Saturday, March 1, 2008 - 7:30pm
Mt. Zion Lutheran Church
5645 Chicago Ave
Minneapolis, MN 55417

The Grand Symphonic Winds is pleased to host Rolf Rudin as a guest composer.

Steven Bryant (b. 1972) is an active composer and conductor with a varied catalog, including works for wind ensemble, orchestra, electronic and electro-acoustic creations, chamber music, and music for the web. Bryant's music has been performed by numerous ensembles across North America, Europe, and East Asia. In 2007, the National Band Association awarded his Radiant Joy the William D. Revelli Composition Award. He studied composition with John Corigliano at The Juilliard School, Cindy McTee at the University of North Texas, and Francis McBeth at Ouachita University. He resides in Austin, Texas. In the composer's own word, Dusk "[is a] simple, chorale-like work captures the reflective calm of dusk, paradoxically illuminated by the fiery hues of sunset. I'm always struck by the dual nature of this experience, as if witnessing an event of epic proportions silently occurring in slow motion. Dusk is intended as a short, passionate evocation of this moment of dramatic stillness.

Born in London, Philip Sparke (b. 1951) went on to study composition, trumpet, and piano at the Royal College of Music, where he earned an Associate degree. His participation in wind band at the College, together with a brass band that he formed, piqued his interest in wind music and resulted in his composition of several works for both ensembles. Interest in his first published works led to his receiving several commissions, including The Land of the Long White Cloud written for the Centennial Brass Band Championships in New Zealand. He has written for brass band championships in the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Holland, Australia, and New Zealand. In 1997, his Dance Movements, commissioned by the U.S. Air Force Band, won the prestigious Sudler Prize. Sunrise At Angel's Gate is the result of a visit to Arizona and the Grand Canyon and Sparke's impressions of the beauty or the rock formations, the wildlife, as well the human activity surrounding the stunning natural phenomenon.

Charles Ives was born in 1874 into a tradition of band music. His father, George, had been a respected bandmaster in the Union Army during the Civil War and was Danbury, Connecticut’s leader of numerous amateur musical groups. Charles was taught to play the drum, cornet, piano, and violin by his father and played in his father’s band at the age of 12. At 13, he was composing simple marches and fiddle tunes. He became the youngest salaried church organist in Connecticut at the age of 14. He studied composition with Horatio Parker at Yale, where he made barely passing grades in his subjects other than music. In 1898, he went to New York to work for the Mutual Life Insurance Company. He formed an insurance business with Julian Myrik in 1902 and saw the business prosper with his innovations (e.g., estate planning). A successful business man by day, Ives would do his composing in the evenings. He wrote only to please his sense of music and didn’t have to depend on it for a living. In 1918, he suffered a heart attack and was forced to give up composing. He died in 1954, leaving a legacy that anticipated most of the innovations of the 20th century, including atonality, polytonality, microtones, multiple cross-rhythms, and tone cluster. Old Home Days, on the other hand stays pretty close to what a listener might expect to hear. Each movement depicts various forms of familiar tunes and home grown music with which he was familiar. Ives draws from many common and recognizable tunes from his time to create this little suite.

Rolf Rudin (b. 1961) is among today’s most prolific, award-winning composers in Germany.  Having studied music education, composition, conducting and theory, he taught music theory, aural skills and instrumentation at the Frankfurter Musikhochschule.  Today he works as a freelance composer, clinician, guest conductor, adjudicator and publisher of his own music. As the title implies, Bacchanale invokes the high-energy festival of ancient Roman festival to worship Bacchus, the Greco-Roman god of wine.

Shelley Hanson, a Twin Cities composer, arranger, teacher, and professional musician, has an affinity for writing and performing folk music. Her band, Klezmer and All That Jazz, recorded traditional and original music for the audio book version of the Yiddish play “The Dybbuk.” Ms. Hanson received a Ph.D. in Performance, Music Theory, and Music Literature from Michigan State University. She is a member of the Minneapolis Pops Orchestra and serves on the faculty of Macalester College. La Tumba de Alejandro Garcia Caturla is a tribute to the young Cuban composer Alejandro Garcia Caturla (1906-1940) who studied with Nadia Boulanger but was later assassinated while presiding as a judge. It opens with a haunting English horn cadenza followed by harmonic shifts, intense soli writing and driving Cuban rhythms that sweep through the ensemble. La tumba literally translated means “tomb”, but in the tradition of the French tombeau it refers to a musical memorial. It also refers to a large conga drum, prominent in this orchestration.