musical offering in memory of Nohemi and as a plea for peace.
The work is based on the poem, "A Prayer" by Alfred Noyes, that speaks of the loss of a loved one and the hope that their memory will be carried on the wings of angels. The music is a powerful outpouring of grief but also a glimmer of light in the darkness of our world. Through its ability to bring people together and heal in times of darkness, Let My Love Be Heard has served as a source of hope and solace to audiences worldwide, reminding us of the transformative power of music.
A Prayer
Alfred Noyes
Angels, where you soar
Up to God’s own light,
Take my own lost bird
On your hearts tonight;
And as grief once more
Mounts to heaven and sings,
Let my love be heard
Whispering in your wings.
Sinfonia (2022)
Zhou Tian (b. 1981)
Consortium premiere performance
- Noir
- Transit
- Arioso
- D-O-N-E
The composer writes:
Sinfonia seeks inspirations from cultures close to my heart and mixes them into four different movements. It begins nostalgically and ends on a hopeful, uplifting note.
I. Noir
Grainy films and stylized black-and-white images from the 1940s and ’50s inspired this nostalgic throwback. Although it starts brightly, at its core lies the night.
II. Transit
New York City. Subway. Rush hour. Each stop opens to a new soundscape. “Say, did I hear Jazz?” Someone asks. “STAND CLEAR OF THE CLOSING DOORS, PLEASE,” New York replies.
III. Arioso
Shanghai. Night of the Mid-Autumn Festival. A vocalise was conceived.
IV. D-O-N-E
May 10, 1869. Promontory, Utah. A one-word telegraph was sent across the United States in Morse code, announcing the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad. Now the country was connected as never before: a journey between San Francisco and New York that previously took up to six months now took only days. Some 150 years later, that word, “D-O-N-E,” is transformed here into music using the rhythm of the Morse code. Throughout the finale, the “done” motif is passed back and forth by numerous instruments in the orchestra. An accumulation of materials sends the piece to a climax at the end. This movement was adapted from a movement of my orchestral work Transcend.
“D-O-N-E” rhythmic motif, based on the Morse code:
Sinfonia was jointly commissioned by a CBDNA consortium consisting of the Michigan State University (Kevin Sedatole), Ball State University (Thomas E. Caneva), Baylor University (Eric Wilson), University of Colorado Boulder (Donald J. McKinney), Florida State University (Richard Clary), Indiana University (Rodney Dorsey), University of Michigan (Michael Haithcock), TheOhio State University (Russel C. Mikkelson), Oklahoma State University (Joseph Missal), Purdue University–Fort Wayne (Daniel Tembras), University of Texas Austin (Jerry Junkin), Texas Tech University (Sarah McKoin), and Western Michigan University (Scott Boerma). My deepest gratitude goes to Kevin Sedatole, who initiated this project, as well as to all commissioning partners. I had a blast writing this work!
— Zhou Tian
Sinfonia was selected as the 2022 Sousa–ABA–Ostwald Award winning composition.
— INTERMISSION —
Radiant Joy
Steven Bryant (b. 1972)
Sarah Baker, guest conductor
The composer writes:
Radiant Joy was the first new work for winds after almost three years away, and one that I hope is equal to its title in character and purity of intent. It came after a difficult period in my personal life, and thus its character was something of a surprise to me. This work began life as a strict, 12-tone, serialized creature modeled on Webern — I wanted something sparse and tightly constructed, while still retaining a vital rhythmic pulse. After several sketches that ended in anger and frustration, I realized I should stop forcing this music into existence with a prescriptive process, and simply listen inwardly to what I actually wanted to hear. The result is simultaneously the opposite of what I was originally trying to create, and also its direct realization — the vital rhythmic pulse is still prominent, but the harmonic materials veered toward the language of 70s/80s funk/jazz/fusion (at least, that's what I've been told). Regardless, the piece is intended to evoke simple joy and "good vibes" (quite literally — the vibraphone is featured prominently) for the performers, the audience, and the composer!
Blink
Joel Puckett (b. 1977)
Have you ever had a feeling that something good was about to happen? Perhaps just an inkling? Have you ever met someone and known instantly that you were going to become thick as thieves? In the fall of 2005, I read Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Blink.
Blink is a book about rapid cognition. The following is from Gladwell’s website:
When you meet someone for the first time, or walk into a house you are thinking of buying, or read the first few sentences of a book, your mind takes about two seconds to jump to a series of conclusions. Well, Blink is a book about those two seconds, because I think those instant conclusions that we reach are really powerful and really important and, occasionally, really good.
I found this concept inspiring and led to the writing of my work for wind band by the same name. My work features quick changes of both texture and tempo (blink!) while systematically exploring a single motive. The boisterous opening of the piece rigorously works this motive (in both transparent and opaque ways) and climaxes in giving way to a surprisingly quiet and ethereal ending.
— Note by the composer
that secret from the river (Adagio Symphony) (2017)
Joel Puckett
Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time? That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past nor the shadow of the future?
– Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
Hesse’s quotation, poetic in its nature, incites a compelling philosophical quandary on the nature of reality and the perception of reality through time. The proposed observation harkens back to the flux doctrine of ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus, who noted that one who stepped into the same river twice was surrounded by changed waters.
Hesse’s further exploration of this concept proposes a host of possibilities. Is our perception of time as a linear progression fundamentally flawed? Does anything remain the same over time, even as it changes significantly? Siddhartha’s journey in the novel hinges on his epiphanies by the river, as it serves as a metaphor for his (and the reader’s) life. This quotation serves as the inspiration and soul of Joel Puckett’s that secret from the river, which approaches the idea of the river from the abstraction of sound. The composer says of his creative process:
I have a very odd relationship with the past. I am constantly forced to confront past choices I’ve made in the form of the music I’ve written which I then experience in the present. When I hear music I’ve written, I am almost always overwhelmed by the feeling that I’m not actually the person who wrote it. And in a very real sense, I’m not; at least, not anymore. But when I hear it, I feel compelled to be grateful that the person who did write that music left the very best of himself in those notes and I go about my life trying to live up to them.
In a sense, the metaphor of Hesse’s river is applied to the life of any person. Can any of us exist outside of the perspective of the absolute present, and are we still the same person as we were in the past or will be in the future?
With art, the common predilection is to observe the creator’s oeuvre through a synchronic lens, assuming all works are created by the same person fixed in time rather than to take into account the evolution not just of the artists’ craft, but also of the artists themselves. In that secret from the river, Puckett deals with this concept in a personally meaningful way through a lengthy study in motivic reference and thick, seemingly mystical harmonies.
The work as a whole is cast in two large sections: first, an exploration of pure harmonies that are made distorted and hazy through glissandi into sound masses, and second, a series of variants on a familiar harmonic motive. For much of the later portions of the piece, sections of the Hesse quotation are printed to accompany the score in a quasi-programmatic fashion. These fragments, positioned out of order, further lend to the concept of universal existence outside of time presented by the quotation itself.
The piece opens with a flash of keyboard instruments and thick clouds of harmony orchestrated into large alternating consorts of wind instruments building to a tremendous sonority that combines elements of both A major and minor. Out of the resonance emerges a solitary D which carries a feeling of placidity from the previous tumult. The first large section begins in earnest here, as the pitch is expanded through its natural harmonic series. This meditation on D comes in and out of focus as it is increasingly distorted by intense neighboring dissonance (first by microtonal adjustment, and subsequently through ever multiplying collections of semitones). With each sequence, more instruments join and enrich the texture until the full ensemble contributes. Two repetitions of this contour follow, albeit with altered pitch content and order of entry, before receding away into an expansive largo bearing the quotation fragment “…there is no such thing as time…” This transitional segment, which concludes the first half of the piece, executes glacially paced chords that slowly sink down by half-steps while a gentle canon between flute and trumpet ambiguously hint at both minor and major modalities once more.
The second half of the work, which in the score is accompanied by the Hesse fragment “…not the shadow of the past,” begins with a statement in the keyboards of a ringing harmonic progression. These harmonies hauntingly call to mind the principal harmonic motive in the “Eye of Shadow” movement from Puckett’s flute concerto The Shadow of Sirius. The ensemble joins in and grows in intensity and dissonance through a nearly direct repetition of the opening measures of the piece before cascading into a series of variants on this harmonic idea. A return to the glissando clusters from early in the piece closes the section, this time accompanied by the Sirius chord progression (which descend in this iteration much as the closing chords in the first half of the work). A brief coda continues the descent, adding to the dissonance until being swept away to frame a tender consonance of D-flat major. The journey moves the listener through a broad landscape of sounds, diverse, nostalgic, and seemingly spiritual. We are asked to meditate on this river and these waters — even if similar — are ever-changing and accept these experiences as but a moment in the eternal continuum.
That secret from the river was commissioned by Northwestern University in celebration of the completion of the Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Center for the Musical Arts and is dedicated to Mallory Thompson and the members, past and present, of the Symphonic Wind Ensemble.
— Note by Jacob Wallace
ROSTER
Piccolo
Meagan Gaskill
Katie Sharp
Braden Stewart
Flute
Meagan Gaskill *
Arianna Bendit
Katie Sharp
Sofia Geelhood
Jonathan Mitchell
Allie Gerckens
Braden Stewart
Oboe/English Horn
Michael Rueda *
Lauren Kowal
Claire Rottman
Bassoon
Dylan Tharp *
Isaiah Heyman
Eb Clarinet
Kaleigh McGee
Destiny Malave
Clarinet
Jiaqi Liu *
Kaleigh McGee
Destiny Malave
Maddy Brickner
Rohit Kolluri
Louis Maligaya
Eli Johnson
Peter Breckenridge
Katie Lowry
Lily Tropple
Bass Clarinet
Marco Rojas
Mason Williams
Contrabass Clarinet
Jiaqi Liu
Alto Saxophone
Frankie Wantuch *
Sean Bauman
Tenor Saxophone
Cooper Greenlees
Baritone Saxophone
Austin Spillman
Horn
Brittany White *
William Holderby
Cheng Peng
Theresa Deevers
Trumpet
Matt Pileski *
Ben Guegold
Nick Schnitzspahn
Connor McMullen
Julia Moxley
Eric Luman
Bobby Petty
Trombone
Charlotte Stefani *
Alex Myers
Zach Irwin
Tristan Miller
Bass Trombone
C. J. McGhee
Euphonium
Sean O’Brien *
Gareth Whelan
Davis Aho
Tuba
Jake Blevins *
Avery Voress
Patrick Woo
Percussion
Tres Perkins *
Sam Sherer
Matt Hanson
Hannah Moore
Kalie Dawson
Double Bass
Jimmy Perera
Piano
Pufan Wang
Harp
Nathan Hay
Celeste
Sarah Baker
* indicates principal
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