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 four 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, A Lifetime of Music, will take place on February 18, 2024, 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.

Peter Gotsch
Board Chair, Northshore Concert Band

Program

Artists

Dr. Mallory Thompson is Director of Bands, Professor of Music, Coordinator of the Conducting Program, and holds the John W. Beattie Chair of Music at Northwestern University. In 2003, she was named a Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence. As the third person in the university’s history to hold the Director of Bands position, Thompson conducts the Symphonic Wind Ensemble, teaches undergraduate and graduate conducting, and administers all aspects of the band program. She has recorded five albums with the Northwestern University Symphonic Wind Ensemble, which are available for streaming on Spotify and Apple Music. Dr. Thompson has served as the Artistic Director of Northshore Concert Band since 2003.

Program Notes

City Girl Sentimentalism
Shuhei Tamura

Japanese composer Shuhei Tamura received his bachelor’s degree from Tokyo University of the Arts and a master’s degree in pedagogy from Tokyo Gakugei University with an emphasis in music education. Tamura is a skilled arranger, as well as a composer, who has written for orchestras, choruses, and brass bands, though he is most prolific in the latter category. His music is heavily influenced by Western music forms that have become the foundation of Japanese instrumental music traditions.

City Girl Sentimentalism was inspired by the sentimental feelings of a woman standing alone at night in the middle of Takaichi, a district located in the Nara Prefecture of southern Japan with a population of nearly 15,000 people. The work is written for an unusual set of instruments: a woodwind sextet (in this case, a flute; two clarinets; and soprano, alto, and baritone saxophones) plus two percussion. The work is highly influenced by jazz and pop music, featuring rhythmic ostinatos and melismatic melodies. A slow, noir style interlude sits at the center of the piece, which is quickly followed by a recapitulation of the familiar main theme and an exciting and conclusive flourish.

Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes of Carl Maria von Weber
Paul Hindemith

Born in Hanau, Germany, in 1895, Paul Hindemith began studying violin at the age of nine and composition in his teens. His musical training helped him support his family as a freelance musician upon the death of his father in World War I. He performed in several professional orchestras — he served as concertmaster for the Frankfurt Opera House Orchestra from 1915-23 — and was appointed to the composition faculty at the Berlin Academy of Music in 1927.

In the mid-1930s, Hindemith refused to stop performing with Jews, and thus his music was banned by the Nazi Party. Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister, publicly denounced him as an “atonal noisemaker” and his music was labeled “degenerate.” He fled to the United States in 1940, where he was showered with invitations to teach and eventually was appointed professor of music at Yale University. Taking American citizenship in 1946, he intended to remain in the United States, but left for Switzerland in 1953 to accept a professorship at the University of Zürich, where he remained until his death in 1963.

Symphonic Metamorphosis was written in 1943 as the result of a suggestion by dancer and choreographer Léonide Massine, who asked Hindemith for a ballet based on the music of Carl Maria von Weber. The two had a falling out due to creative differences — Massine wished for a more literal arrangement and couldn’t hear Weber in Hindemith’s music, and Hindemith felt uninspired by Massine’s latest work at the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. As a result, Hindemith decided to rework his material as an orchestral composition. The work received its premiere on January 20, 1944, by the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Artur Rodzinski, then in his inaugural season as music director of the Philharmonic. The New York Times described the piece as “a real jeu d’esprit by a great master of his medium in a singularly happy mood.” Legendary American ballet choreographer George Balanchine later programmed the work for the New York City Ballet under the title Metamorphoses, which received its premiere in November 1952.

Much of the thematic material of Symphonic Metamorphosis is borrowed from Weber’s music for piano four hands. (Hindemith was familiar with these little-known pieces through playing them with his wife.) The first and fourth movements use themes from Weber’s 8 Pieces for Piano 4 Hands, Op. 60 (1818); the third movement draws from the 6 Pièces, Op. 10a (1809). The second movement is based on Weber’s incidental music to Schiller’s adaptation of Turandot, the same Carlo Gozzi fantasy about China that Puccini used for his 1926 opera.

Although he is best known for his chamber music, sonatas, and concertos, Hindemith’s works for winds significantly influenced the course of wind literature in the mid-20th century. He penned only a handful of works for band, most notably his Konzertmusik für Blasorchester, Op. 41 (1926) and the monumental Symphony in B-flat (1951). Hindemith strongly believed his Symphonic Metamorphosis should be transcribed for concert band, but his busy schedule prevented him from tackling the project himself. Instead, he asked Keith Wilson, his colleague and Director of Bands at Yale University, to undertake the project. After eighteen months, Wilson completed what he considered to be his most significant transcription.

Symphonic Metamorphosis showcases Hindemith’s unique compositional language with its virtuosic woodwind runs, inventive contrapuntal schemes, and prevalent use of perfect fourths. The work begins with a machine-like ostinato, which precedes the introduction of the main theme in the upper woodwinds. Much of the first movement alternates between triumphant brass fanfares and contrapuntal writing for small groups of woodwind instruments, culminating with a bright and climactic A Major chord.

The second movement is based on themes introduced by the flute, clarinet, and piccolo in its opening call and response. After a brief percussion episode, the main theme passes between sections in seven complete statements. The composer’s contrapuntal artistry is put on full display as a second theme is introduced and developed into two fugues — the first ferociously scored for brass, the second a toccata for woodwinds. A second percussion episode leads to an abbreviated recapitulation in which the original theme is presented in a truncated form, again, seven times before resolving with in a serene F Major chord.

Movement three begins with song-like woodwind solos accompanied by colorful, occasionally bird-like, ensemble interjections. The music intensifies through the addition of new instruments and denser harmonies leading to a reintroduction of the opening material enhanced by a virtuosic flute obbligato.

The “March” begins with trumpets and trombones playing a four-note declamatory fanfare based upon the interval of a perfect fourth. Hindemith develops the opening motive into the main theme of the movement, heard first in the woodwinds. In the trio, the horns introduce a second, more heroic theme. The two themes alternate throughout the movement, and the four-note fanfare returns to bring the work to a thrilling conclusion.