Concert Band Fall Concert

Thursday, November 19, 2009
P. E. Monroe Auditorium
7:30 p.m.
Free Admission

Lenoir-Rhyne University's Concert Band performs a wide variety of literature for winds and percussion. The ensemble's membership is drawn from university students in any major and from accomplished community musicians.

Featured on the program will be junior music performance major, Julia Byrd, performing Ernst von Dohnányi's "Variations on a Nursery Tune" for piano and orchestra. The twenty-five minute work is composed as a theme and twelve variations based on the nursery tune, "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star." This transcription for concert band is by John Paynter, who served for many years as Director of Bands at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL.

African American composer, William Grant Still (1895-1978) was known as the "Dean of African American Music." Although he was a prolific composer of orchestral music, he produced only a small number of works for concert winds and percussion. The "Little Red Schoolhouse" was written in 1957. Each of its five movements portrays a scene which could have been studied by school children in their classes. The scenes are as follows.

• "Little Conqueror"
• "Egyptian Princess"
• "Captain Kidd, Junior"
• "Colleen Bawn"
• "Petey"

Also on the program are Robert Jager's energetic overture "Espirit de Corps," James Curnow's "Inventions from the Sacred Harp," Frank Ticheli's beautiful arrangement of "Shenandoah," and John Philip Sousa's "Washington Post March."

The ensemble's conductor, Daniel W. Kiser, is in his eighteenth season as Lenoir-Rhyne's Director of Instrumental Programs. He joined the Lenoir-Rhyne faculty in 1992 after serving on the faculty of North Dakota State University as Assistant Conductor of the "Gold Star" Concert Band, conductor of the Brass Ensemble, and conductor and founding member of the Lake Agassiz Concert Band, a community ensemble which draws its membership from the greater Fargo/Moorhead area of eastern North Dakota and western Minnesota. In addition to conducting the Concert Band, Dr. Kiser also serves as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.