Evening Concert Series 2022-2023 Season

Helen M. Hosmer Hall Wednesday, April 19, 7:30 PM

Crane Concert Band

Peter B. Lewis, conductor
Jocelyn Kagoro, guest conductor

Metal (2012) Brian Balmages

(b. 1975)

First Suite in Eb (1909) Gustav Holst

I. Chaconne (1874-1934)
II. Intermezzo
III. March

Down a Country Lane (1962/1988) Aaron Copland

(1900-1990)
trans. Merlin Patterson
(b. 1955)

March from “Symphonic Metamorphosis Paul Hindemith

of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber” (1945) (1895-1963)
arr. Keith Wilson

Intermission

Aurora Awakes (2009) John Mackey

(b. 1973)
Themes From “Green Bushes” Percy Aldridge Grainger
Passacaglia on an English Folksong (1882-1961)
arr. Larry Daehn
(b. 1939)

Uncle Sid (2002) Jonathan Newman

(b. 1972)

Danzon no. 2 (1998/2009) Arturo Marquez

(b. 1950)
trans. Oliver Nickel
(b. 1973)
With Gratitude…

On behalf of the Crane Concert Band, I would like to offer our sincere gratitude to Amy
Swartele for her working with us on this cross curricular collaboration. No matter our
chosen path or passion, all things exist on a continuum and are interwoven. The more
opportunities we create to bring people together, the more we realize that nothing
functions or thrives alone. The stronger the bonds we create between disciplines, we
eliminate any societal hierarchy and give equal importance to all pursuits.

Thank you to Dean William Gibbons, Associate Dean David Heuser, Performance
Department Chair Carol Lowe, Audio and Video Engineers Douglas McKinnie and
Robert Zolner, all of the Performance Department Studio Professors, all the
Administrative Assistants and Secretaries, Facilities Manager Matthew Gatti and his
crew for all your support and assistance in preparing for tonight’s performance.

In his book, “Musicking”, Christopher Small challenges us all to view the concert
experience as something that involves many more dimensions, rather than only the
performers on stage. All of us here tonight, performers, audience (live and virtual),
support staff, engineers, custodians, administration, educators, and many more have a
direct role in the act of making music. Without all of you, tonight would be another
rehearsal. Thank you for joining us this evening and “musicking” along!
-Peter B. Lewis
AMY SWARTELE
Professor of Studio Art-Painting
“My practice explores possibilities and connections. Supposedly disparate forms
combine—dance, play, discuss, argue, and procreate— birthing odd hybrids and be-
ings. My work is diverse, yet the projects share a focus— to breach boundaries, overturn
hierarchies, shatter false dichotomies— to enhance relationships, celebrating the range
of human potential in both known and imagined worlds.”

“To ask, “What if?”

-Amy Swartele

Swartele, who has been a professor in the Department of Art for the past 20 years, has
historically focused on oil and mixed media painting, in 2019 she was commissioned to
create a mural using spray paint in downtown Potsdam on the side of the Potsdam Tile
Company Building. She was inspired to undertake the project after spending time in
Montreal and being inspired by all the wonderful graffiti throughout the city.

Swartele moved to the U.S. from Belgium in 1989 to attend Wesleyan University, and
then went on to get her of Master of Fine Art degree in painting at SUNY Buffalo. After
grad school she moved to France and spent a few months producing a series of paintings
for Bongrain (now Savencia Fromage & Dairy). “Because they were a big international
company, they really wanted paintings that dealt more with international issues and the
scope of the world. That fed into some of my interests in terms of valuing things that
are different from you—an on-going thread through lots of different bodies of my
work,” Swartele said. After being commissioned for the corporate work in France, she
returned to the U.S. and went on to teach in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Ohio,
before landing a tenure track position at SUNY Potsdam in 2000.

You can see more of Amy’s work at www.amyswartele.com

 Crane Concert Band Personnel

Piccolo/Flute Alto Saxophone

Euphonium
Jocelyn Kagoro Kevin Hyppolite*
Casey DeJesus-Webb*
Carina Phillips
Aiden Timko
Flute Crystal Machuca
Austin Pelissier
Alexandra Zagara*
Emma Scionti* Baritone Saxophone
Tuba
Elizabeth Betz Ryan Dunia
John Lithco*
Mark Peragine
Noah Somers
Liz Combs Trumpet
Matthew Deutscher
Catharine Chapman Casey Asaro*
Isabella Santoli
Michael Digman
Oboe Frank Pietraniello
Contra Bass
Annelise Herschbein* Michael Panella
Jorge Hernandez
Christopher Mavrogian Jonny Smith
Michael Morra
Percussion
Bassoon Josh Rivera
Aidan Sherwood*
Melissa Mitchell Isaac Aviles
Luke Coyne Connolly
Jalen Johnson Donny Anderson
Drew Spina
Jacob Hathaway
Brianna Lizzo
E-flat Clarinet
Sasha Truax
Nicholas Derderian Horn
Joshua Gambee
David Nesbitt*
Clarinet Hayden Aron
Piano/Percussion
Manya Kester* Moriah Clendenin
Johanna Saint-Vil
Jessica Schaller Hannah Shufelt
Nicholas Derderian
Librarians
Ainsley Hipp Trombone
Ashley Colucci
Ashley Colucci Jason Lensky*
John Aebly
Shannon Frank Elliot Borden
Christian Cummings Jonathan Langton
Sam McManus Wyatt Moore
Section Principal*
Charli Deixler
Bass Trombone
Bass Clarinet Alex Sanders
Jessica LaRocca*
Julia Saxby
CRANE CONCERT BAND
Program Notes • 19 April, 2023

METAL
Brian Balmages
Metal was inspired by two different types of “metal”. The first type manifests in the
considerable use of metallic sounds in the percussion section. Most of the percussion
instrumentation relies on metal instruments, both pitched and non-pitched. The only
exception are the timpani, snare drum, and bass drum. The second inspiration comes
from the genre “Heavy Metal”. Brian Balmages grew up listening to a wide range of
music and he often likes to go back to these early influences and explore the idea of
setting them in a contemporary framework. While the style does not completely emerge
in full form, there are several instances throughout the piece that suggest a strong heavy
metal influence.

FIRST SUITE IN Eb
Gustav Holst
Gustav Holst’s First Suite in E-flat for Military Band occupies a legendary position in
the wind band repertory and can be seen, in retrospect, as one of the earliest examples
of the modern wind band instrumentation still frequently performed today. Its influence
is so significant that several composers have made quotation or allusion to it as a source
of inspiration to their own works.

Holst began his work with Chaconne, a traditional Baroque form that sets a series of
variations over a ground bass theme. That eight-measure theme is stated at the outset in
tubas and euphoniums, and, in all, fifteen variations are presented in quick succession.
The three pitches that begin the work -- E-flat, F, and B-flat, ascending -- serve as the
generating cell for the entire work, as the primary theme of each movement begins in
the same manner. Holst also duplicated the intervallic content of these three pitches, but
descended, for several melodic statements (a compositional trick not dissimilar to the
inversion process employed by the later serialist movement, which included such
composers as Schoenberg and Webern). These inverted melodies contrast the optimism
and bright energy of the rest of the work, typically introducing a sense of melancholy
or shocking surprise. The second half of the Chaconne, for instance, presents a somber
inversion of the ground bass that eventually emerges from its gloom into the exuberant
final variations.

The Intermezzo, which follows is a quirky rhythmic frenzy that contrasts everything
that has preceded it. This movement opens in C minor and starts and stops with abrupt
transitions throughout its primary theme group. The contrasting midsection is
introduced with a mournful melody, stated in F Dorian by the clarinet before being taken
up by much of the ensemble. At the movement’s conclusion, the two sections are woven
together, the motives laid together in complementary fashion in an optimistic C major.

The March that follows immediately begins shockingly, with a furious trill in the
woodwinds articulated by aggressive statements by brass and percussion. This sets up
the lighthearted and humorous mood for the final movement, which eventually does
take up the more reserved and traditional regal mood of a British march and is simply
interrupted from time to time by an uncouth accent or thunderous bass drum note. The
coda of the work makes brief mention of elements from both the Chaconne and
Intermezzo before closing joyfully.

- Program note by Jacob Wallace

DOWN A COUNTRY LANE

Aaron Copland
On June 29, 1962, Life Magazine featured Aaron Copland's composition Down a
Country Lane. The piece was commissioned by Life in hopes of making quality music
available to the common pianist and student. The work was featured along with an
article title "Our Bumper Crop of Beginning Piano Players". The article explains,
"Down a Country Lane fills a musical gap: It is among the few modern pieces specially
written for young piano students by a major composer." Copland is quoted in the article
of saying "Even third-year students will have to practice before trying it in public."
Copland then explains the title: "The music is descriptive only in an imaginative, not a
literal sense. I didn't think of the title until the piece was finished -- Down a Country
Lane just happened to fit its flowing quality."

Copland is very descriptive in his directions on how the piece should be played. The
piece begins with instructions to play "gently flowing in a pastoral mood"; a brief
midsection is slightly dissonant and to be played "a trifle faster"; and the ending returns
to the previous lyrical mood. Down a Country Lane was orchestrated for inclusion in a
youth orchestra series and premiered on November 20, 1965, by the London Junior
Orchestra. The band arrangement was completed by Merlin Patterson in 1988. Patterson
specialized in Copland transcriptions. Copland himself spoke of Patterson's excellent
work upon the completion of Down a Country Lane, saying that he produced "a careful,
sensitive, and most satisfying extension of the mood and content of the original."

- Program note from conductor’s score

MARCH
Paul Hindemith
In early 1942, Hindemith was discussing plans for two ballets to be choreographed by
Leonide Massine, one of which was to pay homage to Carl Maria von Weber by
reimagining his melodies with Hindemith’s harmonic and rhythmic language. The
composer spent only a few days working on the Weber ballet, when he rejected the idea
after a disagreement with Massine who accused Hindemith of creating a reimagining of
Weber’s melodies which was, “too personal”. This suited Hindemith just fine, as he had
taken the time to see one of Massine’s ballets and disliked it.

Instead of throwing his work away, he decided to turn them into a symphonic suite.
Each of the melodies of the Symphonic Metamorphosis is based on pieces originally
composed for piano by Weber, the final movement being a march originally written as
a piano duet with the marking of “Maestoso” which clearly depicts that of a solemn
funeral march. Hindemith decided to transform the overall feeling of the melody by
making the tempo brighter and as he describes as making the music of Weber, “lightly
colored and made a bit sharper”.

AURORA AWAKES
John Mackey
Aurora now had left her saffron bed,
And beams of early light the heav’ns o’erspread,
When, from a tow’r, the queen, with wakeful eyes,
Saw day point upward from the rosy skies.
– Virgil, The Aeneid, Book IV, Lines 584-587

Aurora – the Roman goddess of the dawn – is a mythological figure frequently

associated with beauty and light. Also known as Eos (her Greek analogue), Aurora
would rise each morning and stream across the sky, heralding the coming of her brother
Sol, the sun. Though she is herself among the lesser deities of Roman and Greek
mythologies, her cultural influence has persevered, most notably in the naming of the
vibrant flashes of light that occur in Arctic and Antarctic regions – the Aurora Borealis
and Aurora Australis.

John Mackey’s Aurora Awakes is, thus, a piece about the heralding of the coming of
light. Built in two substantial sections, the piece moves over the course of eleven
minutes from a place of remarkable stillness to an unbridled explosion of energy – from
darkness to light, placid grey to startling rainbows of color. The work is almost entirely
in the key of E-flat major (a choice made to create a unique effect at the work’s
conclusion, as mentioned below), although it journeys through G-flat and F as the work
progresses. Despite the harmonic shifts, however, the piece always maintains a – pun
intended – bright optimism.
Though Mackey is known to use stylistic imitation, it is less common for him to utilize
outright quotation. As such, the presence of two more-or-less direct quotations of other
musical compositions is particularly noteworthy in Aurora Awakes. The first, which
appears at the beginning of the second section, is an ostinato based on the familiar guitar
introduction to U2’s “Where The Streets Have No Name.” Though the strains of The
Edge’s guitar have been metamorphosed into the insistent repetitions of keyboard
percussion, the aesthetic is similar – a distant proclamation that grows steadily in fervor.
The difference between U2’s presentation and Mackey’s, however, is that the guitar riff
disappears for the majority of the song, while in Aurora Awakes, the motive persists for
nearly the entirety of the remainder of the piece:

“When I heard that song on the radio last winter, I thought it was kind of a shame that
he only uses that little motive almost as a throwaway bookend. That’s my favorite part
of the song, so why not try to write an entire piece that uses that little hint of minimalism
as its basis?”

The other quotation is a sly reference to Gustav Holst’s First Suite in E-flat for Military
Band. The brilliant E-flat chord that closes the Chaconne of that work is orchestrated
(nearly) identically as the final sonority of Aurora Awakes – producing an unmistakably
vibrant timbre that won’t be missed by aficionados of the repertoire. This same effect
was, somewhat ironically, suggested by Mackey for the ending of composer Jonathan
Newman’s My Hands Are a City. Mackey adds an even brighter element, however, by
including instruments not in Holst’s original:

“That has always been one of my favorite chords because it’s just so damn bright. In a
piece that’s about the awaking of the goddess of dawn, you need a damn bright ending
— and there was no topping Holst. Well… except to add crotales.”

-Program note by Jacob Wallace

THEMES FROM “GREEN BUSHES”

Percy Aldridge Grainger; arr. Larry Daehn
In setting such dance-folk songs (indeed, in setting all dance music) I feel that the
unbroken and somewhat monotonous keeping-on-ness of the original should be
preserved above all else.

The greater part of my passacaglia is many-voiced and free-voiced. Against the folk
tune I have spun free countermelodies of my own -- top tunes, middle tunes, bass tunes
. . . The key-free harmonic neutrality of the folk song’s mixolydian mode opens the door
to a wondrously free fellowship between the folk tune and these grafted-on tunes of
mine.

My Green Bushes setting is thus seen to be a strict passacaglia throughout well-nigh its
full length. Yet it became a passacaglia unintentionally. In taking the view that the
Green Bushes tune is a dance-folk song... I was naturally led to keep it running like an
unbroken thread through my setting, and in feeling prompted to graft upon it modern
musical elements expressive of the swish and swirl of dance movements the many-
voiced treatment came of itself.

The work is in no sense program music -- in no way does it musically reflect the story
told in the verses of the Green Bushes song text. It is conceived, and should be listened
to, as dance music (It could serve as ballet music.) ... as an expression of those athletic
and ecstatic intoxications that inspire, are inspired by, the dance -- my new time
harmonies, voice-weavings and form-shapes being lovingly woven around the sterling
old-time tune to in some part replace the long-gone but still fondly mind-pictured
festive-mooded country-side dancers, their robust looks, body actions and heart-stirs.”

-Program note by Larry D. Daehn

UNCLE SID
Jonathan Newman
Uncle Sid bears a family resemblance to a puny nephew, a little ditty born of one long
and feverish collegiate night. It was a night of passionate desperation, the fruit of which
was a namesake who never quite lived up to his family's unreasonable expectations. His
Uncle Sid, however, lives life on a much grander and appropriate scale. Sid is crass,
obnoxious, and uncaring of anyone's feelings. Traveling the wedding/bar mitzvah
circuit, Sid performs a hora for the horrified crowds. Sure, Sid sounds like fun, but wait
till you get to know him. Uncle Sid first reared his ugly head in public on October 10,
2002, introduced by the UNLV Wind Orchestra, with the composer conducting. Sid is
dedicated to my brother, with familial understanding.

-Program note by Jonathan Newman

DANZON NO. 2
Arturo Marquez; trans. Oliver Nickel
The idea of writing the Danzón No. 2 originated in 1993 during a trip to Malinalco with
the painter Andrés Fonseca and the dancer Irene Martínez, both of whom are experts in
salon dances with a special passion for the danzón, which they were able to transmit to
me from the beginning, and also during later trips to Veracruz and visits to the Colonia
Salon in Mexico City. From these experiences onward, I started to learn the danzón’s
rhythms, its form, its melodic outline, and to listen to the old recordings by Acerina and
his Danzonera Orchestra. I was fascinated and I started to understand that the apparent
lightness of the danzón is only like a visiting card for a type of music full of sensuality
and qualitative seriousness, a genre which old Mexican people continue to dance with
a touch of nostalgia and a jubilant escape towards their own emotional world; we can
fortunately still see this in the embrace between music and dance that occurs in the state
of Veracruz and in the dance parlors of Mexico City.

The Danzón No. 2 is a tribute to the environment that nourishes the genre. It endeavors
to get as close as possible to the dance, to its nostalgic melodies, to its wild rhythms,
and although it violates its intimacy, its form, and its harmonic language, it is a very
personal way of paying my respects and expressing my emotions towards truly popular
music. Danzón No. 2 was written on a commission by the Department of Musical
Activities at Mexico’s National Autonomous University and is dedicated to my
daughter Lily.

- Program note by Arturo Marquez