Welcome to 
HOME PAGE JUNE 2018
Welcome to the 2018 Spring/summer edition of my Web Pages, mostly about music which I shall have conducted or will conduct in my birthday celebration concerts in Kentucky, Scotland, Spain, Singapore and Tokyo. La Lira we played in the concert at KMEA with Henry Clay High School, Kentucky, and I was happy to play Guy Woolfenden’s Illyrian Dances.
If you are planning programmes for next season, I hope that some of the links might be an inspiration. Cheers, Slàinte, Salut, 乾杯, Kanpai,
How many marches have such a variety of dynamics, orchestration and thematic invention as this PASO DOBLE BY LUIS SERRANO ALARCON?
The Philharmonic Winds dirigida por Timothy Reynish interpreta el pasodoble "La Lira De Pozuelo De Alarcón" del maestro Luís Serrano Alarcón durante el Certamen Internacional de Bandas de Música "Ciudad de Valencia" 2013.
Tim
CARNEGIE HALL DEBUT, that’s Carnegie Hall, Dunfermline, Scotland
15 March Band of the Royal Marines, Scotland
Hesketh Danceries Set 1
Holst Marching Song
NEWS
A NEW OPERA FOR VOICES AND WIND ENSEMBLE by
ADAM GORB and BEN KAYE
June 21 at the RNCM, Manchester UK, 7.30pm – 9.15pm RNCM Concert Hall
THE PATH TO HEAVEN Adam Gorb composer Ben Kaye libretto - Stefan Janski director - Mark Heron conductor - Melvin Tay assistant conductor Musicians from Psappha and RNCM
A powerful tale of extremism, expedience, deceit and betrayal, The Path to Heaven dramatically exposes the disintegration of the loves, lives and hopes of an extended family struggling to survive amidst the horrors of The Holocaust.
Sara, Hanna, Dieter, Magda and Hans return home from a party to find that having ‘danced too long in the moonlight’, evil stalks them from the darkness.
The discovery that their adoptive parents have disappeared triggers a descent into a nightmare from which none will escape unchanged. A meticulously-researched series of individual real stories has been woven into a thrilling new opera for the 21st Century.
SCORING
Fl/Picc, Fl. Cl/Cl Eb, Cl/Bcl, Sop sax/Alto sax, Alto sax/Ten sax, Bsn/contra, 2 Tpts, 2 Tbns, Tba, 2 perc. Piano
May 19 Spanish premiere of Symphony no 2 by Luis Serrano Alarcon
Was given by the Unión Musical Santa Cecilia de Villar del Arzobispo conducted by the composer in a joint concert with the Banda Sinfonica “La Artistica” de Buñol..
May 24 Premiere of Flute Concerto by Wei Yang University of Washington, details Tim Salzman uwbandpublicity-bounces@mailman13.u.washington.edu
April 28 World premiere of Christopher Marshall’s Cone of Uncertainty
Unión Musical Santa Cecilia de Villar del Arzobispo conducted by Tim Reynish
The ‘cone of uncertainty’ is a term used by meteorologists to illustrate the range of most likely tracks for a hurricane. The cone narrows as the storm approaches and the location of a strike becomes increasingly clear. For those in the path of the storm – or any other predicted catastrophic event – their thoughts may veer between surging anxiety, over-confidence, prayers to a higher power, and resignation…as time inexorably erodes the cone.
Cone of Uncertainty is constructed using a 12 note theme (B,C,E,Eb,F#,G,D,Bb<F,C#,G#, A) ina predominantly triadic-tonal context. The row or its 3 transformations are present throughout the piece, either in melody, bass line or harmonies, or a combination of these.
2plus picc, 2 plus cor, Eb, 4 B, bass and contra bass, 2alto, 1 tenor 1 baritone sax
4 horns, 3 trumpets, 2 tenor and bass, euphonium, tuba, 1 percussion (5 timpani) 4 percussion duration 6 minutes
April 7 Saffron Walden UK premiere of new edition of Richard Rodney Bennett Morning Music prepared and edited by Andrew Keeling, conducted by Phillip Scott with the National Youth Wind Ensemble of Great Britain. Score and parts available from Music Sales. Shortly to be published a new edition of Bennett’s Trumpet Concerto edited by Andrew Kdeenan.
LUIS SERRANO ALARCON
Many thanks to Luis for arranging a birthday concert, with wine, paella, and a midnight serenade under my window; he wrote a brand new “British” Paso Doble entitled Tim, which he conducted with his band in Villar del Arzobispo on April 25th . The band is nothing less than superb, at cooking and playing, in a repertoire which included:
Guy Woolfenden Suite Francaise
William Alwyn Concerto for Flute and Octet
Kenneth Hesketh Masque
Christopher Marshall Cone of Uncertainty World Premiere
Luis Serrano Alarcon A British paso doble Tim World Premiere
Adam Gorb Yiddish Dances
Luis Serrano Alarcon Paso Doble La Lira del Pozuelo
Luis is a superb conductor and a first rate composer; here is the first movement of his Concertango which we shall play in Tokyo.
ADAM GORB
Yiddish Dances was written for my 60th birthday concert and premiered by the RNCM in Manchester. This year, Adam is writing a new piece, to be premiered by Trinity Laban Conservatoire Wind Ensemble in my final birthday concert on 1st November at Blackheath Halls. Everyone is of course invited. New to me with Philharmonic Winds will be Adam’s Bohemian Revelry, written in 2013, a superb suite of dances in the style of Antonin Dvorak. Here is a performance conducted by Björn Bus.
KENNETH HESKETH
My great birthday year began with conducting the Band of HM Royal Marines Scotland in Ken’s superb Danceries 1, in Carnegie Hall, Dunfermline, not New York, but still a great acoustic. I programmed Masque in Villar del Arzobispo to great applause, and I will play it again on June 17th in the Esplanade, Singapore with Philharmonic Winds. I think Masque is a lot of fun; played here by UNC conducted by Even Feldman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5ZNyB5ei_c
I tried to get one of the bands to programme Diaghilev Dances; here is a fine performance by Phillip Scott conducting the excellent NYWOGB.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SS9rGsK3UPI
I also adore my commission from Ken of Vranjankar played here by Philharmonic Winds
SINGAPORE PHILHARMONIC WINDS 17th June 7.30 Esplanade
Kenneth Hesketh Masque
Guy Woolfenden Illyrian Dances
Derek Bourgeois Symphony for William
Yasuhide Ito As Time Is Passing
Luis Serrano Alarcon Tim, a British Paso Doble
Adam Gorb Bohemian Revelry
TOKYO GREEN TIE WIND ENSEMBLE OF THE SENZUKO GAKUEN COLLEGE OF MUSIC 1st July 3.00PM
Guy Woolfenden Illyrian Dances
David del Tredici In Wartime
Yasuhide Ito Time-into-music world premiere
Luis Serrano Alarcon Concertango first movement
Christopher Marshall L’Homme Armé
encores
Felix Mendelssohn/Ito Auf Flügel des Gesanges’
Yasuhide Ito Solo una Volta, March or Nippon Hey!
GUY WOOLFENDEN,
who was my best man at my wedding 57 years ago (still married) is a composer whose use of soloists in the ensemble is always a source of delight. In Villar del Arzobispo we played his charming Suite Française for wind octet, with no horns. I programmed his equally charming Illyrian Dances with William Clay High School at the Kentucky Music Educators Conference in February, and will conduct it again in Singapore and Tokyo. Here is Guy conducting Suite Française in Florida:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9OVUSpu6gg
It is too easy to keep playing Illyrian Dances or Gallmaufry. I would recommend searching through the rest of his fifteen pieces. Here is his Divertimento which he wrote for Keith Allen for the 1907 WASBE Conference.
YASUHIDE ITO
Yasuhide Ito is one of the finest composers and conductors in the band world, with a background in European opera rather than American film scores, so that for me his best music is quite special and his work in preparing the green Tie Wind Ensemble at Senzuko Gakuen College equally outstanding. His best known work is Gloriosa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JDv5LCf5lo
Recently his music has shown greater depth and intensity. As Time is Passing was written in memory of his wife’s mother and is in four movements,
Lamento – Marcia – Dies Irae - Adagio Molto
A Symphonic Poem for Band, As Time is Passing is one of the finest examples of sustained emotional writing in the repertoire. It was written at the turn of the century, intended to be a celebratory work, but the death of the composer’s mother turned into a miniature requiem. The opening Lamento is a hearfelt romantic prelude, in which we might detect influences of major German composers of the 19th century, Wagner or Richard Strauss, and this is followed by a March which owes something to the British traditional march. This breaks off as the chorus shout “Dires Irae”, and this leads into a demonic scherzo reminiscent of similar passages in Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius, and the final adagio is mainly for unaccompanied voices, intensely moving and almost unbearably beautiful. The work ends with a short postlude based on the opening Lamento.
TWO IMPORTANT DISCS OF UNKNOWN WIND MUSIC
Just discovered
GEORGE LLOYD VIOLIN CONCERTO NO 1
Scoring 3333:222
Recording Troy 316 Albany records
Christina Anghelescu and Philharmonic Orchestra conductor David Parry
Recently discovered
ANTHONY BURGESS MR BURGESS’S ALMANACK
Scoring 2222:11:timps 2P Piano
Recording The compact disc Anthony Burgess: Orchestral Music (Naxos 8.573472), the first commercially available recording of Burgess's orchestral music, was released in May 2016. The works on the CD are Mr W.S., Marche pour une révolution 1789-1989, and Mr Burgess’s Almanack, all performed by the Brown University Orchestra under Paul Phillips's direction.
Review in Guardian:
“I wish people would think of me as a musician who writes novels, instead of a novelist who writes music on the side,” Anthony Burgess wrote in the Economist in 1991. Fat chance of that, especially after the release of Stanley Kubrick’s film of Burgess’s novel A Clockwork Orange . But Burgess kept composing – his lengthy worklist includes everything from recorder sonatas to perhaps the least likely operetta ever, based on Joyce’s Ulysses – and the US conductor Paul Phillips has been championing his music.
This disc starts with Mr WS, a jaunty mock-Tudor ballet suite nodding to Walton’s Shakespearian music, and the similarly Waltonesque Marche pour une Révolution, both dispatched with spirit if not ideal refinement by Phillips’s student orchestra; but keep listening and a more interesting voice emerges in Mr Burgess’s Almanack, a sequence of 14 modernist-inflected short movements for chamber ensemble written in 1987.
Visit the World Association for Symphonic Bands and Ensembles website