ATLANTA YOUTH WIND SYMPHONY
SUNDAY, MARCH 9, 2025 4:00 PM
lassiter concert Hall

REEL MUSIC

Zing!
Scott McAllister

“Zing! was commissioned by Kappa Kappa Psi and Tau Beta Sigma at Baylor University. Zing! is the first work in a series of short band pieces that are inspired by catchphrases of different band directors who influenced the composer in high school and college. These phrases were often used during rehearsals to illuminate an image in order to create a special sound. Jim Croft, retired director of bands at Florida State University, inspired Zing's fanfare-like motives juxtaposed with lyrical melodic lines and "shiny" color.”

Sweet Chariot
Carlos Simon

“Swing Low, Sweet Chariot is perhaps one of the most well-known African American spirituals. As beautiful and rapturing as its melody is, it should be. However, its beauty and popularity is often overlooked by the song’s true meaning about death. I have taken fragments of the melody and combined it with the Gregorian chant from the Latin mass for the dead, In Paradisum. Its text is as follows: "May the angels lead you into paradise; may the martyrs receive you at your arrival and lead you to the holy city Jerusalem. May choirs of angels receive you and with Lazarus, once (a) poor (man), may you have eternal rest.””

Sweet Chariot was commissioned by a consortium led by Robert Ambrose at Georgia State University.

Juba Dance
Florence Price

Florence Price made history as the first African-American woman to have a symphony performed by a major American orchestra. (Symphony No. 1 in E minor, premiered by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1933). The "Juba Dance: Allegro" is the third movement from Symphony No. 1 in E minor. The Juba, originating in Haiti and Africa, features a two-cross step that is danced in a circle. The dance was accompanied by hand-clapping, singing, and drums. Enslaved individuals introduced the Juba into the southern colonies, later influencing hambone and ragtime.

Give Us This Day (Short Symphony)
David Maslanka

“Give us This Day was commissioned by Eric Weirather, Director of Bands at Rancho Buena Vista High School in Oceanside, Calif., which is in the greater San Diego area. Eric put together a consortium to support the commission. The score was finished in October of 2005, and the premiere performance was done at Eric's school in the spring of 2006.

The words "give us this day" are, of course, from the Lord's Prayer, but the inspiration for this music is Buddhist. I have recently read a book by the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh (pronounced "Tick Not Hahn") entitled For a Future to be Possible. His premise is that a future for the planet is only possible if individuals become deeply mindful of themselves, deeply connected to who they really are. While this is not a new idea, and something that is an ongoing struggle for everyone, in my estimation it is the issue for world peace. For me, writing music, and working with people to perform music, are two of those points of deep mindfulness.

Music makes the connection to reality, and by reality I mean a true awakeness and awareness. Give Us This Day gives us this very moment of awakeness and aware aliveness so that we can build a future in the face of a most dangerous and difficult time.”

Grand Canyon Fanfare
James Newton Howard

James Newton Howard composed this dynamic fanfare for the closing segment of the 1993 movie Grand Canyon (starring Danny Glover, Kevin Kline and Steve Martin). The film is now largely forgotten, however the music remains a vibrant and powerful statement and a very effective concert opener.

Tombstone
Bruce Broughton

Very few events in the colorful and sometimes fanciful history of the American West capture the imagination like the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. The event did take place, in the boom town of Tombstone, Arizona, on October 26, 1881, and it did see the brothers Virgil, Morgan, and Wyatt Earp, plus their friend Doc Holliday, shooting it out with a loosely organized group of outlaws called the Cowboys, led by Ike Clanton.

Bruce Broughton was not the first choice to score it – Jerry Goldsmith was originally meant to score the film, having worked with director George Cosmatos before on films like Rambo: First Blood Part II and Leviathan, but he was forced to pull out because of scheduling conflicts, and he recommended Broughton instead. The Tombstone score revels in the glorious sound of the classic Hollywood western perpetuated by composers like Alfred Newman and Aaron Copland, Elmer Bernstein and Jerome Moross. It’s not authentic in the sense that it doesn’t depend on typical western instruments like guitars or harmonicas, but it is nevertheless steeped in the sound that moviegoers think the wild west sounded like, and it does so without apology.

The final cue of the soundtrack, “Looking at Heaven,” begins with the scene where Wyatt – keeping his word to Doc’s dying wish – seeks out Josephine, declares his love for her, and waltzes with her in the snow. To underscore this moment Broughton brings back the Love Theme variation of Josephine’s theme and the Earp Family theme at its most sweeping and magical, a full orchestral celebration of their relationship that would last until Wyatt’s peaceful death in 1929. Broughton ends the waltz and segues into the score’s most iconic moment – finally, the largest, most epic statement of the main Tombstone theme in the entire score, performed on huge, masculine brasses as the end credits roll over footage of Wyatt, Doc, Morgan, and Virgil purposefully striding towards the O.K. Corral and immortality.

The Red Pony
Aaron Copland

Aaron Copland wrote the music for the film The Red Pony during a 10-week period in 1948 on the studio lot in the San Fernando Valley. An orchestral suite was completed that same year, commissioned by Efrem Kurtz of the Houston Symphony Orchestra. Four of the original movements were transcribed by Copland himself for performance by the U.S. Navy Band in 1968.

John Steinbeck’s story about a ten-year-old boy, Jody, and his life on a California ranch was based on the author’s experiences growing up near King City and a pony he had once cared for. It is a story that derives its warmth and sensitive quality from the character studies of the boy, his parents, grandfather and cowhand Billy Buck. It is filled with the emotions of daily living, from the joy of a boy receiving a pony of his own to the bitter nature of death and dying. The Dream March and Circus Music depict two of Jody’s daydreams: he is at the head of an army of knights in silvery armor or the whip-cracking ringmaster of the circus. The Walk to the Bunkhouse shows Jody’s admiration for Billy Buck’s talents, especially with horses. Grandfather’s Story tells of how he led the wagon train ‘clear across the plains to the coast’, but his bitterness that the ‘Westerning has died out of the people’ can’t be hidden from his grandson. The last movement suggests the open air quality of country living and mounts to the climax of a Happy Ending.

Far and Away
John Williams

Far and Away is a romanticized film about the American immigrant experience, specifically those who came from Ireland seeking their fortune in the new world in the 1890s, while the country was still recovering from the great potato famine several decades previously. The film stars Tom Cruise as Joseph Donnelly, a poor farmer from rural Ireland who meets Shannon Christie (Nicole Kidman), the privileged daughter of his father’s landlord, and they bond over their shared plans to emigrate to America.

The (highly unsuccessful) film gave composer John Williams the opportunity to initially explore a sound new to his palette – traditional Irish music – and then slowly transition out of that and into a style that he had not embraced fully since The Cowboys in 1972 – the epic Western.

There are four main recurring themes weaving through the score, two of which are introduced in the opening cue, “County Galway/June 1892.” After a dark opening for moody pipes, the first performance of the Irish theme emerges, a bittersweet lament for pennywhistle and strings that somehow does the thing that all Irish music does – be both desperately sad and longingly beautiful at the same time. Alongside this wistful Irish theme is a more boisterous piece representing the rough-and-tumble of Irish working class life, drinking, fighting, chasing girls, and having a barney. This is the most traditional of the score’s Irish folk music, and it features the Irish instruments wheel and skirl, kept time by a rambunctious bodhrán beat, in “The Fighting Donnellys.” “Blowing Off Steam” is a vibrant and lively orchestral scherzo that follows the youthful hi-jinks of Donnelly and his boys, and has stylistic similarities to the scherzos from things like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, going all the way back to Dracula and Jane Eyre.

The conclusive “Joseph and Shannon” is where their love theme finally grows to epic proportions as Shannon rejects Steven and embraces Joseph, they declare their love for each other, and then literally drive the land stake into the ground to exultantly claim their prize and secure their future together. The “End Credits” is a wonderful summation of the score containing stirring statements of the Irish folk music, the American theme, the Irish scherzo, and the Race theme/American theme combo, back to back, all featuring Irish rollicking performances.