Wind Ensemble in Streamed Concert

Due to the current pandemic situation, the Baylor University Wind Ensemble’s next concert of will be presented without an in-person audience. However, viewers at home will be able to enjoy the performance by going to the School of Music website for a streaming opportunity. The premiere showing of this concert will be on Monday, March 8, beginning at 7:30 p.m. The conductor of this splendid, 69-member ensemble of woodwinds, brass, and percussion is Baylor’s Director of Bands, J. Eric Wilson.
Opening the program will be Flash: A Fanfare for Brass and Percussion by American composer Elaine Ross. This exciting curtain-raiser from 2004 will be conducted by Steve Dailey, Baylor’s Assistant Director of Bands.
Next will come anti-Fanfare by American composer Andrew Blair, as conducted by Hannah Morrison, a graduate student from Magnolia, Texas. From 2019, Blair’s anti-Fanfare was inspired by a music lesson during which his teacher mentioned that he should consider writing a concert opener for woodwinds and percussion only, with no brass instruments.
Ceon Rumphs, a graduate student from Garland, Texas, will lead the Wind Ensemble in a performance of American composer Vincent Persichetti’s youthful Serenade No. 1 for Ten Wind Instruments, Op. 1, written in 1929 when the composer was only fourteen years old.
To conclude the program, Dr. Wilson will conduct three pieces by Australian composer Percy Grainger. Dating from 1939, The Duke of Marlborough Fanfare is based on an eighteenth-century broadside ballad about the Battle of Ramillies (1706) between the English and French. Grainger wrote his Hill Song No. 2 for twenty-four wind instruments in 1907, but he revised its scoring repeatedly until completing the final version in 1946. Shepherd’s Hey was written for full orchestra in 1913. So pleased was Grainger with the orchestral setting that he adapted the tune for concert band in 1918.
To join the virtual audience for this concert by the Baylor University Wind Ensemble, visit the School of Music website by clicking here.