Northshore Concert Band at Niles North High School

Welcome

Thank you for joining us for this joint performance of the Niles North High School Bands and Northshore Concert Band.

Northshore Concert Band was founded in 1956 by John P. Paynter, longtime Director of Bands at Northwestern University and a pioneering music educator. Under his leadership, the Band gained international recognition for its musical excellence, leadership in community music, and commitment to music education.

The Band has been a staple of musical life in Chicagoland since its founding. We presented our first concert for the Skokie community in 1968 — a collaborative concert with the Niles Township High Schools bands presented by Independence Hall of Chicago. Since then, the Band has performed many concerts in local parks and venues, including a landmark concert of our 50th season celebration at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts.

In May 2017, we performed our first joint concert with the Niles North High School bands, and have since presented five additional collaborative concerts, including tonight’s performance. Concerts like these are a core element of the Band’s Lifetime of Music Initiative, demonstrating to young musicians that music can be appreciated throughout their lives and encouraging them to pursue musical endeavors after graduation. We extend our gratitude to the Niles North High School administration and their band director, Mike Moehlmann, for their support of tonight’s concert and their continued commitment to the education of young musicians.

We hope you will consider attending another Northshore Concert Band performance this season! Our next series concert, Tributes & Innovations, will take place on February 16, 2025, and features some of the works heard at tonight’s concert.

Thank you for your support of music education in our community, and we hope to see you again soon.

Mallory Thompson
Artistic Director, Northshore Concert Band

Program

Artists

Dr. Mallory Thompson is emeritus director of bands, professor of music, and coordinator of the conducting program at Northwestern University, where she held the John W. Beattie Chair of Music. In 2003, she was named a Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence. During her tenure, as only the third person in the university’s history to hold the director of bands position, Thompson conducted the Symphonic Wind Ensemble, taught undergraduate and graduate conducting, and administered all aspects of the band program. She recorded five albums with the Northwestern University Symphonic Wind Ensemble for Summit Records, including landmark recordings of David Maslanka’s Symphony No. 4 and Carter Pann’s symphony for winds, “My Brother’s Brain.” Dr. Thompson has served as the Artistic Director of Northshore Concert Band since 2003.

Program Notes

Canzon primi toni à 8
Giovanni Gabrieli (Ed. Robert King)

Venice emerged from its humble origins as a 5th-century refuge to become one of the most powerful and affluent states in 16th-century Europe. At its cultural and musical heart stood the cathedral of St. Mark’s, where the city's unique architectural design fostered a revolutionary approach to music. The church's spatial layout allowed for the development of antiphonal music, in which groups of musicians performed in alternating or combined arrangements. This innovative style reached its peak with the polychoral works of Giovanni Gabrieli, who blended elements of the chanson tradition with the evolving polychoral idiom. His compositions emphasized tonal color and striking contrasts in space, tessitura, and volume, shaping a rich and dynamic musical experience.

Gabrieli’s Canzon primi toni à 8 exemplifies his pioneering techniques, featuring two choirs of four instruments each in a textural interplay of antiphony. The piece opens with the upper voices ornamenting the melody before shifting into bold, repeated chords reminiscent of a "battle chanson." As the composition progresses, interwoven ornamentation builds tension before resolving into a final cadence. Gabrieli’s influence extended far beyond his time, shaping the development of brass music through his clear rhythms, innovative harmonies, and structured diatonic sensibility. His legacy endures in modern brass repertoire, continuing to captivate musicians and audiences with its clarity, richness, and grandeur.

Cathedrals
Kathryn Salfelder

Kathryn Salfelder, an award-winning composer and faculty member at the New England Conservatory, merges historical musical forms with contemporary techniques. Her work frequently draws from late medieval and Renaissance polyphony, creating a rich dialogue between past and present. Cathedrals, a fantasy on Gabrieli’s Canzon per sonar primi toni à 8, exemplifies this approach through its exploration of neo-Renaissance music. The piece utilizes antiphonal textures, 16th-century counterpoint, and canonic structures, all shaped by the golden ratio — a mathematical principle found in nature and Renaissance compositions. Salfelder interweaves three direct quotations from Gabrieli’s work along with subtle, fragmented references, earning the piece the ASCAP/CBDNA Frederick Fennell Prize in 2008.

The composition unfolds with sparse ostinato figures that gradually expand, leading to the first Gabrieli quotation. A section of imitation and fragmented melodies follows, alternating between brass and woodwinds, culminating in a dramatic outburst where the full ensemble plays every pitch of the B-flat minor scale. A shift in texture, marked by mallet percussion, introduces the second quotation, with horns taking the lead while woodwinds carry a lively countermelody. In the final moments, Salfelder masterfully blends historical and modern elements — brass choirs present a rhythmically augmented version of Gabrieli’s theme, while woodwinds and percussion add intricate embellishments, creating a dynamic fusion of Renaissance grandeur and contemporary brilliance.

Huldigungsmarsh (Homage March)
Richard Wagner (Ed. William A Schaefer)

Though Richard Wagner's discriminatory ideologies remain controversial, his contributions to opera epitomize 19th-century artistry and the harmonic evolution of the Romantic period. Born in Leipzig and rising to fame with Rienzi in 1842, Wagner introduced groundbreaking works like Der fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman), Tannhäuser, and Lohengrin. His operas often feature mythical characters and explore themes of good versus evil, with Wagner coining "music drama" to express his belief that these works transcended traditional opera.

Wagner's fortunes changed in 1864 when King Ludwig II of Bavaria became his patron, financing ambitious productions in Munich and supporting the creation of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus. Inaugurated in 1876 with Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung), the theater was celebrated with Huldigungsmarsch, one of Wagner’s few compositions for winds. This piece begins with lyrical themes and brass fanfares, weaving intricate counterpoint and culminating in a powerful recapitulation of the main melody, showcasing Wagner’s signature harmonies and grand orchestration.