November 21, 2023
SIU Wind Ensemble closes fall semester with Nov. 30 performance
CARBONDALE, Ill. — The Southern Illinois University Carbondale School of Music’s Wind Ensemble will present its final concert of the semester on Nov. 30 in Shryock Auditorium.
Comprising 37 students — both undergraduate and graduate music majors and non-music majors — the ensemble will present “Time and Place.” The free, public performance starts at 7 p.m.
Under the direction of Christopher Morehouse, professor in the School of Music, the wind ensemble will celebrate the 100th anniversary of French composer and conductor Darius Milhaud’s “La Création du monde” — The Creation of the World — which premiered in 1923.
After first hearing jazz in London and the United States, Milhaud incorporated jazz elements into his ballet, Morehouse said.
“The piece is composed for chamber winds and string quintet, with the alto saxophone replacing the viola part,” he said. “The music has become standard repertoire for both orchestras and bands.”
The concert will also feature another standard in the wind repertoire, English composer Gustav Holst’s only late period work for band, “Hammersmith: Prelude and Scherzo.”
“The piece is based on Holst’s love for the London borough of Hammersmith, where he worked at the St. Paul’s Girls’ School for almost 30 years,” Morehouse said. “Although not program music, depicting a specific scene or image, in the ‘Prelude,’ you can hear the slow meandering of the River Thames, while the ‘Scherzo’ captures the busy, daily life of those living in the town.”
Morehouse said the concert will open with Canadian composer John Estacio’s “Frenergy,” an amalgamation of the words “frenetic” and “energy,” and include American composer Charles Ives’ March No. 6, “Here's to Good Old Yale,” and Australian-born composer and arranger Percy Grainger's “Shepherd’s Hey.”