While this may have been an unusually non-aggressive football season, the symphonic wind programs in our band department have really been picking up the pace. I only got to talk about this semester’s first concert on the mailing list, but you have plenty of time to prepare for Monday night’s concert in Sharp Hall at Catlett Music Center. That’s November 23 at 8:00 PM, as you can probably see in the poster image to the right. (Click on it to get your own PDF copy to print out and hang at your office or other place where people will see it and attend.)

Even at that small size, you can probably see that Carter Pann is returning to the Wind Symphony not just to hear his new composition Concerto Logic, but also as the pianist for the piece. Pann’s Hold This Boy and Listen was on the April 2009 program, when I said:

Pann’s pieces have been regular features of Wind Symphony programs in the past few years, including Slalom andFour Factories, largely because both the players and the audiences love them. I’m looking forward to hearing this work.

I wasn’t disappointed—it was beautiful. The new piece—well, I don’t want to spoil it much, but let me give you a taste of the program notes:

CONCERTO LOGIC (2007/08) was commissioned by a consortium of 20 university wind symphonies including the University of Oklahoma. The work is largely inspired by games of chance, logic and strategy, both ancient and contemporary.

Chance? Logic? Strategy? Without giving away everything in Dr. Pann’s extensive notes, let me just share the program section:

Concerto Logic for Piano and Wind Symphony (2007/2008) Carter Pann
I. Dogs and Jackals C-minor Fantasy(b. 1972)
II. Ërno Rubik’s Magic Cube
III. Rondo Capriccio: “Rage over a Lost Pawn”
IV. Dancing with Caissa

William Wakefield, conductor
Carter Pann, piano

Consortium Premiere

(I guess it’s not cheating if I tell you that there’s a lot more information on Carter Pann’s Concerto Logic Web page.) Don’t be thinking this is too weird, because this is real music. For example:

II. Ërno Rubik’s Magic Cube is a musical depiction of what it’s like to work on the Rubik’s Cube until finally, after several days, the last few turns are found and the puzzle is solved. In the fall of 2007 I decided to wrestle with this cube until I brought it down. This slower movement has a pensive, contemplative feel for the most part. The little Scherzetto in the middle can be likened to the mid-cube adrenaline I experienced as I realized it was within reach. There is a romantic resolution near the end with rushes of ascending arpeggios, leading to the final solo. A last clustered harmony in the piano is slowly pealed away, revealing the tonic sonority (the last few turns of the cube).

You can listen to the movements there, and then realize that Monday night, you can hear them live, in person, with the composer at the piano accompanied by our own Wind Symphony. How cool is that? Check it out. (I’ve been writing for years, and I can work my way around both kinds of keyboards, and I didn’t even know pianism was a word.)

If you can’t read the text at the bottom of the poster in the tiny size, it says:

OU SYMPHONY BAND also performs a brilliant new fanfare by noted video game composer WATARU HOKOYAMA; exotic Armenian dances by ARAM KHACHATURIAN; the lovely RICHARD STRAUSS art song ALLERSEELEN; and the fun-loving SOUSA rag written for the White House Lawn Easter Egg Roll

In addition to Pann’s composition, the WIND SYMPHONY performs Wedding Dance from HASSENEH SUITE by JACQUES PRESS and American composer JOHN MACKEY’s newest work AURORA AWAKES

Recent alums may remember Easter Monday on the White House Lawn from a performance in the past few years. Recent or current students may be more familiar with the work of Wataru Hokoyama from his orchestral music in the video games Afrika and Resident Evil 5. His piece Nebula for concert band is popular enough to be known to Wikipedia, but this is his Fanfare No. 1 (2000), with “aggressive percussion,” lyrical melodies, and of course, a brass motif.

John Mackey’s contemporary wind work is no stranger to Sharp Hall, either; just one year ago, these two ensembles performed his Kingfishers Catch Fire (2007) and Undertow (2008). This time the Wind Symphony takes on Mackey’s newest work, Aurora Awakes, which premiered just six months ago. It is “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,” and if you read the linked page, you’ll discover why its key signature of E♭ may remind you of something you’ve played.

And that’s not even talking about music from Richard Strauss and Jacques Press.

This is music for winds both old and stunningly new, from Strauss and Sousa to work so contemporary I don’t have words to describe it—but then again, I didn’t know about pianism, so what do you expect? Not only do these programs include classics, they push boundaries, and they sound good. Seriously, click the link for Concerto Logic and listen to some of this stuff. (If you’re just sampling, skip to the middle of movements if you like—we all remember pieces that started small and sonorous, and sound far more beautiful in the concert hall than on a recording.) There’s only a MIDI demo of Aurora Awakes, but you can hear that and you can look at the full score. Go. Find out why the piece quotes U2. Listen. You’ll be calling the Fine Arts Box Office at (405) 325-4101 to get your tickets now.

If you absolutely can’t make it, go to the School of Music home page at 8:00 PM on Monday night and listen to the live stream. It’s not the same as being there, but this is good stuff and you can hear it anywhere you have QuickTime. But that’s only a last resort. Come to the concert. It’s going to be good.