Purdue Bands Showcase bursts
with Gala Week musical treats
Bursting
with talent and tantalizing tunes, Purdue Bands Showcase’ concerts on Saturday
and Sunday, April 20-21, set a celebratory tone for Gala Weekend with a guest
appearance by one of the nation’s leading contemporary composers, a concerto
by Purdue’s top classical musician and innovative tunes that employ such unusual
effects as a water gong, blast sticks and a lion’s roar.
Varsity, Collegiate and University
Concert Bands will be featured in the Bands Showcase I concert at 8 p.m. Saturday,
April 20, in Elliott Hall of Music. The Purdue Symphony Orchestra, Symphonic
Band and Alumni Band will be featured in the Bands Showcase II at 2:30 p.m.
Sunday, April 21, in Elliott. Both events are free.
Works by Missouri native David
Holsinger, whose tunes are widely performed by collegiate and high school
bands, will be featured at both concerts during the music-filled weekend.
“His compositions are pretty unique and very rhythmic. They use different
effects to create unique and interesting sounds,” says Jay Gephart, director
of Symphonic Band.
For many years, a Holsinger
hymnsong has been part of the traditional repertoire played at Purdue commencements.
The Gala Weekend concerts explore the full range of his talent through such
pieces as “Scootin’ on Hardrock,”
a jazzy depiction of a rural crossroads in Texas, “Havendance” and “Consider
The Uncommon Man.”
Sven Schreiber, a Purdue Junior
with an uncommon talent on bassoon, will be featured in Johann Hummel’s “Grand
Concerto for Bassoon and Orchestra” at Sunday’s concert. Typical of the multi-faceted
students attracted to Purdue Bands’ ensembles, Schreiber pursues a mechanical
engineering degree but could just have easily pursued music at a major conservatory.
“Sven is without a doubt the
most talented musician I’ve ever had the opportunity to work with. Period,” says Gephart. Bassoon, one of the
most difficult instruments to master, “really takes someone who’s special,
has a good ear and is very left-brained, very technically oriented,” Gephart,
offering a link between the two sides of Schreiber’s personality.
“For someone his age, Sven
plays with such a sense of maturity and knowledge. He’s an intuitive musician
with a lot of natural skill,” Gephart adds.
Schreiber won Purdue’s annual
concerto competition to earn the right to solo with the orchestra at its April
concert. The Hummel concerto he’ll perform is both lyrical and technically
flashy with lots of octave jumps that display the bassoon’s broad range. “I
like it a lot because it shows off the instrument, and it’s kind of a fun
piece, not super serious,” Schreiber says.
Purdue Bands also uses these
season-ending concerts to showcase some unusual compositions.
Two of the most intriguing
are “Crystals” by Thomas Duffy, to be performed by the Collegiate Band on
Saturday night, and “Celebrate/Celebration” by Daniel Bukvich on the Symphonic
Band’s Sunday program.
Duffy drew the inspiration
for his 1992 composition from tiny crystals that form massive objects such
as ice crystals in glaciers and rock crystals in structures like Stonehenge.
The piece “has the most strange effects, stuff you don’t see all that often
in band music,” says Matthew Conaway, Purdue Bands’ graduate assistant, who’s
conducting the piece. Musicians will run their fingers around the edge of
water-filled crystal glasses to create a high-pitched sound, for example,
and a gong will be played as it’s lowered into a large vat of water. That
produces “the kind of sound you expect to hear in horror movies. It’s a very
eerie sound,” Conaway says.
The composer also incorporates
a lion’s roar into the piece with instructions on how to rig a drum with a
string and play it to obtain the desired effect.
Bukvich, the composer of “Celebrate/Celebration,”
also includes unusual instruments and effects in his pieces. “Every rhythm
in the piece is based on the rhythm of those two words – celebrate and celebration,”
says Conaway. Party horns and blast sticks – pipes played by hitting them
on the palm of the percussionists’ hands - are featured and the musicians are also called
upon, at various times, to whisper the words “celebrate, celebration” to create
a verbal percussion effect.