MARINE CLARINET CHOIR

Thursday, August 12, 2020 at 7:30 P.M.

Streamed live from John Philip Sousa Band Hall
Marine Barracks Annex
Washington, D.C.
Colonel Jason K. Fettig, Director

John Stafford Smith (1750–1836) National Anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner”

arranged by GySgt Patrick Morgan*

John Philip Sousa (1854–1932) March, “The Belle of Chicago”

arranged by SSgt Parker Gaims*

Everett Gates (1914–2006) Seasonal Sketches

Summer Caprice
Waltz for a Spring Night

traditional “Londonderry Air”

arranged by Dale Casteel
edited by Don McCathren

Sammy Nestico* (b. 1924) A Study in Contrasts

The Demure
The Delightful

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958) Rhosymedre

arranged by Matt Johnson

Vaclav Nelhybel (1919–96) Chorale and Danza

Zequinha de Abreu (1880–1935) “Tico-Tico”

arranged by Kazuhiro Morita

Alfred Reed (1921–2005) “Havana Moon” from Caribbean Suite

Henry Fillmore (1881–1956) March, “The Circus Bee”

arranged by SSgt Parker Gaims*

Jacques Offenbach (1819–80) The Marines’ Hymn

arranged by GySgt Patrick Morgan*

MGySgt Vicki Gotcher and MSgt Michelle Urzynicok, E-flat clarinet

MGySgt Deborah Hanson-Gerber, GySgt Christopher Grant, SSgt Kristin Bowers, SSgt Alexander Bullard,
SSgt Harrison Burks, SSgt Zachary Gauvain, SSgt Lewis Gilmore, SSgt Tyler Hsieh, SSgt Meaghan Kawaller,
SSgt Jacob Moyer, and SSgt Samuel Ross, B-flat clarinet
SSgt Shannon Kiewitt, alto clarinet
SSgt Andrew Dees, bass clarinet
GySgt Harry Ong, contra alto clarinet
SSgt Lucia Disano, conducting
*Member, U.S. Marine Band
www.marineband.marines.mil | (202) 433-4011 | www.facebook.com/marineband | www.twitter.com/marineband | www.instagram.com/usmarineband
PLEASE NOTE: The use of recording devices and flash photography is prohibited during the concert. In addition to works of the U.S. Government (as defined by 17
U.S.C. § 101 et seq.), this performance may also contain individuals’ names and likenesses, trademarks, or other intellectual property, matter, or materials that are either
covered by privacy, publicity, copyright, or other intellectual property rights licensed to the U.S. Government and owned by third parties, or are assigned to or
otherwise owned by the U.S. Government. You should not assume that anything in this performance is necessarily in the Public Domain.
 PROGRAM NOTES

March, “The Belle of Chicago”

John Philip Sousa (1854–1932)
arranged by SSgt Parker Gaims*

Perhaps more than anyone else, John Philip Sousa was responsible for bringing the
United States Marine Band to the level of excellence upheld today. As a composer, he wrote the
best known and most beloved marches in the repertoire; as director, he was an innovator who
shaped the future of the Marine Band. Sousa was born in southeast Washington, D.C., near the
Marine Barracks where his father, Antonio, was a musician in the Marine Band. Sousa studied
piano and most orchestral instruments, but his first love was the violin. He became very
proficient on the instrument, and at age thirteen was almost persuaded to join a circus band. His
father intervened, however, and enlisted him as an apprentice musician in the Marine Band.
Sousa remained in the band until he was twenty, and after a short stint as a professional musician
in Philadelphia, returned to accept a position as the seventeenth director of the band in 1880.
The “Belle of Chicago” was performed in 1892 at the dedication of the World’s
Columbian Exposition, the Chicago World’s Fair. This specially assembled orchestra of 190
players was conducted by Theodore Thomas, who founded the Chicago Symphony Orchestra a
year earlier. Sousa composed this piece for his engagements in the city and, more importantly, as
a tribute to its ladies. The rousing march apparently had something other than the desired effect
after one local journalist stated, “Mr. Sousa evidently regards the Chicago belle as a powerful
creature, with the swinging stride of a giant, a voice like a foghorn, and feet like sugar-cured
hams.” Sousa completed the full score of “The Belle of Chicago” on July 23, 1892, in
Washington, D.C., one week before his discharge from the Marine Corps to form his own
civilian band which, incidentally, was based in Chicago.

Seasonal Sketches
Everett Gates (1914–2006)

Composer Everett Gates graduated in 1939 from the Eastman School of Music in
Rochester, New York, with a bachelor’s degree and a performer’s certificate in viola. After
performing as a member of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra from 1937 to 1948, he
returned to the Eastman School as a student, earning a master’s degree in 1948. He spent the next
ten years with the Oklahoma Symphony Orchestra as principal viola and assistant conductor,
while also teaching as a member of the faculty at Oklahoma City University and composing
original compositions. Gates returned to the Eastman School once again, this time as a professor
of Music Education and later as department chair in 1958, and he remained there until his
retirement in 1979. He was an active part of the Rochester music scene until his death in 2006.
Gates’ composition Seasonal Sketches is a four-movement suite for clarinet choir, from which
the light-hearted outer movements Summer Caprice and Waltz for a Spring Night are extracted
for this performance.
 “Londonderry Air”
traditional
arranged by Dale Casteel
edited by Don McCathren

“Londonderry Air” is an old Irish air that was collected by Jane Ross in 1851. Ross gave
the tune to George Petrie who included the melody in the book, The Ancient Music of Ireland,
which was published in 1855. Ross is said to have heard the tune played by a traveling musician
on the streets of Limavady, Ireland, and neglected to notate the name of the performer or the title
of the tune. Because Ross was from the County of Londonderry, the melody became known by
the title “Londonderry Air.” Most often heard as the melody for the song “Danny Boy,” this
melancholy tune lends itself beautifully to the warm, sorrowful sound of the clarinet.

A Study in Contrasts
Sammy Nestico* (b. 1924)

Largely self-taught, composer Sammy Nestico saved the dime his mother gave him for
food money each day to buy used jukebox records to play on his secondhand record player. He
listened and learned by experience, working as a staff arranger with a radio orchestra in
Pittsburgh from age seventeen. He served in the Air Force with the Airmen of Note for twelve
years and then served five years as chief arranger in “The President’s Own.” A Grammy-award
nominee, Nestico has arranged for such acclaimed artists as Quincy Jones and Count Basie.
Nestico’s 1964 work A Study in Contrasts has been arranged for a variety of different
ensembles, including string ensemble, saxophone quartet, and clarinet choir. The two movements
of this work stylistically contrast each other and are filled with rich harmonies.

Rhosymedre
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958)
arranged by Matt Johnson

Ralph Vaughan Williams established himself as one of the greatest British composers of
his generation and heir to the legacy of symphonic composition so well established by Sir
Edward Elgar. The son of a clergyman, Vaughan Williams studied viola and organ as a youth.
He attended the Charterhouse School, Cambridge University, and the Royal College of Music,
eventually earning a doctorate at Cambridge in 1901. His formal training, while extensive, did
not satisfy an inner urge to find his own musical voice. He went abroad to study in Germany
with Max Bruch in 1897 and to Paris in 1908 to work with Maurice Ravel, but the distinctive
rhythms and harmonies of English folk songs proved a more significant influence.
Beginning in the 1890s, Vaughan Williams joined fellow composer Gustav Holst in
collecting folk songs, many of which were in danger of being lost because those who knew this
aural tradition were passing away without having taught them to a new generation. Vaughan
Williams collected more than 800 folk songs, many of which appeared in his compositions for
the rest of his life.
 One such folk melody is “Rhosymedre,” which is used as the foundation for the second
movement of Three Preludes Founded on Welsh Hymn Tunes for organ composed by Vaughn
Williams in 1920. “Rhosymedre” was perhaps one of the most popular hymns, first published in
Original Hymn Tunes by John David Edwards. This folk melody is named after the village in
Wales where Edwards was a vicar from 1843 until his death in 1885. Also referred to as
“Lovely,” this piece has been arranged from its original setting for organ to a number of other
musical settings, including band, orchestra, brass ensemble, and this arrangement for clarinet
ensemble.

Chorale and Danza

Vaclav Nelhybel (1919–96)

Vaclav Nelhybel was born in Czechoslovakia and studied composition and conducting at
the Conservatory of Music in Prague and musicology at the University of Prague and the
University of Fribourg in Switzerland. Following World War II, he was affiliated as a composer
and conductor with the Swiss National Radio and became a lecturer at the University of
Fribourg. In 1950 he became the first musical director of Radio Free Europe in Munich,
Germany. Nelhybel immigrated to New York City in 1957 and became a naturalized citizen of
the United States in 1962. In 1994, he moved to Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he served as
composer-in-residence at the University of Scranton until his death.
A two movement work for clarinet choir, Chorale and Danza was first published in 1964,
shortly after Nelhybel became an American citizen. Showcasing the incredible vocal qualities of
the instrument, the first movement Chorale is powerful and majestic. By contrast, the second
movement Danza, with its driving rhythms, allows the ensemble to highlight the technical
capacities of the clarinet.

“Tico-Tico”
Zequinha de Abreu (1880–1935)
arranged by Kazuhiro Morita

“Tico-Tico” is a world-famous song by Brazilian composer Zequinha de Abreu. Abreu

wrote the song in 1917 in the popular Brazilian choro style, which is characterized by fast
rhythms, syncopations, and lots of counterpoint. The song was originally scored for the choro
ensemble, which usually consisted of several guitars, a cavaquinho (a small four-stringed guitar),
and a melody instrument, often a flute. In the 1940s, the tune became a hit in the United States,
and it has been recorded worldwide by a variety of artists in many different settings. Carmen
Miranda popularized it internationally in the 1947 movie Copacabana. The full title “Tico-Tico
no Fubá”, meaning “Sparrow in the Cornmeal,” was added when it was published in Brazil, to
distinguish it from a different popular tune also named “Tico-Tico.” As the piece flies by, one
cannot help but hear the sparrow pestering a young woman by continually finding ways to sneak
bites of her cornmeal.
 “Havana Moon” from Caribbean Suite
Alfred Reed (1921–2005)

American composer Alfred Reed, was born in New York and began his musical studies at
age ten. He served as associate conductor of the 529th Army Air Corps Band in Colorado during
World War II. After the war’s end, in 1946 Reed moved back to New York and attended the
Juilliard School of Music where he studied with composer Vittorio Giannini at the Juilliard
School before becoming a staff composer and arranger for NBC and then ABC. In 1953 he
became the conductor of the Baylor University Symphony Orchestra, where he simultaneously
continued his education, earning his bachelor’s degree in 1955 and his master’s degree in 1956.
It was during this time that the clarinet choir was rising in popularity as an ensemble among
music educators around the United States.
The first original work for clarinet choir and percussion, “Havana Moon” was printed in
1955 and is now a standard in the clarinet choir repertoire. When it was initially published, Reed
remarked that its success was in large part to the developments made in the low-register clarinet
family members at the time. The composer revealed in his score the following regarding the
bourgeoning repertoire for clarinet choir:
With the development of the B-flat Contra-Bass Clarinet, as well as the improvement of
the E-flat Alto and B-flat Bass Clarinets by the G. LeBlanc Instrument Corporation, the
Fully Balanced Clarinet Choir, at last, becomes a practical reality We now have the pure,
basic tone for the Band as a complete section in itself, capable of being detached from the
Orchestra as a whole, and playing its own literature. The publication of the Caribbean
Suite for clarinet choir marks the first step in the development of a literature for the Band
that small stand in the same relationship to it as the String Orchestra literature to the
symphonic Orchestra.

March, “The Circus Bee”

Henry Fillmore (1881–1956)
arranged by SSgt Parker Gaims*

As the composer of at least 256 works and the arranger of 774 others, Henry Fillmore
was one of the most prolific writers in the history of band music. The sheer volume of his
musical output prompted him to take the unusual step of publishing his compositions under
seven different pseudonyms in addition to his given name to avoid saturating the sheet music
market. Fillmore also had a reputation for flamboyant showmanship as conductor of his own
bands. In the words of a friend, “No one enjoyed his performances more than Henry himself.”
Published in 1908, “The Circus Bee” was considered at the time to be the most difficult
piece Fillmore had composed to date. This march is named after an imaginary circus newspaper
of Fillmore’s making, reflecting his lifelong interest in the circus. This arrangement of “The
Circus Bee” for clarinet ensemble was created by Marine Band clarinetist Staff Sergeant Parker
Gaims.