Baylor's Wind Ensemble in Concert

The Baylor University Wind Ensemble will present a concert on Thursday, March 31, as part of the 2022 Southwestern Division Conference of the College Band Directors National Conference, which Baylor is hosting on its campus in Waco, Texas. The Baylor Wind Ensemble’s performance, led by Baylor’s Director of Bands J. Eric Wilson, will begin at 7:30 p.m. in Jones Concert Hall, located within the Glennis McCrary Music Building. Also appearing on the conductor’s podium will be Associate Director of Bands Isaiah Odajima and Director of Choral Activities Lynne Gackle.
The program will open with Seeker’s Scherzo by Chinese-American composer Zhou Tian, who serves on the faculty of Michigan State University. This work was originally the third movement of Dr. Zhou’s Concerto for Orchestra from 2016. Dr. Odajima will conduct.
Next, the Wind Ensemble will play Some treasures are heavy with human tears, John Mackey’s meditation on grief following a 2019 mass murder in Dayton, Ohio. One of the victims of the shooting was a girl who played trumpet in her high school band in nearby Bellbrook.
Another work from last year is Spanish composer Luis Serrano Alarcón’s first book of Spanish Dances, from which the Wind Ensemble will perform “Petenera,” “Zortziko,” and “Jota.”
Also to be heard on this concert is Susan Botti’s Cosmosis for soprano, women’s choir, and wind ensemble. This 2004 piece was inspired by American poet May Swenson’s “The Cross Spider,” telling of a Skylab experiment in which a student project proposed to see whether a spider could spin a web in space. The soprano soloist will be Amy Petrongelli, and Dr. Gackle will conduct Baylor’s chamber chorus of female voices, Bella Voce.
Closing the program will be Paul Dooley’s Yellow Red Blue from 2021, which was commissioned to honor the retirement of Dr. Joseph Missal after his thirty-five years of service at Oklahoma State University Greenwood School of Music.
This concert is free of charge and open to the public. It is also available for livestreaming at baylor.edu/music/live.