Upcoming Events

Theatre at GV presents Oleanna Thursday - Sunday, February 22 - 25, 2018 Linn Maxwell Keller Black Box, Haas Center for Performing Arts, Allendale Campus GVSU Music Audition Day Saturday, February 24, 2018 - 8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. Haas Center for Performing Arts Guest Artist Master Class, Dr. Nam, piano Tuesday, February 27, 2018 at 7:30 p.m. Sherman VanSolkema Recital Hall, Haas Center for Performing Arts, Allendale Campus Faculty and Guest Artist Four-Hands Piano Concert: Dr. Cho and Dr. Nam Wednesday, February 28, 2018 at 7:30 p.m. Sherman Van Solkema Hall, Haas Center for Performing Arts Allendale Campus Annual Student Composers Competition Thursday, March 1, 2018 at 7:30 p.m. GVSU Art Gallery, Haas Center for Performing Arts Allendale Campus

Find us on social media! Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat

@gvsumtd

Learn more about GVSU Music, Theatre, and Dance at www.gvsu.edu/mtd

The use of cameras, video cameras, or recording devices is strictly

Prohibited.

Please remember to turn off your cell phone.

Symphonic Wind Ensemble

John Martin, conductor Kevin Tutt, conductor

Friday, February 23, 2018

7:30 PM Louis Armstrong Theatre

Thomas J. and Marcia J. Haas Center for the Performing Arts

Paris Sketches: Homages for Wind Band (1994) . . . . . Martin Ellerby (b. 1957) I. Saint Germain-des-Prés II. Pigalle III. Père Lachaise IV. Les Halles

John Martin, conductor

Intermission

In evening’s stillness … (1996) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Joseph Schwantner (b. 1943)

Intermission

Symphonic Dances from West Side Story (1967/2006) Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) Arr. Paul Lavender

Program

When Bernstein asked Kostal and Ramin to help him create a symphonic suite from West Side Story’s ballet music in 1961, they were understandably excited. According to Sid Ramin:

We were in ecstasy! Every orchestral colour was ours for the asking; strings could be subdivided ad infinitum, percussion could be spread out among many players, winds and brass were expanded; and our only concern was whether the classically oriented symphonic player could handle the “jazzier” elements of the score. Cool, for example: Lenny assured us that symphonic orchestras could play the Cool Fugue stylistically, and indeed they have! In retrospect, I now realize that Lenny himself, because he had a foot in both camps, was a classi-cally trained musician who knew just how far we could go with popu-lar styles.

Bernstein felt strongly that music and dance were integral elements of West Side Story’s narrative: “So much was conveyed in the music, including enormous reliance upon dance to tell the plot—not just songs stuck into a book.” This conviction led him to construct a ballet suite that is more than just a potpourri of popular tunes from the show. Although the sequence of dances does not strictly adhere to the plot line, the episodes were carefully chosen and ordered by Bernstein to reflect the general contour of the story. He had no doubt that the suite should begin with the distinctive tritone that is heard throughout the music of West Side Story, followed immediately by the swaggering Prologue that sets the stage for his modern, urban version of Romeo and Juliet. Some of the subsequent dances were shifted from the original plot sequence to facilitate pacing, such as the placement of “Somewhere” between the “Prologue” and “Mambo,” and the use of the “Meeting Scene” music as transitional material into “Cool.” The idea to end the suite with “I Have a Love,” the same music that ends the show, came from longtime friend and collaborator Jack Gottlieb, a decision that prompted Bernstein to compose a new flute cadenza to transition into this hauntingly beautiful coda. Although the music was originally conceived for the Broadway stage, Symphonic Dances from West Side Story has become Leonard Bernstein’s most successful concert work. Concert band musicians have long wished for a transcription of the suite, but until now the Bernstein estate had not sanc-tioned one. Paul Lavender’s marvelous new setting was published in 2007, just in time to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of this icon of American musical theater.

Symphonic Dances from West Side Story Program notes by “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band

Reprinted with permission

Neither an opera nor a musical, audiences were at first somewhat

unsure what to make of Leonard Bernstein’s groundbreaking West Side Story when it opened on Broadway in 1957. Pushing the boundaries of musical

theater was not a new idea for Bernstein, who had been blurring the lines

between its various forms from his earliest work for the stage, the ballet

Fancy Free (1944). Some of Bernstein’s experiments were more successful than others. His musical On the Town (1944) was a popular hit that eventually

was made into a successful movie, while more serious works like Trouble in Tahiti (1952) and Candide (1956) languished, opening to decidedly mixed

reviews and lukewarm popular response. In West Side Story, however,

Bernstein perfected his formula, astutely balancing elements of the Broadway

musical, opera, ballet, and popular musical idioms. Despite its unusual

identity, West Side Story enjoyed popular and critical success, initially running

for 732 performances on Broadway and receiving a Tony Award nomination.

It is ironic that this innovative musical, a work that forever changed the

course of musical theater and is defined by its focus on twentieth century

urban issues, lost the 1957 Tony Award to Meredith Willson’s The Music Man,

a charming but nostalgic work that longingly looks back upon the America of

our past.

In composing the score for West Side Story, one of Bernstein’s biggest orchestration challenges was to translate his large-scale symphonic concepts

into a format that would work for the small pit orchestra of the Winter Garden Theater, the site of the premiere. His first step in solving this dilemma was to enlist the aid of Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal, two musicians

with considerable stage, radio, and television experience. But the problem

was bigger than just the limited number of instruments available in the pit,

for Bernstein was required by the local union to use a number of the regular

pit orchestra members of the Winter Garden Theater, many of whom were

not especially talented or motivated. Bernstein derisively labeled these house

musicians “Shuberts,” a reference to the owners of the theater. He thought so little of them that he asked his orchestrators, “How would you guys feel if we got rid of the viola Shuberts?” Kostal warned Bernstein that the players would have to be paid even if they didn’t play, to which the composer re-plied: “Okay, let’s do without them, because I couldn’t stand listening to my show every night and hearing what those guys would do to the viola parts.” Other instrumental sections of “Shuberts” were accommodated by adding freelance musicians to play the difficult parts, while the house players “played the potatoes;” much simpler lines to which they could do little harm.

Piccolo Hannah Petersen

Flute Candice Rohn*

Maiya Hoard

Anna Vander Boon

Hannah Petersen

Abbey Trach

Melissa Machusko

Oboe Lauren Glomb*

Olivia Martin

Emily Walker

English Horn Olivia Martin

Bassoon Benjamin Pummell*

Isabella Purosky

Eb Clarinet Jacob Bleeker

Clarinet Bryce Kyle*

Amy Zuidema

Jacob Bleeker

Alex Alcorn

Katie VanOort

Ryan Schmidt

Jennifer Soles

Courtney Allen

Alexa Villaron

Bass Clarinet Claire Salinas

Ryan Schmidt

Alto Saxophone Andrew Peters*

Darwin McMurray

Michael Jasman

John Breitenbach

Tenor Saxophone Anna Petrenko

Baritone Saxophone Derek Storey

Trumpet Erin Ray*

Ethan Lonsway

Justin Schreier

Shawn Nichols

Skye Hayes

Amy David

Horn Reed Fitzpatrick*

Timothy Lester

Eric Pasma

Erica Lumsden

Julius Beller

Trombone Elizabeth Miller*

Johnathan Tesner

Caleb Marshall

Bass Trombone Zachary Stout

Euphonium Nicholas Hudgins*

Tuba Matt Langlois*

Drew Moles

Nathan Sund

Percussion Jacob Theisen*

David Hempstead

Liam Martin

Andrew Witter

Jaden McCallum

James Cortright

Piano Alyssa Kaiser

Reese Rehkopf

Press Officer Amy Zuidema

Applied Instrumental Faculty Richard Britsch, Horn

Arthur Campbell,

Clarinet

Paul Carlson,

Tuba & Euphonium

Sookkyung Cho, Piano

Tim Froncek, Percussion

Dan Graser, Saxophone

Christopher Kantner,

Flute

Helen Marlais, Piano

Victoria Olson, Bassoon

Gregrey Secor,

Percussion

Marlen Vavrikova, Oboe

Mark Williams,

Trombone

Alex Wilson, Trumpet

* principal

Personnel

Program Notes

Paris Sketches (notes by the composer): This is my personal tribute to a city I love, and each movement pays homage to some part of the French capital and to other composers who lived, worked or passed through – rather as Ravel did in his own tribute to an earlier master in Le Tombeau de Couperin. Running like a unifying thread through the whole piece is the idea of bells – a prominent feature of Parisian life. The work is cast in four movements 1. Saint Germain-des-Prés The Latin Quarter famous for artistic associations and bohemian lifestyle. This is a dawn prelude haunted by the shade of Ravel: the city awakens with the ever-present sound of morning bells. 2. Pigalle The Soho of Paris. This is a 'burlesque with scenes' cast in the mould of a balletic scherzo – humorous in a kind of 'Stravinsky-meets-Prokofiev' way. It is episodic but everything is based on the harmonic figuration of the opening. The bells here are car horns and police sirens! 3. Père Lachaise The city's largest cemetery, the final resting place of many a celebrity who once walked its streets. The spirit of Satie's Gymnopédies – themselves a tribute to a still more distant past – is affectionately evoked before the movement concludes with a 'hidden' quotation of the Dies Irae. This is the work's slow movement, the mood is one of softness and delicacy, which I have attempted to match with more transparent orchestration. The bells are gentle, nostalgic, wistful. 4.Les Halles A bustling finale with bells triumphant and celebratory. Les Halles is the old market area, a Parisian Covent Garden and, like Pigalle, this is a series of related but contrasted episodes. The climax quotes from Berlioz's Te Deum, which was first performed in 1855 at the church of St Eustache, actually in the district of Les Halles. A gradual crescendo, initiated by the percussion, prefaces the material proper and the work ends with a backward glance at the first movement before closing with the final bars of the Berlioz Te Deum.

In evening’s stillness … (notes by the composer) The piece is the third of three works I have written for winds, brass, percussion, and piano. It forms the middle movement of a trilogy of pieces that includes “...and the mountains rising nowhere” and ‘From a Dark Millennium.” In all three works, the piano is responsible for presenting the primary melodic, gestural, harmonic, and sonoric elements that unfold in the music. While each work is self-contained, I always envisioned the possibility that they could be combined to form a larger and more expansive three movement formal design.” As in his previous two works for wind ensemble, In evening’s stillness was inspired by poetry, in this case written by the composer: In evening’s stillness a gentle breeze, distant thunder encircles the silence.

Program Notes

Paris Sketches (notes by the composer): This is my personal tribute to a city I love, and each movement pays homage to some part of the French capital and to other composers who lived, worked or passed through – rather as Ravel did in his own tribute to an earlier master in Le Tombeau de Couperin. Running like a unifying thread through the whole piece is the idea of bells – a prominent feature of Parisian life. The work is cast in four movements 1. Saint Germain-des-Prés The Latin Quarter famous for artistic associations and bohemian lifestyle. This is a dawn prelude haunted by the shade of Ravel: the city awakens with the ever-present sound of morning bells. 2. Pigalle The Soho of Paris. This is a 'burlesque with scenes' cast in the mould of a balletic scherzo – humorous in a kind of 'Stravinsky-meets-Prokofiev' way. It is episodic but everything is based on the harmonic figuration of the opening. The bells here are car horns and police sirens! 3. Père Lachaise The city's largest cemetery, the final resting place of many a celebrity who once walked its streets. The spirit of Satie's Gymnopédies – themselves a tribute to a still more distant past – is affectionately evoked before the movement concludes with a 'hidden' quotation of the Dies Irae. This is the work's slow movement, the mood is one of softness and delicacy, which I have attempted to match with more transparent orchestration. The bells are gentle, nostalgic, wistful. 4.Les Halles A bustling finale with bells triumphant and celebratory. Les Halles is the old market area, a Parisian Covent Garden and, like Pigalle, this is a series of related but contrasted episodes. The climax quotes from Berlioz's Te Deum, which was first performed in 1855 at the church of St Eustache, actually in the district of Les Halles. A gradual crescendo, initiated by the percussion, prefaces the material proper and the work ends with a backward glance at the first movement before closing with the final bars of the Berlioz Te Deum.

In evening’s stillness … (notes by the composer) The piece is the third of three works I have written for winds, brass, percussion, and piano. It forms the middle movement of a trilogy of pieces that includes “...and the mountains rising nowhere” and ‘From a Dark Millennium.” In all three works, the piano is responsible for presenting the primary melodic, gestural, harmonic, and sonoric elements that unfold in the music. While each work is self-contained, I always envisioned the possibility that they could be combined to form a larger and more expansive three movement formal design.” As in his previous two works for wind ensemble, In evening’s stillness was inspired by poetry, in this case written by the composer: In evening’s stillness a gentle breeze, distant thunder encircles the silence.

Symphonic Dances from West Side Story Program notes by “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band

Reprinted with permission

Neither an opera nor a musical, audiences were at first somewhat

unsure what to make of Leonard Bernstein’s groundbreaking West Side Story when it opened on Broadway in 1957. Pushing the boundaries of musical

theater was not a new idea for Bernstein, who had been blurring the lines

between its various forms from his earliest work for the stage, the ballet

Fancy Free (1944). Some of Bernstein’s experiments were more successful than others. His musical On the Town (1944) was a popular hit that eventually

was made into a successful movie, while more serious works like Trouble in Tahiti (1952) and Candide (1956) languished, opening to decidedly mixed

reviews and lukewarm popular response. In West Side Story, however,

Bernstein perfected his formula, astutely balancing elements of the Broadway

musical, opera, ballet, and popular musical idioms. Despite its unusual

identity, West Side Story enjoyed popular and critical success, initially running

for 732 performances on Broadway and receiving a Tony Award nomination.

It is ironic that this innovative musical, a work that forever changed the

course of musical theater and is defined by its focus on twentieth century

urban issues, lost the 1957 Tony Award to Meredith Willson’s The Music Man,

a charming but nostalgic work that longingly looks back upon the America of

our past.

In composing the score for West Side Story, one of Bernstein’s biggest orchestration challenges was to translate his large-scale symphonic concepts

into a format that would work for the small pit orchestra of the Winter Garden Theater, the site of the premiere. His first step in solving this dilemma was to enlist the aid of Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal, two musicians

with considerable stage, radio, and television experience. But the problem

was bigger than just the limited number of instruments available in the pit,

for Bernstein was required by the local union to use a number of the regular

pit orchestra members of the Winter Garden Theater, many of whom were

not especially talented or motivated. Bernstein derisively labeled these house

musicians “Shuberts,” a reference to the owners of the theater. He thought so little of them that he asked his orchestrators, “How would you guys feel if we got rid of the viola Shuberts?” Kostal warned Bernstein that the players would have to be paid even if they didn’t play, to which the composer re-plied: “Okay, let’s do without them, because I couldn’t stand listening to my show every night and hearing what those guys would do to the viola parts.” Other instrumental sections of “Shuberts” were accommodated by adding freelance musicians to play the difficult parts, while the house players “played the potatoes;” much simpler lines to which they could do little harm.

Piccolo Hannah Petersen

Flute Candice Rohn*

Maiya Hoard

Anna Vander Boon

Hannah Petersen

Abbey Trach

Melissa Machusko

Oboe Lauren Glomb*

Olivia Martin

Emily Walker

English Horn Olivia Martin

Bassoon Benjamin Pummell*

Isabella Purosky

Eb Clarinet Jacob Bleeker

Clarinet Bryce Kyle*

Amy Zuidema

Jacob Bleeker

Alex Alcorn

Katie VanOort

Ryan Schmidt

Jennifer Soles

Courtney Allen

Alexa Villaron

Bass Clarinet Claire Salinas

Ryan Schmidt

Alto Saxophone Andrew Peters*

Darwin McMurray

Michael Jasman

John Breitenbach

Tenor Saxophone Anna Petrenko

Baritone Saxophone Derek Storey

Trumpet Erin Ray*

Ethan Lonsway

Justin Schreier

Shawn Nichols

Skye Hayes

Amy David

Horn Reed Fitzpatrick*

Timothy Lester

Eric Pasma

Erica Lumsden

Julius Beller

Trombone Elizabeth Miller*

Johnathan Tesner

Caleb Marshall

Bass Trombone Zachary Stout

Euphonium Nicholas Hudgins*

Tuba Matt Langlois*

Drew Moles

Nathan Sund

Percussion Jacob Theisen*

David Hempstead

Liam Martin

Andrew Witter

Jaden McCallum

James Cortright

Piano Alyssa Kaiser

Reese Rehkopf

Press Officer Amy Zuidema

Applied Instrumental Faculty Richard Britsch, Horn

Arthur Campbell,

Clarinet

Paul Carlson,

Tuba & Euphonium

Sookkyung Cho, Piano

Tim Froncek, Percussion

Dan Graser, Saxophone

Christopher Kantner,

Flute

Helen Marlais, Piano

Victoria Olson, Bassoon

Gregrey Secor,

Percussion

Marlen Vavrikova, Oboe

Mark Williams,

Trombone

Alex Wilson, Trumpet

* principal

Personnel

Paris Sketches: Homages for Wind Band (1994) . . . . . Martin Ellerby (b. 1957) I. Saint Germain-des-Prés II. Pigalle III. Père Lachaise IV. Les Halles

John Martin, conductor

Intermission

In evening’s stillness … (1996) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Joseph Schwantner (b. 1943)

Intermission

Symphonic Dances from West Side Story (1967/2006) Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) Arr. Paul Lavender

Program

When Bernstein asked Kostal and Ramin to help him create a symphonic suite from West Side Story’s ballet music in 1961, they were understandably excited. According to Sid Ramin:

We were in ecstasy! Every orchestral colour was ours for the asking; strings could be subdivided ad infinitum, percussion could be spread out among many players, winds and brass were expanded; and our only concern was whether the classically oriented symphonic player could handle the “jazzier” elements of the score. Cool, for example: Lenny assured us that symphonic orchestras could play the Cool Fugue stylistically, and indeed they have! In retrospect, I now realize that Lenny himself, because he had a foot in both camps, was a classi-cally trained musician who knew just how far we could go with popu-lar styles.

Bernstein felt strongly that music and dance were integral elements of West Side Story’s narrative: “So much was conveyed in the music, including enormous reliance upon dance to tell the plot—not just songs stuck into a book.” This conviction led him to construct a ballet suite that is more than just a potpourri of popular tunes from the show. Although the sequence of dances does not strictly adhere to the plot line, the episodes were carefully chosen and ordered by Bernstein to reflect the general contour of the story. He had no doubt that the suite should begin with the distinctive tritone that is heard throughout the music of West Side Story, followed immediately by the swaggering Prologue that sets the stage for his modern, urban version of Romeo and Juliet. Some of the subsequent dances were shifted from the original plot sequence to facilitate pacing, such as the placement of “Somewhere” between the “Prologue” and “Mambo,” and the use of the “Meeting Scene” music as transitional material into “Cool.” The idea to end the suite with “I Have a Love,” the same music that ends the show, came from longtime friend and collaborator Jack Gottlieb, a decision that prompted Bernstein to compose a new flute cadenza to transition into this hauntingly beautiful coda. Although the music was originally conceived for the Broadway stage, Symphonic Dances from West Side Story has become Leonard Bernstein’s most successful concert work. Concert band musicians have long wished for a transcription of the suite, but until now the Bernstein estate had not sanc-tioned one. Paul Lavender’s marvelous new setting was published in 2007, just in time to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of this icon of American musical theater.

Upcoming Events

Theatre at GV presents Oleanna Thursday - Sunday, February 22 - 25, 2018 Linn Maxwell Keller Black Box, Haas Center for Performing Arts, Allendale Campus GVSU Music Audition Day Saturday, February 24, 2018 - 8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. Haas Center for Performing Arts Guest Artist Master Class, Dr. Nam, piano Tuesday, February 27, 2018 at 7:30 p.m. Sherman VanSolkema Recital Hall, Haas Center for Performing Arts, Allendale Campus Faculty and Guest Artist Four-Hands Piano Concert: Dr. Cho and Dr. Nam Wednesday, February 28, 2018 at 7:30 p.m. Sherman Van Solkema Hall, Haas Center for Performing Arts Allendale Campus Annual Student Composers Competition Thursday, March 1, 2018 at 7:30 p.m. GVSU Art Gallery, Haas Center for Performing Arts Allendale Campus

Find us on social media! Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat

@gvsumtd

Learn more about GVSU Music, Theatre, and Dance at www.gvsu.edu/mtd

The use of cameras, video cameras, or recording devices is strictly

Prohibited.

Please remember to turn off your cell phone.

Symphonic Wind Ensemble

John Martin, conductor Kevin Tutt, conductor

Friday, February 23, 2018

7:30 PM Louis Armstrong Theatre

Thomas J. and Marcia J. Haas Center for the Performing Arts