Northshore Concert Band & Loyola Academy Bands

Welcome

We are delighted to welcome you to the second annual side-by-side performance of Northshore Concert Band and the Loyola Academy Band. Tonight’s concert celebrates the artistic partnership between NCB and Loyola Academy, which provides enriching musical experiences for students and community members alike.

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 Wilmette since its founding. We have presented over 100 concerts at Gillson Park — the first on August 19, 1958, under the direction of John P. Paynter, and the most recent on October 17, 2021, under the baton of Dr. Mallory Thompson. NCB performed its first concert at Loyola Academy on May 14, 1961, and presented annual concerts at Loyola from 1985 to 2000.

Northshore Concert Band extends its deepest gratitude to Rev. Gregory J. Ostdiek, Tim Devine, Susan McGovern, Chris Penna, Patricia Patterson, and Sean McQuinn of Loyola Academy for their tremendous support and creativity, which allows this partnership to flourish and prosper.

We invite you to attend our weekly open rehearsals at the Leemputte Family Theater, and we hope you will join us again on February 18, 2024, for our next series concert, A Lifetime of Music.

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

THE PLANETS, OP. 32
Gustav Holst

Mars, the Bringer of War
Transcribed by Merlin Patterson

Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity
Transcribed by Clark McAlister
Edited by Alfred Reed

Gustav Holst, a man with a wide range of interests, composed The Planets over nearly three years between 1914 and 1917, drawing heavy inspiration from astrology. Tonight’s program features two of the most recognizable movements from this monumental work: “Mars, the Bringer of War” and “Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity.”

“Mars,” the first movement, was composed prior to the start of World War I. Throughout the movement, an ominous and eventually fervent and aggressive ostinato persists, creating an unstable foundation in which harmonic dissonances proliferate. “Jupiter,” the fourth movement, portrays the abundance of vitality characteristic of our solar system’s largest planet. The movement begins with a vigorous and energetic melody, followed by a stately processional theme. (That theme was later used and popularized as the melody for the British patriotic hymn “I Vow to Thee, My Country.”)

ALLERSEELEN (ALL SOULS’ DAY)
Richard Strauss
Arranged by Albert Oliver Davis
Edited by Frederick Fennell

While Richard Strauss is primarily renowned for his grand orchestral tone poems, a significant portion of his compositional career was dedicated to vocal works. In addition to his groundbreaking operas, Strauss composed over 130 art songs. His opus 10 consists of eight songs, including Allerseelen, and was penned in 1882 when the composer was just 18 years old.

The text reads:

Place on the table the fragrant mignonettes,
Bring inside the last red asters,
and let us speak again of love,
as we once did in May.

Give me your hand, so that I can press it secretly;
and if someone sees us, it’s all the same to me.
Just give me your sweet gaze,
as once you did in May.

Flowers adorn today each grave, sending off their fragrances;
one day in the year the dead are free.
Come close to my heart, so that I can have you again,
as I once did in May.

This arrangement for winds and percussion expands on Strauss’ original work by including newly composed material connecting each verse.

HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE
Joe Hisaishi
Arranged by Yo Goto

Hayao Miyazaki’s film have garnered an international following due to their wistful, childlike, and evocative settings. His animated motion picture Howl’s Moving Castle, released in 2004, is set in a fictitious kingdom where magic and 19th-century technology coexist. Like many of Miyazaki’s works, the story is narrated from the perspective of a child — a young hatter named Sophie. After being transformed into an old woman by a witch, Sophie encounters a wizard named Howl and is drawn into his resistance against the King’s warmongering. Joe Hiashi’s score to Howl’s Moving Castle captures the fantasy and wonder of the setting as experienced through a child’s eyes. This arrangement by Yo Goto sets five scenes from the film and soundtrack, which are played without pause.

MARCH, OP. 99
Sergei Prokofiev
Arranged by James Meredith

Written at a time when many Russian composers were turning to the march genre as a show of support to their country during World War II, Prokofiev’s opus 99 was penned in honor of May Day, also known as International Workers’ Day. May Day is perhaps the most important political holiday in the Soviet calendar, second only to the October Revolution. The march was broadcast over government radio as part of the 1944 May Day celebration and was later included in Prokofiev’s opera The Story of a Real Man. Sounding like music fit for a colorful, big-top circus show, the main theme is utterly memorable in its bouncing vigor and celebratory cheer — a departure from the somber and militaristic music being written at the time.

BARNUM AND BAILEY’S FAVORITE
Karl King
Edited by Loras John Schissel

Karl L. King began his career playing the baritone in a circus band before becoming bandmaster for Barnum and Bailey’s “The Greatest Show on Earth.” In addition to conducting, he composed innovative music to match the exciting emotions and rhythms of circus acts. While performing with the Barnum and Bailey Band in 1913, bandmaster Ned Brill asked King to write a special march which was to become the theme of the circus. Barnum and Bailey’s Favorite is the result of that request and is dedicated to Brill. The pieces, perhaps unsurprisingly, contains an active part for the baritone and is considered to be among the more challenging works in the American march repertoire.

BARNUM AND TESLA’S TANDEM BICYCLE
Erika Svanoe

“Barnum and Tesla’s Tandem Bicycle” is the fourth and final movement of Erika Svanoe’s Steampunk Suite, which was arranged by the composer for wind ensemble based on her earlier work Steampunk Scenes. The work explores various scenes that take place in a fictional alternate history featuring notable people alive in the Victorian era, including Charles Ives, Marie Curie, H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, P.T. Barnum, and Nikola Tesla. Popular music from the era is scattered throughout and often combined with the sounds of clockwork and imagined steam technology, as well as elements of composers from the time, like John Philip Sousa, Kurt Weill, and Aram Khachaturian. The end result is a remarkably innovative and entertaining march where each section of the band has an opportunity to showcase its talents.