We resume our 2024/25 subscription season on February 16, with Tributes & Innovations, a synthesis of works that pays homage to our musical forebears while embracing the creative minds shaping classical music today.

Led by Artistic Director Mallory Thompson, the concert includes the world premiere of Jay Kennedy’s Let Your Light Shine. Commissioned by NCB, this work pays tribute to Mallory Thompson’s inspiring musical leadership of the Northshore Concert Band and celebrates her enduring influence and vision.

Kennedy writes about Let Your Light Shine:

The piece celebrates Mallory for her superb musicianship and ability to motivate Northshore Concert Band and other ensembles to achieve wonderful performances, as well as her knack in communicating to ensemble members simple and often pithy phrases that effectively epitomize and encourage the musical interpretation to be realized.

The title of the work is one of her oft-used phrases. She has told the performers in her ensembles, “you ideally play to share your joy and love for music with the audience,” so let your light shine in delivering that joy and love. Movement I, Protect Your Fire – another Mallory-esque phrase – is about caring for and nurturing your passion for music. The title of the second movement comes from one of Mallory’s favorite poems, The Summer Day, by Mary Oliver that she regularly shares with ensembles and hundreds of students. Mallory speaks to performers about keeping a Cool Head, Warm Heart – the title of Movement III – knowing the importance in performance of staying calm and composed that will allow caring and emotion to come through in their presentation of the music.

As an added element of the honoring of Mallory, sprinkled throughout the piece are fleeting musical hints and homages of some of the works commissioned by Northshore Concert Band, as well as from several works that she is well-known for creating seminal performances with Northshore Concert Band and Northwestern University Symphonic Wind Ensemble during her career.

Let Your Light Shine Suite for Concert Band
I. Protect Your Fire II. The Summer Day III. Cool Head, Warm Heart
Movement I, Protect Your Fire, is comprised of two parts, the first being mostly lyrical and the second featuring rhythmic vitality. The movement opens with a metallic spark of keyboard instruments from which a sustained cluster in woodwinds and muted trumpets emerges. Following a meditative bass clarinet solo, the initial statement of the first melody is presented by a solo clarinet and continued by flutes and oboes. French horn and trumpet chorales provide brief interludes before the horns reiterate the melody, trumpets extend it, and ascending harmonic support underneath propels the first section to conclusion.
The second section starts briskly with staggered entrances of neighboring, repeating intervals of 5ths in woodwinds that stack to enrich the harmonic density. The section of 5ths releases into a fanfare-like declaration that kicks into a high-energy 5/4 groove. The incessance of ascending major chords in low brass and driving percussion provide an unrelenting underpinning on top of which melodic counterpoint in double reeds, clarinets and saxes, then flutes, trumpets, and horns, elevate the energy. Rhythmic percussion leads into the coda, gradually calming to allow saxes and acoustic bass to transition into the second movement.
“Who made the world?” is the opening line of the Mary Oliver poem, The Summer Day and serves as the inspiration for the start of Movement II. Woodwind and percussion textures in the introduction symbolize that searching sentiment, much like the greyness just before the sunrise. The melody enters in English horn and is continued by oboe (supported by the English horn). Both reeds join in support of a flute solo that extends the melody and becomes the featured element throughout much of the movement.
The final line of the Mary Oliver poem – “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” – provides motivation for the last portion of the movement. A short transition with more instruments joining and enriching the texture lifts to a new tonal center in which the full ensemble soars with the melody, then settles into a peaceful release. The flute solo re-emerges and brings the movement to an emotionally uplifting finish. The day awaits you.
Movement III – Cool Head, Warm Heart – also in two parts, starts with a purposeful and bold timpani solo supportively punctuated by low brass and percussion. That builds into a full ensemble passage and concludes with the entire ensemble vigorously “ripping” into the second portion. Percolating rhythms in percussion provide underlying energy as woodwinds enter with ostinato-like scalar melodic lines that gradually become more harmonically complex. A trumpet line and low brass propel the ensemble forward to a passage marked “joyous spirit.” Major chords in second inversion are featured as primary material, taking impetus from their more supportive use in the first movement. Calmer energy follows and introduces a hymn-like melody in lower sonorities. Snippets and variations of the hymn melodic phrases enter randomly above a passacaglia-like bass line, building to a plagal cadence that abruptly shifts to a brisk tempo and higher energy leading to the flourish of a strong finish.

Jay Kennedy’s career encompasses varied and successful experiences as a composer, arranger, producer, educator, entrepreneur, and administrative leader. Before retiring in 2022, he was the Vice President for Academic Affairs and Vice Provost at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. Before his work in collegiate education, Kennedy composed and produced music for hundreds of television commercials (Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Pontiac, Levi's, Nike, etc.). His music has been heard in feature films (Wayne’s World, Lethal Weapon 2), and television series (One Tree Hill, Felicity), and he was a 2002 Grammy Award finalist for arrangements on Virtuosi by Gary Burton and Makoto Ozone. Kennedy is also active in the marching arts as an adjudicator and clinician and was inducted into the Drum Corps International Hall of Fame in 2007.

World Premiere of Let Your Light Shine