Motu
Christopher Buchanan
 
Motu was written for the Midwest Clinic at the request of Capt. Kenneth Collins, and has proven quite the exciting addition to wind band repertoire. The title comes from the Latin term meaning “of motion” and was inspired by Buchanan’s interests in running and pop music. In his words: The only time I can think is when I’m moving. To this end, I’ve also been influenced by the process and pulse-based music of Steve Reich and Terry Riley, as well as Zack Browning, one of my professors at the University of Illinois, who encouraged me to embrace my first love, popular music, in more classical forms of composition. I also endeavored to explore the nature of motion, at least in my own experience. In some sections, the motion itself acts as the primary force driving the work forward. During others, overlapping, independent lines written in phase impart a sense of stillness to the work, the goal of which being to completely obscure the pulse. Given all the factors above stated, not only do I find myself most able to concentrate while I’m in motion, but it’s frequently the time I feel most at peace.
 
–United States Navy Band, December 19, 2022
 
 
Crackle
Augusta Read Thomas
 
I care about craft, clarity, and passion. My works are organic and, at every level, concerned with transformations and connections. The carefully sculpted musical materials of Crackle are agile and energized, and their flexibility allows a way to braid harmonic, rhythmic, and contrapuntal elements that are constantly transformed — at times whimsical and light, at times jazzy, at times layered and reverberating. Across Crackle’s 11-minute duration, a labyrinth of musical interrelationships and connections unfold that showcase the musicians in a virtuosic display of rhythmic agility, counterpoint, skill, energy, dynamic range, clarity, and majesty. Throughout the kaleidoscopic journey, the work passes through many lively and colorful episodes and, via an extended, gradual crescendo, reaches a full-throttle, sparkling intensity — imagine a coiled spring releasing its energy to continuously propel the musical discourse. Vivid, resonant, brassy, and blazing, Crackle culminates in music of enthusiastic, intrepid (almost Stravinsky-like, or Stravinsky-crossed-with-Bebop-like) spirits while never losing its sense of dance, caprice, and effervescence.
 
Crackle is an expansion and a transcription made by the composer of her composition Brio for orchestra and is dedicated with admiration and gratitude to John Bierbusse on the occasion of his 65th birthday.
 
—Augusta Read Thomas
 
 
Riffs
Jeff Tyzik
 
Riffs is a one-movement composition in three sections, which include a fast swing, a heavy medium swing and an Afro-Cuban finale that turns the wind ensemble into a huge jazz ensemble with the jazz drum soloist leading the way. There is an optional cadenza where the soloist can choose to work out a call-and-response section with the percussionists.
 
This work was premiered by Michael Burritt and the Eastman Wind Ensemble conducted by Mark Scatterday at the Chicago Midwest Clinic in December 2009.
 
 
Tarot
Lindsay Bronnenkant
 
Gustav Holst was incredibly interested in Indian culture, going so far as to teach himself Sanskrit. Some evidence suggests that he tried to incorporate Indian rāgas into his works, and after investigating Holst’s resources and analyzing his The Planets, I believe that Holst tried to reference rāgas that evoked similar characters to those of the planets in his suite. Holst’s access to authentic performance of Indian music was limited, however, and like many composers – especially as a British composer entrenched in modal composition during the English folk song revival of the early twentieth century – he took what he understood of rāgas and filled in the gaps with Western theoretical knowledge, resulting in the treatment of what were once rāgas as scales or modes.
 
I decided to compose a suite that traces Holst’s footsteps but applies his musical experimentation to a new topic: Tarot. Like astrology, Tarot cards have been used for divination, and as each planet in modern astrology represents specific characteristics and personality traits, so too does each Tarot card. Some elements of the Hindustani thāts, Karnātak mēlakarta rāgas, and pitch sets Holst references in his The Planets are referenced in Tarot using a similarly Western approach to portray Tarot card analogs.
 
In Tarot, the Fool represents someone who dives head-first through open doors with enthusiasm (and sometimes with a blissful ignorance of any looming danger). The card represents new beginnings, playfulness, naïveté, and optimism. The first movement, “The Fool,” contains several intentionally comedic moments as the Fool, unaware of the luck manifesting from his will, manages to skip through a minefield unharmed. The movement references the pitches of the Kalyān that are found in “Jupiter,” a benefic planet of good fortune, to represent the Fool’s beginner’s luck. The movement also uses the whole-tone scale hinted at in some of Holst’s themes for “Uranus,” a chaotic and unpredictable planet, to depict the unintentional mayhem that inevitably follows each of the Fool’s steps.
 
In Tarot, the suit of cups corresponds with emotional energy and the element of water. A deeply empathic soul, the King of Cups tempers his emotions by balancing his heart with his head. The King leads diplomatically through compassion. The second movement, “The King of Cups,” references the pitches of mēlakarta rāga Dhavalāmbari from Neptune as a nod to a fellow intuitive and ruler of the sea, and additionally employs the pitches of the Bhairavī that are found in Venus to allude to the King’s kind and gentle countenance.
 
“The Tower” represents surprise, upheaval, and destruction. It represents the collapse of structure, the crumbling of façades based on faulty foundations. The final movement references “Mars, the Bringer of War” with two similar pitch sets: the one Holst uses in Mars, as well as a theme that Holst may have meant to draw from, Bhairav.
 
–Lindsay Bronnenkant
 
 
Deciduous
Viet Cuong
 
For a long time after my father passed away, I felt like I had “lost my leaves.” In the ways that leaves harness light to create energy for trees and plants, I felt like I had so little left to harness creatively. Many days I feared those leaves would never grow back. After struggling for months to write, I finally found some healing while creating Deciduous. This involved revisiting chord progressions that brought me solace throughout my life and activating them in textures that I have enjoyed exploring in recent years. The piece cycles through these chord progressions, building to a moment where it’s stripped of everything and must find a way to renew itself. While I continue to struggle with this loss, I have come to understand that healing is not as much of a linear process as it is a cyclical journey, where, without fail, every leafless winter is followed by a spring. Deciduous was commissioned by the Florida Bandmasters Association and premiered by the 11-12 Florida All-State Band under the direction of Dr. Emily Threinen.
 
–Viet Cuong

Cynthia Johnston Turner
Odds were against Cynthia Johnston Turner becoming a musician let alone a professor of music and conducting in higher education. Born in a small town in Ontario, Canada, no one in her family played an instrument or sang, although there were rumors that her great paternal grandfather was an accomplished mandolinist. Cynthia asked for a piano for Christmas when she was 8 years old, and because it was all her parents could afford, she received a toy electric keyboard from which she was pretty much inseparable until she started the ukulele in grade school. When she picked up the clarinet and saxophone in middle school, a love affair and a career were born.
 
The first in her family to attend university, Cynthia received her Bachelor of Music and Bachelor of Education from Queen’s University, a Master of Education at the University of Victoria, and a Doctor of Musical Arts (Conducting) from the Eastman School of Music. She has received numerous teaching, research, and leadership awards in Canada and the United States.
 
Cynthia was appointed Dean—Faculty of Music at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario July 1, 2021. She leads a school of approximately 400 undergraduate and graduate music majors with programs in traditional conservatory programming coupled with innovative programs such as the Bachelors, Masters, and PhD in Community Music, and Artist Diplomas in Opera Performance, Chamber Music, and Master of Music in Collaboration, Curation, and Creative Performance (MMC3). She also oversees the Laurier Academy of Music and the Arts, a community-based school serving approximately 1000 students ranging from 6 months to 95 years old in the region. In the fall of 2025 Laurier Music will launch a new curriculum that dismantles the hierarchy between “classical” and “popular” music.
 
Before her appointment as Dean, Cynthia was Director of Bands, Professor of Music, and Artistic Director of the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble at the Hodgson School of Music, University of Georgia where she conducted the Hodgson Wind Ensemble, led the Master and Doctoral programs in conducting, provided strategic leadership in diversity, equity, and inclusivity initiatives as well as innovative curriculum, and oversaw the entire band program including the 400+ member Redcoat Marching Band (“Go Dawgs!”). The Hodgson Wind Ensemble performed at the College Band Directors National Association National Convention in 2017. Prior to UGA, Cynthia was Director of Wind Ensembles at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. The Cornell Wind Ensemble undertook multiple service-learning and performance tours to Costa Rica, Panama, inner-city Washington and Pennsylvania where they donated hundreds of instruments and led workshops with students and band directors. She was recently appointed as Artistic Director and Conductor of the Festival Winds of “Summer Music at Saugeen Shores” and the Wellington Wind Symphony, a semi-professional community band in Waterloo, Ontario.
 
Cynthia has guest conducted bands, new music ensembles, and orchestras professionally, at several universities and conservatories, and state honor bands in the United States and abroad. She continues to actively promote commissions by today’s leading and emerging composers around the world with a focus on underrepresented voices. She has been invited to present her research with teaching and technology, innovative rehearsal techniques, and service-learning and music performance at numerous conferences nationally and internationally. She is published in such journals as Interdisciplinary Humanities, International Journal of the Humanities, Music Educators Journal, National Association for Music Education “Teaching Music,” NewMusicUSA.org, Journal of the World Association of Bands and Ensembles, Fanfare Magazine, and Canadian Winds, and has recorded CDs with the Innova and Albany labels. In 2025, “An Evening with Michael Barry—from Showstopper to Encore” with Budapest Winds will be released with Acis Productions. She is a frequent guest on numerous podcasts.
 
Cynthia has served as a board member with the World Association of Symphonic Bands and Ensembles (WASBE) and is a member of College Band Directors National Association (CBDNA), Conductor’s Guild, College Music Society, Humanities Education and Research Association, the National Association for Music Education, and the American Bandmasters Association. She currently serves on the board of the Western International Band Clinic (WIBC) and is faculty at the American Band College (ABC). She serves on the advisory boards of the Institute for Composer Diversity (composerdiversity.com), Lift Music Fund (liftmusicfund.org), and United Sound Music (unitedsoundmusic.org). She is an honorary member of Kappa Kappa Psi and a National Arts Associate member of Sigma Alpha Iota. Cynthia is a sponsored clinician with Conn-Selmer.
 
 
Brandon Lim
Brandon Lim is currently the Principal Percussionist with the Boise Philharmonic, a position he has held since 2022. Formerly, he has appeared with the Houston Symphony, the New World Symphony, and the Omaha Symphony. In addition to his engagements in Boise, Brandon is the owner of Owl Percussion products and enjoys a vibrant freelance career playing a wide range of musical styles.
 
During the Summer of 2024, Brandon was a member of the percussion section at Music Academy of the West, an immersive summer festival for emerging professional musicians in Santa Barbara, California. Brandon is also an alumnus of the Aspen and Texas Summer Music Festivals, as well as the Blackburn Music Academy in Napa, California.
 
Outside of orchestral performance, Brandon has had innumerable experiences performing in a variety of musical settings such as brass choirs, jazz combos, opera and musical theater orchestras, and contemporary music groups. These experiences have given him the opportunity to collaborate with artists such as Curtis Stigers, Josh Bell, Jon Kimura Parker and the Stockholm Chamber Brass quintet.
 
As an advocate for new music, Brandon has performed chamber works by notable composers such as Aaron Kernis, George Crumb, George Lewis, Unsuk Chin, John Adams, and Stewart Copeland and has also premiered works by emerging American composers Theo Chandler, Lucas Lemonholm, and Daniel Leibovic.
 
Recognized as a finalist for the Houston Symphony’s 2015 HSL Concerto Competition and a New Horizons Fellow at the 2018 Aspen Music Festival, Brandon has studied with Brian Del Signore, Doug Howard, Svet Stoyanov, and Michael Werner, and has played under the batons of conductors Robert Spano, Larry Rachleff, Juraj Valčuha, and Stéphane Denève to name a few.
 
A Houston native, Brandon studied at The Shepherd School of Music at Rice University, earning his Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees in Percussion Performance as a student of Richard Brown and Matthew Strauss. He is currently pursuing a Graduate Certificate in Percussion at the University of Southern California as a student of Joseph Pereira, James Babor and Naoko Takada.