The Ohio University Wind Ensemble, which has been selected to perform at the College Band Directors National Association regional conference, will preview their show in a free performance at 8 p.m. tonight in Templeton-Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium.
A committee from the association selected the ensemble from applicants in the Midwest and Plains regions of the United States to perform at the North Central Conference at the University of Cincinnati Friday, Feb. 27. The ensemble, which is the most selective of the three concert bands at OU, performed at the conference once during the 1970s.
John Climer, who will conduct, said he tried to select a program with balance.
The performance will begin with a two-minute brass fanfare by Roberto Sierra, followed by the Wind Ensemble playing a piece by Jurrian Andriessen. Then the ensemble will be joined by a vocalist in three Bernard Gilmore folk songs. Next, the group will play several musical caricatures by Jere Hutcheson, and the performance will finish with a march by Australian composer Percy Aldridge Grainger.
Climer selected Emily Barrett, a vocal performance master's student, to accompany the Wind Ensemble after hearing her sing in last year's opera production by the School of Music and in a contemporary music festival in Dayton last fall. Although Barrett has studied voice since she was in the seventh grade, she only realized her interest in opera in high school when she saw Faust.
It's like falling in love at first sight - you just know
Barrett said.
Barrett, a native of Baton Rouge, La., will sing light-hearted songs from three backgrounds: Irish, American and Jewish. To prepare for the last song, which is in Yiddish, Barrett studied the song's words with Nili Urieli, a pathologist in the College of Osteopathic Medicine.
Jere Hutcheson, a professor of theory and composition at Michigan State University, has written 36 short pieces, seven of which have been arranged for the Wind Ensemble and entitled Caricature Suite.
Hutcheson began composing these pieces in 1996 as a break from longer compositions. Inspired by the work of artists, actors and musicians, the pieces are named after the people whose work they represent.
In the Edgar Allan Poe piece the music is about the idea of the pit and the pendulum Hutcheson said. I tried to capture the sense of the pendulum swinging back and forth at the end of the story.
The Wind Ensemble will play Hutcheson's songs commemorating Marcel Marceau, John Cage, Edgar Allan Poe, Emma Thompson, Kurt Vonnegut, Vincent van Gogh and Camille Saint-Saens.
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Ohio University Wind Ensemble practices last night at Templeton-Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium. The Wind Ensemble has been selected to perform at the College Band Directors National Association regional conference; they will preview their show in a
