The Stephen F. Austin State University Symphonic Band and Wind Symphony will present their first concert of the semester at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 7, in W.M. Turner Auditorium on the SFA campus.
The concert, entitled “Earth Dreams,” will feature the works of American composers, including Timothy Mahr, Timothy Broege, John Mackey and Frank Ticheli.
The Symphonic Band, directed by Dr. Tamey Anglley, assistant director of bands at SFA, will open the concert with Mahr’s “Daydream.” The composer intended it to be a musical daydream, with introspective sound eliciting mood changes and shifting images, Anglley explained. Mahr wrote about the piece: “I hope to conjure up in the listener the sense one perceives when he or she ‘pulls out’ of a daydream, returning to reality after a transient mental trip to places of flight and fancy.”
The program also includes Broege’s “Dreams and Fancies,” which is a four-movement work that alternates between slow and fast tempi. The Symphonic Band will close its half of the concert with “Waves March” by Henry Fillmore. Over the span of his 50-year career, Fillmore wrote more than 250 original compositions, including 113 marches.
The Wind Symphony, under the direction of Dr. David Campo, associate director of bands, will open its half of the concert with the John Bourgeois edition of Pieter Leemans’ “March of Belgian Parachutists.” Leemans served in the Belgian army during World War I and was asked by his regimental commander to write a march. He began the march, but did not finish before the end of the war. Later, near the end of World War II, he was asked by a group of Belgian paratroopers to compose a march, and remembering his earlier theme, he completed this popular march, which has enjoyed great success and is Leemans’ best known work, Campo explained.
The Wind Symphony will also perform Mackey’s “Sheltering Sky,” which was intended by the composer to exude a folksong-like character, and Ticheli’s “Gaian Visions,” which was commissioned by the Gamma Phi chapter of Kappa Kappa Psi in honor of Dr. Donald E. Bowen, SFA’s fifth president.
Of the piece, Ticheli wrote: “The title of the work refers to Gaia, the Earth goddess of ancient Greece, and to British scientist James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis, which holds that the Earth is a living, self-regulating organism that is capable of annihilating anything it perceives to be a threat, including the environmentally destructive human race itself.”
Tickets are $8 for adults, $6 for seniors and $3 for students and youth. For tickets or more information, call the SFA Fine Arts Box Office at (936) 468-6407 or (888) 240-ARTS or visit www.finearts.sfasu.edu.
