July 2008
Santa Fe, New Mexico
With all of the wildly eclectic tastes in music these days it’s surprising that there’s any
conceivable niche left unfilled. Allow me to propose one: a professional level wind ensemble
featuring contemporary concert music. Maybe it’s just my skewed background from years of
playing with amateur concert bands, big bands, Dixieland bands . . . but lately I’ve developed
a thirst for a special kind of sound that evokes, but transcends the music traditionally
associated with wind instruments. My thirst had gone pretty much unquenched – until that
mellow Sunday afternoon when Concordia Santa Fe performed its on concert on June 29th
entitled “Reflections”.
Like a long cool drink from a high mountain stream I finally had the satisfaction of hearing
what wind instruments could do with an ambitious contemporary program, enthusiastic
direction and sensitive musicians. From the opening introduction guest conductor Dr. Sarah
McKoin’s connection to both the program and the ensemble offered the promise of a special
performance. Concordia Santa Fe did not disappoint.
The fun started with Nitro, a firecracker of piece by Frank Ticheli that premiered in 2006.
With sparkling clear high brass, crisp entrances and chest thumping accents Nitro quickly
cleared out the cobwebs, leaving me tingling with excitement. Now fully engaged, Acrostic
Song by David Del Tredici led me into an enchanted forest of music textures that evoked the
whole range of emotions from wonder through confusion and fear and finally back home
again – all in the course of few minutes!
The North American premiere of Reflections: Serenade No. 2 by British Composer Guy
Woolfenden, featured Debra Poulin and Jim Preus on bassoon – a remarkable instrument
that somehow manages to evoke images of old wood, deep roots and cool damp earth.
Often the butt of musical jokes, the bassoons in Reflections ran the full gambit from light
hearted humor to deep pathos.
After intermission Concordia Santa Fe launched into the most ambitious and demanding
piece of the program, Paul Hindemith’s Symphony in Bb. Written in 1952 for the US Army
band after Hindemith fled Nazi Germany, Symphony in Bb uses complex, ever changing,
counterpoint and edgy harmonies to paint a vivid diorama of force, counterforce and
synthesis. In lesser hands the piece could easily have disintegrated into an
incomprehensible jumble. Under Dr. McKoin’s steady baton Concordia Santa Fe gave full
voice to the symphony’s beautiful paean to the turbulent 20th Century.
Darius Milhaud’s Suite Francaise wove a series of French provincial folk tunes into a
tapestry of sound that had impressions of Normandy and Provence dancing through my
head. Milhaud’s composition used the wide palette of tonality developed by the mid- 20th-
Century to provide a compelling sound environment through which the original tunes were
voiced, shaped and re-framed.
The formal program came to an end – too soon for me – with the brilliantly eccentric Percy
Grainger’s take on Londonderry Air (“Oh, Danny Boy”). I’ve come to expect the unexpected
from Granger’s music, but this wild and wonderful slide through what has become a
venerable Irish-American chestnut still managed to surprise and delight. While the melody
held fast to its all too well known course, the harmonics morphed through a series of
passages that often seemed on the brink of complete atonality, only to resolve unexpectedly,
setting up a whole new phrase. The end result was a startling but revealing glimpse of our
world through the lens of a man whose (often ironic) perspective somehow allows raw
experience to cut through convention.
The enthusiastic audience response prompted an encore number: Davide Delle Cese’s
Inglesina, an Italianate march. Concordia Santa Fe demonstrated that sprightly articulation,
phrasing and dynamics can make even a relatively simple piece sparkle. In fact, Inglesina
provided not only a refreshing culmination, but a perfect recapitulation of the elements that
made this a particularly satisfying musical afternoon: sensitivity, expressiveness and
precision. If you enjoy concert music and have not yet experienced the quality a wind
ensemble can delivery, I urge to give Concordia Santa Fe a listen.
Concordia Santa Fe
"Harmony in the High Desert"
a 501(c)(3) charitable organization
"Harmony in the High Desert"
a 501(c)(3) charitable organization
Reflections on “Reflections”
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