The Cascade Winds Symphonic Band will present its first concert of the 2016-2017 season on November 13th, 2016 at 2:00 pm in the Summit High School Auditorium. COCC music professor, Michael Gesme, will lead the ensemble in a concert that features a diverse array of wind ensemble classics, marches, and recent compositions. The four compositions on the first half will commence with a work by one of the band world’s foremost living composers, Belgian born, Jan Van der Roost. His Olympica: Festival Overture for Band is a showpiece for the entire band, which, from beginning to end, is a burst of joyous musical color. Drawing on the vivid musical heritage of his Jewish roots, composer Adam Gorb has created a serious tongue-in-cheek composition, Eine Kleine Yiddishe Ragmusik – a curious synthesis of Scott Joplin ragtime and Jewish folk song, subtly conveying the atmosphere of the 1930s Berlin cabaret scene. John Philip Sousa’s tribute to the Royal British Navy in with his Jack Tar March will follow. This rollicking nautical march has a quaint musical surprise in the trio section where the British sea shanty “The Sailor’s Hornpipe” makes a cameo appearance along with ship’s bells and whistles. Rounding out the first half is a work featuring the energetic music of Jerry Bock arranged by Ira Hearshen, the Symphonic Dances from “Fiddler on the Roof.” Highlighted dances include “Tradition,” “The Bottle Dance,” and “To Life.”

After intermission the Cascade Winds will perform Alfred Reed’s A Little Concert Suite for Winds, a brief work with four delightfully contrasting movements: a regal court procession, a hushed and melancholy Siciliana, a bubbling Scherzo and a rollicking and festive Gigue. A trip through Yosemite National Park inspired the next work, Yosemite Autumn by Mark Camphouse. The composition begins and ends with the peace and tranquility that marks sunrise and sunset each day in the park, while the middle is filled with the excitement and variety that is symbolic of the daytime action. The concert concludes with a classic band composition: the American Civil War Fantasy for Band by Jerry H. Bilik. The work is a collection of American folk songs, such as “Dixie,” “Camptown Races,” “The Yellow Rose of Texas” and “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” cleverly woven together to tell the story of the buildup to the Civil War, the war itself and its aftermath. The work is at times, tender, haunting, jaunty, horrific and, ultimately, hopeful.

The concert is free of charge and tickets are not required. For additional information please contact Michael Gesme at 541-383-7516 or mgesme@cocc.edu.

The Cascade Winds Symphonic Band, under the direction Michael Gesme, will present their annual spring concert on Sunday, May 22, 2016, at 2:00pm in the Summit High School Auditorium. The concert is free, but donations are gratefully accepted.

The season finale will open with driving rhythmic intensity as the sounds of Ron Nelson’s Homage to Perotin fill the hall. Though inspired by the music of a twelfth-century composer, Nelson’s use of the colors made possible by the concert band instrumentation are decidedly from the twentieth century. A much more subdued work follows: A Northern Legend by Alfred Reed. Though not overtly stated, this composition is perhaps best described as musical tone poem evoking the boundlessness of nature utilizing hints of Native American music. Two additional works will appear on the first half: John Philip Sousa’s Corcoran Cadets March, a work that Frederick Fennell described as one of Sousa’s most “rhythmically neat, texturally clean, harmonically and melodically satisfying marches,” and Puszta, by Jan Van der Roost. Typical of gypsy music, the dances in this last work feature the abrupt alternation of mood and constantly fluctuating tempos.

The second half opens with Samuel Hazo’s hauntingly beautiful Fantasy on a Japanese Folk Song. The composition tells the story of a Japanese girl who is given a music box by her mother and father when she is a child. As her life evolves, including a marriage to an American who takes her away from Japan, she is filled with inner conflict about her place in the world, and she returns again and again to the music box to feel close to her culture. The final work of the 2015-2016 Cascade Winds season will be Igor Stravinsky’s Suite from The Firebird. From its first performance in 1910, The Firebird made ballet history and placed Stravinsky at the forefront of contemporary composers. The suite is a compressed version of the ballet’s story, and the music is exceptionally precise in describing the action: from a wavering melodic line that is suggestive of the dark and mysterious forest, to the cries of the Firebird and the dips and curves of the enchanted creature in flight, to the horrendous evil gyrations of the monster Kashchei and his demons, to the lullaby which the Firebird sings to lull the monsters to sleep. The composition ends in a burst of brilliance as the demons disappear and there is unrestrained rejoicing.

The Cascade Winds Symphonic Band, under the direction of Michael Gesme, will present its final concert of the 2014-2015 season on Sunday, May 31, 2015 at 2:00pm in the Summit High School Auditorium. Admission is free, but donations are gratefully accepted.

The performance will open with “American Riversongs,” a pastiche of folksongs from a younger America, including ‘Shenandoah’ and Stephen Foster’s ‘The Glendy Burk,’ cleverly woven together by composer Pierre La Plante. Next will be a pair of works by two composers who share a similar musical esthetic, but have so very little in common. The first is a set of dances from “The Royal Fireworks” by the famous, baroque composer, G.F. Handel.  The second, a work titled “Six Contrary Dances” by the lesser known P.D.Q Bach, will undoubtedly raise a few eyebrows for it’s simultaneous allegiance to and blatant disregard of the compositional traditions of the Bach family. The first half will conclude with John Philip Sousa’s “The Free Lance March.” Considered a medley-march, “The Free Lance” is comprised of several melodies that are drawn from Sousa’s popular 1905 operetta of the same name.

The second half is dedicated to a single work, a new arrangement for wind ensemble of Carl Orff’s most famous composition, “Carmina Burana.”Inspired by a collection of sacred and secular poems, found in a Bavarian monastery, “Carmina Burana” is exceptionally powerful and wonderfully uncomplicated. Using the simplest of harmonies and incessantly repetitious rhythmic patterns, Orff is able to create huge textures of sound that have the power to overwhelm the listener with their cumulative effects. Earl Kelly, a former Professor of Music at Kent State University, has commented that “one can envy any listener [who is having their] first experience with this fascinating, hypnotic and utterly spontaneous music. “Whether this is your first or twenty-first experience with the music of ‘Carmina Burana,’” comments conductor Michael Gesme, “I’m confident you’ll be enchanted by the sonic experience.”

For additional information about this performance and the Cascade Winds please contact Michael Gesme at mgesme@cocc.edu or visit www.cascadewinds.org.

The final concert of the Cascade Winds will be held on Sunday, May 4, 2014 in the Summit High School Auditorium. Admission to the concert is free, but donations are gratefully accepted. COCC professor of music, Michael Gesme, will lead the ensemble in a varied program beginning, appropriately, with “Quirks” by Brant Karrick. By definition, quirks are sudden sharp turns or unpredictable peculiarities and this capricious work takes full advantage of its title; never resting too long on one style, the piece seamlessly and continually transitions between latin, jazz, tango, swing, et cetera. The “Huckleberry Finn Suite” by Franco Cesarini, a piece of intentionally lighthearted disposition, is up next musically describing some of the primary scenes and characters of Mark Twain’s classic. Interspersed with brief readings from the text, the four movements of this work will portray a lazy river town, Jim, The King and the Duke, and Huckleberry Finn himself. Also on the first half will be a march by John Philip Sousa, “Solid Men to the Front!,” and “Carmen Fantasy” with music by Georges Bizet and arranged by Eiji Suzuki. The march was composed in 1918 while the 62-year-old Sousa was serving as Music Director of the Great Lakes Naval Training Station. The fantasy is a wandering pastiche of several of the great melodies from Bizet’s famously scandalous opera, which, in this arrangement, prominently features mallet percussion.

The second half will open with two works by Giovanni Gabrieli, an Italian high renaissance composer famous for church music intended to be performed from opposite sides of the cathedral. The Cascade Winds brass section will simulate this experience with two brass choirs placed on opposite sides of the auditorium. “For those of us who play brass instruments,” comments Gesme, “the music of Gabrieli is one of the high watermarks of composition. It is extremely satisfying to listen to and to play.” The final piece on the concert is the “Sixth Symphony” by James Barnes. This three movement work is very traditional in form, melodic and harmonic language, and is brimming with the wide palate of colors for which Barnes’ compositions are famous–a rousing conclusion to the 2013-2014 season.