Variations on “America”
Charles Ives (arr. Schuman)
(1949)

Variations on “America” was originally a composition for organ. Composed in 1891 when Ives was seventeen, it is an arrangement of a traditional tune, known as My Country, ‘Tis of Thee, and was at the time the de facto anthem of the United States. The tune is also widely recognized in Thomas Arne’s orchestration as the British National Anthem, God Save the Queen, and in the former anthems of Russia, Switzerland, and Germany, as well as being the current national anthem of Liechtenstein and royal anthem of Norway.

The variations are a witty, irreverent piece for organ, probably typical of a “silly” teenage phenom like Ives. According to his biographers, the piece was played by Ives in organ recitals in Danbury and Brewster, New York, during the same year. At the Brewster concert, his father would not let him play the pages which included canons in two or three keys are once, because they were “unsuitable for church performances –They upset the elderly ladies and made the little boys laugh and get noisy!”

This work was transcribed for orchestra in 1964 by William Schuman and for band in 1968 by William Rhodes.

—Evelyn Webber

Ladder to the Moon
Michael Daugherty
(2006)

Ladder to the Moon is inspired by the urban landscapes of American artist Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1968), who lived and painted in Manhattan before moving to New Mexico in 1934. From 1925-30, O’Keeffe created over twenty New York paintings of newly constructed skyscrapers, such as the Radiator Building and the Shelton Hotel. Like experimental photographers of the era, such as Alfred Stieglitz, O’Keeffe discovered a different reality in the form of skyscrapers, simultaneously realistic and abstract. Although Stieglitz (her husband at the time) claimed it was “an impossible idea” for a woman to paint New York, O’Keeffe went on to create some of her finest work during this time, motivated by her own conviction that “one can’t paint New York as it is, but rather as it is felt.” Ladder to the Moon is a musical tribute to the art of O’Keeffe, recreating the feeling of skyscrapers and cityscapes in Manhattan of the 1930s.

I. Night, New York is my musical perspective on skyscrapers as seen by O’Keeffe from an elevated height in New York at night: she often painted from her high-rise apartment on the thirtieth floor of the Shelton Hotel. Like her paintings, which featured only one or two buildings in the calm of the night, the music of this movement is intimate. Soulful woodwind melodies rise in dark soaring spirals to evoke a nocturnal view. A violin plays repeated pizzicato (plucked) and arco (bowed) patterns, providing a counterpoint like the visual rhythm of hundreds of brightly-lit windows on a skyscraper seen from afar.

II. Looking Up offers another musical perspective on skyscrapers, as seen from below. In 1927 O’Keeffe painted the Radiator Building, looking from the ground up and leading the eye upward on a ladder of vision. In this movement I have composed a ladder of sound, featuring virtuosic and expressive music for the violin in ascending vertical lines. Meanwhile the ensemble is structured in complex light and dark patterns, like the moon reflecting off the side of a building. A reflective slow section features tremolo violin, double bass harmonics, bowed vibraphone, and musical flights of fancy heard in the clarinet and horn. All instruments combine to suggest the rising spirit of the American skyscraper: an inspiring flight heavenward.

—Michael Daugherty

Afrospire
Bakhari Nokuri
(2023)

In the process of creating this work, I found it hard to place a label on it. This composition is a swelling-dance inspired by afro-cuban rhythms and grooves, most notably from chick Corea’s “La Fiesta” and Stan Kenton’s “Malagueña”. While the harmonic language in the piece shifted over time from when the piece was first created in April 2022, the meaning and feeling of the piece never changed. When I started the work, I was going through a particularly challenging time in school, lacking motivation and drive. I had to dig deep inside myself to find a sense of  motion and reason to go on. I turned to music, finding songs that instilled a fire in me. I found that the sounds of African drums resonated within my soul the most, making me feel connected to my African roots, and pushing me to go on. Afrospire encapsulates this feeling of being transcended from reality and being left in a trance or dream that tells you to keep going. The word itself is a combination of two words: Afro-, meaning relating to african diaspora, and Spir-, deriving from spirit.

—Bakhari S. Nokuri

…And The Mountains Rising Nowhere
Joseph Schwantner
(1977)

…And The Mountains Rising Nowhere (1977) was written especially for Donald Hunsberger and the Eastman Wind Ensemble with the aid of a Composer Fellowship Grant awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts. The work is scored for amplified piano, six percussionists, winds and brass, and seven glass crystals (the glass harmonica played by the oboists). It is the latest in a series of works which incorporate the glass crystals into the sonic tapestry of the ensemble.

The title of the work is a line from a poem written by my friend, poet, and writer Carol Adler. The following poem is contained in a collection of poems entitled Arioso:

Sepia
Moonbeams

An afternoon sun blanked by rain
And the mountains rising nowhere
The sound returns
The sound and the silence chimes

While the work is not specifically programmatic, the poem nevertheless acted as the creative impetus for the composition and provided, for me, an enigmatic, complex, and powerful imagery creating a wellspring of musical ideas and feelings in sympathetic resonance with the poem. The instrumentalists of the wind ensemble, besides playing in a traditional manner, are also required to sing (“celestial choir”), whistle, play glass crystals, water-gongs, bow antique cymbals, vibraphones, and tam-tams, among other instruments and techniques that are employed. The percussion choir, with its wide diversity of instrumental and sonorous possibilities, plays a fundamentally important role in projecting, along with the amplified piano, musical materials in the work. The recognition of that role is emphasized by their foreground placement in the ensemble.

…And The Mountains Rising Nowhere is respectfully dedicated to Carol Adler, Donald Hunsberger, and the fine performers of the Eastman Wind Ensemble.

—Joseph Schwantner

Rest
Frank Ticheli
(2010)

Created in 2010, Rest is a concert band adaptation of my work for SATB chorus, There Will Be Rest, which was commissioned in 1999 by the Pacific Chorale, John Alexander, conductor. In making this version, I preserved almost everything from the original: harmony, dynamics, even the original registration. I also endeavored to preserve carefully the fragile beauty and quiet dignity suggested by Sara Teasdale’s words. However, with the removal of the text, I felt free to enhance certain aspects of the music, most strikingly with the addition of a sustained climax on the main theme. This extended climax allows the band version to transcend the expressive boundaries of a straight note-for-note setting of the original. Thus, both versions are intimately tied and yet independent of one another, each possessing its own strengths and unique ideas.

The choral work, There Will Be Rest, published by Hinshaw Music, is dedicated to the memory of Cole Carson St. Clair, the son of my dear friends, conductor Carl St. Clair and his wife, Susan.

The concert band work, Rest, was commissioned by Russel Mikkelson and family in memory of his father, Elling Mikkelson.

—Frank Ticheli

Blue Shades
Frank Ticheli
(1997)

In 1992 I composed a concerto for traditional jazz band and orchestra, Playing With Fire, for the Jim Cullum Jazz Band and the San Antonio Symphony. That work was composed as a celebration of the traditional jazz music I heard so often while growing up near New Orleans. I experienced tremendous joy during the creation of Playing With Fire, and my love for early jazz is expressed in every bar of the concerto. However, after completing it I knew that the traditional jazz influences dominated the work, leaving little room for my own musical voice to come through. I felt a strong ned to compose another work, one that would combine my love of early jazz with my own musical style.

Four years, and several compositions later, I finally took the opportunity to realize that need by composing Blue Shades. As the title suggests, the work alludes to the Blues, and a jazz feeling is prevalent — however, it is in not literally a Blues piece. There is not a single 12-bar blues progression to be found, and except for a few isolated sections, the eighth-note is not swung.

The work, however, is heavily influenced by the Blues: “Blue notes” (flatted 3rds, 5ths, and 7ths) are used constantly; Blues harmonies, rhythms, and melodic idioms pervade the work; and many “shades of blue” are depicted, from bright blue, to dark, to dirty, to hot blue. At times, Blue Shades burlesques some of the clichés from the Big Band era, not as a mockery of those conventions, but as a tribute. A slow and quiet middle section recalls the atmosphere of a dark, smoky blues haunt. An extended clarinet solo played near the end recalls Benny Goodman’s hot playing style, and ushers in a series of “wailing” brass chords recalling the train whistle effects commonly used during that era.

Blue Shades was commissioned by a consortium of thirty university, community, and high school concert bands under the auspices of the Worldwide Concurrent Premieres and Commissioning Fund.

—Frank Ticheli

Lina Bahn is a violinist who has a keen interest in collaborative and innovative repertoire, and has been called “brilliant” and “lyrical” by the Washington Post. Her most recent publication of Mean Fiddle Summer on the Naxos Label was hailed by the ClevelandClassical.com, “From start to finish, the violinist demonstrates her adroit technical facility, kaleidoscope of colors, and consummate musical taste.”

As a committed educator, she was on the faculty at the University of Colorado-Boulder from 2008-2015, and has taught masterclasses and lessons throughout the world, including those at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory in Singapore, the Sydney Conservatory, Hong Kong University, Renmin University in Beijing, The Glenn Gould School at the Royal Conservatory of Music, among others.  She was on the faculty of the Sierra Summer Academy of Music from 2001-2013, the Institute of the Palazzo Rucellai in Florence, Italy, Green Mountain Chamber Music Summer Festival, the Borromeo Music Festival, the Mostly Modern Festival, and the Atlantic Music Festival. Currently, she teaches at the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

Intrigued by the relationship between art and social context, Bahn is one of four founding members of MoVE (Modern Violin Ensemble modernviolinensemble.org). MoVE is an innovative quartet of four violinists, committed to commissioning music and starting a canon of repertoire for this relatively unknown instrumentation. Along with MoVE, she has collaborated with cellist Matt Haimovitz to produce a program dedicated to ocean/water awareness at the National Gallery of Art.

Bahn was a member of the award-winning Corigliano Quartet, which held prestigious residency posts at The Juilliard School, Indiana University and Dickinson College, as well as on summer faculty at Madeline Island Chamber Music Festival, Marrowstone, Canandaigua Chamber Festival, and the Chicago Suzuki Institute. The quartet’s performances have brought them to such venues as The Library of Congress, Alice Tully Hall, Ravinia Festival, Corcoran Gallery, Phillips Collection, Carnegie Hall, and the Library of Congress, and earned them the ASCAP/CMA Award for Adventurous Programming. In 2007, their Naxos Records recording of quartets by John Corigliano and Jefferson Friedman was selected by The New Yorker magazine as one of the year’s “Best 10 Recordings.” The Corigliano Quartet was lauded by the Strad Magazine for their “abundant commitment and mastery”, and praised as “musicians who seem to say ‘listen to this!’” by the New York Times. They have been broadcast on NPR’s Performance Today, All Things Considered, and Backstage Pass, Chicago’s WFMT’s Live From Studio One, and can be heard on the Albany, CRI, Naxos, and Bayer Labels.

Chamber music performances have included recitals and concerts in festivals such as the Oregon Bach Festival, the Costa Rican International Chamber Festival, the Sierra Summer Festival, the Grand Canyon Music Festival, the Garth Newel Music Series, and the Festival de Música de Cámara de San Miguel de Allende, and Music on the Hill in Rhode Island.  In the spring of 2010, she was on tour with the Takacs Quartet, performing at Carnegie Hall, the Southbank Centre, Concertgebouw, and the Mariinsky Theater.  From 1992-1994 she toured extensively throughout Chile with the Bahn-Mahave-Browne piano trio as a recipient of national grants to teach and perform.  In 2005, their piano trio was selected to perform for the president of Chile and the King of Indonesia, in Kuala Lumpuur.

In Washington, D.C., Bahn was the Executive Director and violinist with the VERGE Ensemble for fourteen years, while it was the resident ensemble of the Corcoran Gallery of Art. The VERGE Ensemble performed in Paris, New York, Cleveland, at the Livewire Festival (UMBC) and Third Practice Festival (Richmond), University of Virginia, and was the resident ensemble for the June in Buffalo Festival in 2009.  They have performed at Le Poisson Rouge, The Issue Project Room, and the National Museum of American Indians.  She is was a member of the National Gallery New Music Ensemble of the Smithsonian in 2010, which gave its inaugural performance in the East Wing, performing works of Xenakis, Antosca, and a premiere by Roger Reynolds. The National Gallery Ensemble participated in the 2012 Washington D.C. John Cage Centennial Festival, with performances at the East Wing, the NGA Auditorium, and at the Maison Française of the French Embassy.  These included premieres of composers Christian Wolff, Beat Furrer, Robert Ashley, and George Lewis.

As a soloist, she has made appearances with the Chicago Chamber Orchestra, The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, La Orquesta Sinfonica de la Serena (Chile), and the Malaysian National Symphony Orchestra, the Fort Collins Symphony, and Pro Musica Colorado Chamber Orchestra. Solo recitals include those at the Phillips Collection, The Stone, Issue Project Room, and at The Corcoran Gallery of Art.  She has commissioned numerous new and arranged works including those by Benjamin Broening, Ken Ueno, Dan Visconti, Jeffrey Mumford, Adam Silverman, Steve Antosca, Keith Fitch, Daniel Wohl, Pamela Z, Morton Subotnick, Daniel Kellogg, among others.

Bahn studied with Dorothy DeLay at the Juilliard School for her undergraduate degree. She completed her Masters degree as the recipient of the Jane Bryant Fellowship Award under the tutelage of Paul Kantor.  Her Doctorate in Music is from Indiana University, where she was an Associate Instructor and studied with Miriam Fried and Paul Biss. Her early training in Chicago started with Lillian Schaber and she finished her high school years under the guidance of Roland and Almita Vamos.