Baylor's Symphonic Band in Concert

The Baylor University Symphonic Band, conducted by Associate Director of Bands Isaiah Odajima, will present its next concert on Monday, February 7, beginning at 7:30 p.m. in Jones Concert Hall, located within the Glennis McCrary Music Building.
With graduate conductor Ceon Rumphs on the podium, the Symphonic Band will open the program with Vanity Fair by Percy Fletcher, a popular English composer of musical theater. Fletcher described this work as “a comedy overture in which several characters from Thackeray’s novel are portrayed,” and it is easy to imagine the piece as the introduction to a musical comedy.
Next, graduate conductor Ben Gerrard will lead the Symphonic Band in the Funeral March in Memory of Rikard Nordraak by Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg. This piece pays homage to Grieg’s good friend and classmate, who died suddenly in 1866.
William Schuman wrote his New England Triptych: Three Pieces for Orchestra in 1956, and he subsequently scored each of the three for wind band. The Baylor University Symphonic Band will play the first movement, Be Glad Then, America.
Japanese composer Yo Goto wrote his Songs for Wind Ensemble on a commission from the Hamamatsu Cultural Foundation of Japan. It was premiered in March 2010 in Hamamatsu, Japan, and won the 2011 Sousa/Ostwald Award from the American Bandmasters Association.
Closing the Symphonic Band concert will be English composer Gustav Holst’s First Suite in E-flat for Military Band. This three-movement work can be seen, in retrospect, as one of the earliest examples of the modern wind band instrumentation that is still frequently performed today.
This concert is free of charge and open to the public. It is also available for livestreaming at baylor.edu/music/live.