U of A Bands to Host Second Concert of the Fall 2023 Season

University of Arkansas

Faulkner Performing Arts Center

The Wind Ensemble and Wind Symphony will host their second concert of the fall 2023 concert season at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 20, in the Faulkner Performing Arts Center on the campus of the U of A. 

Wind Symphony 
The Wind Symphony will begin their program with Katahj Copley's Halcyon Hearts, a piece that "...centers around major 7ths and warm colors to represent the warmth that love brings us." Next will be a consortium premier piece of Life Unto the Age. Composed this year by Haley Woodrow, the piece speaks to the loyalty, friendship and unconditional love that we share our pets.

Verena Mosenbichler-Bryant's 2017 arrangement of Eric Whitacre's Goodnight Moon will feature soprano and Department of Music professor Amanda Lenora Green-Turner. The piece was composed after Whitacre began to hear "little musical fragments" while reading the popular children's book to his son. "The melody of Goodnight Moon will forever make me think of those quiet nights, reading my son to sleep," Whitacre says.

Variations on a Korean Folk Song is based on a folk tune composer John Barnes Chance learned while serving in the Eighth U.S. Army Band in 1958-59. Based on the pentatonic scale, the piece's origins can be tracked back to the 18th century up until the 20th century when it was used as a resistance anthem during the Japanese occupation of Korea, a time when the singing of patriotic songs was criminalized. 

Wind Ensemble 
The Wind Ensemble's program will begin with Zhou Tian's 2019 work Seeker's Scherzo, a work adapted from the third movement of Tian's Concerto for Orchestra, re-orchestrated for wind ensemble.

Michael Daugherty's Reflections on the Mississippi for tuba and symphonic band will feature Department of Music professor Benjamin Pierce. Commissioned in 2015 by the University of Michigan Symphony Band, this four-movement work offers a musical reflection of Daugherty's childhood trips to the Mississippi River near McGregor, Iowa.

The Wind Ensemble will conclude with Meditations at Lagunitas, Paul Dooley's interpretation of a poem by Robert Hass. "Hass is continuously meditating on words as ideas, stirring recollections of images, scents, memories, love, lust, joy and friendship," Dooley says. What unfolds musically is a theme that elicits both clarity and abstraction. 

Admission to all U of A Bands performances is free, but a ticket is required. Tickets can be reserved through the Faulkner Performing Arts Center website.