UPEI Wind Symphony presents effervescent widgets
The UPEI Wind Symphony will perform its final recital of the academic year on Saturday, March 24, at 7:30 pm at Park Royal United Church in Charlottetown. This has been a particularly busy and musically rewarding year for the Wind Symphony with highly successful performances throughout the fall and winter.
This recital will feature contemporary works for the modern wind band, with several emerging masterworks of the genre. The program will open with Pansori's Rhapsody, a virtuosic work by Korean composer Chang Su Koh. This work is imbued with Korean culture and, through Su Koh's masterful orchestration, creates innovative colours and effects. effervescent widgets, this recital's title work, is among the most rhythmically complex scores that the Wind Symphony has ever performed. Here, American Richard Drehoff Jr., creates, in musical terms, a narrative of a widget's journey through the modern manufacturing mechanism. To accomplish this, Drehoff Jr. uses repetitive ostinato passages which layer upon themselves to the point of collapse.
Percy Grainger, an Austrailian by birth but an American by choice, wrote his Children's March: Over The Hills and Far Away around 1919. Based on an original Grainger melody, it is a light, carefree work the utilizes the full symphonic resources and colour of the modern wind band. Grainger was among the first to use piano and mallet percussion as part of his works for wind band. Another featured work by an American composer is Julie Giroux's One Life Beautiful. It is an introspective work with some of the most lyrical lines. Additional works by Dimitri Shostakovich and Warren Benson will be performed.
This recital will be the final Wind Symphony performance for eleven of its graduating students – among the largest in the history of this ensemble. All have made significant contributions to UPEI, and the Wind Symphony in particular, throughout their undergraduate careers.
Tickets ($15 Adults; $10 Students) for this performance may be acquired in advance at the UPEI Music Department or at the door prior to the recital.
The UPEI Wind Symphony received the 2014 Music PEI award for Achievement in Classical Music. Under the direction of Dr. Karem J Simon, the Wind Symphony has had a progressive approach to its programming, and in reaching a wider audience. With performances throughout PEI and beyond each year, partnerships with PEI school music programs, and utilizing unique performance spaces, the Wind Symphony is among PEI's most respected large ensembles. Commissioning new compositions, featuring outstanding student and professional soloists, and showcasing masterworks of the wind band genre are all hallmarks of this ensemble. In recent years performances at Zion Presbyterian Church, St. Dunstan’s Basilica, and Park Royal United Church have attracted capacity audiences.
