The Illinois State University College of Fine Arts and School of Music invite you to the Wind Symphony concert on Sunday, February 18, at 7 p.m. in the Center for the Performing Arts’ Concert Hall. Tickets are $10 for general admission and $6 for students (with student ID) and seniors.
The fourth Wind Symphony concert of the 2017–2018 concert season, Sunday’s concert will feature graduate student Alexandra Clay, flute, winner of the 2018 Illinois State University Band Concerto Competition.
The concert will open with Mothership for wind ensemble and electronica, an electric opener by Grammy-nominated American composer of symphonic music and electronic dance music DJ Mason Bates. Among his many honors, Bates was the composer-in-residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 2010–2015. This energetic opener imagines the orchestra as a mothership that is “docked” by several visiting soloists, who offer brief but virtuoso riffs on the work’s thematic material over action-packed electro-acoustic orchestral figuration.
Clay will then perform François Borne’s Fantasie Brillante on Themes from Bizet’s Carmen. A staple of the flute literature, the performance is sure to excite and impress.
The concert will close with John Krance’s arrangement of Carl Orff’s epic Carmina Burana. Orff’s Carmina Burana is scored for a massive orchestra, an array of percussion equipment, two pianos, celesta, two SATB mixed choirs (one large, one small), a boys’ choir, and soprano, tenor, and baritone soloists. The texts cover a wide and varied range of subject matter from the sacred to the secular, the capricious nature of fortune, the brevity of life, the beauty of springtime, and the earthly pleasures and temptations of eating, drinking, gluttony, and lust.
This transcription by John Krance was conceived entirely as an instrumental work, with the arranger fully incorporating the vocal parts. Krance selected 13 movements (a curious number when dealing with the subject of the fickleness of fortune) and ordered them to programmatic satisfaction. His transcription, now a staple in wind literature, grew out of detailed correspondence with the equally enthusiastic Orff who wrote to Krance: “I would like to emphasize my very great pleasure with your superb arrangement.”
The Wind Symphony is the University’s premier wind band and features the finest wind and percussion musicians on campus.
For a schedule of upcoming band concerts and events, visit the Bands home page on the College of Fine Arts website and follow Illinois State University Bands on Facebook.
For tickets or additional information, contact the College of Fine Arts Box Office, located in the Illinois State University Center for the Performing Arts, open 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, at (309) 438-2535, or purchase tickets online at Ticketmaster. Performance parking is available for free in the School Street Parking Deck in spots 250 and above, 400 West Beaufort Street, Normal.
