2003 WASBE Conference

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herein are those of the
authors and not
necessarily the opinions
of WASBE.

Conference Article Archive

Wednesday, 02 July — Religion, Royalty, Sex & Mystery

That’s what WASBE members who aren’t here in Sweden are missing out on! CBDNA President Gary Hill adopted this as the framework for his excellent keynote address on Monday morning.

In offering his view of where the future of the wind band lies, Gary drew many parallels with society as a whole and argued convincingly that if the medium is to move from the fringes to even the edge of the mainstream it must look outward into the wider world of music, the arts, and the humanities as a whole, rather than what might be termed self-referential navel-gazing.

I was intrigued by the connections Gary drew between the evolution of what he termed ‘industrial assembly line society’ into one where the ‘creative classes’ have a far bigger place, and how despite this the concert giving experience remains rooted in the 19th century. The point being that society today demands interactive, engaging leisure pursuits as opposed to the almost entirely passive experience of attending a concert.

Another main theme was inclusiveness. Again this was linked into the question of where the audience is going to come from. Gary’s argument was based on research that shows that 70% of concertgoers in the US play an instrument or sing. The logical conclusion being that the more inclusive the music education system is, and the more stimulation that can be created in amateur music making, the greater the potential audience pool for what might be called the elite at the top of the pyramid.

The final message, and this is where the sex bit comes in, is that there is an urgent need to cull the rubbish from the repertoire. OK so maybe the link from sex to DNA to the parallels between defective male genes and the way bad wind band music seems to continually self-replicate was a little tenuous but the message was clear: if the repertoire isn’t of good enough quality to be comparable to the best of what is being written for other genre, the wind band movement will remain on the periphery of the ‘real’ music scene.

I wrote Monday about curiosity, musing about parallels between the opening speech by the Culture Minister and what makes people come to these conferences. Today’s ‘c’ word was confidence. This came out of the debate following Gary’s address in which Tim Reynish, Charles Peltz, and others stressed the importance of having the confidence to take bold steps, to be ‘arbiters of taste’ in terms of what deserves to be performed, and to lead rather than simply exist.

The above is nothing more than the briefest of personal observations on a session which I am sure will stimulate much debate, both over the remainder of the conference and in print over the coming months.

Concerts

An organisation which is clearly does not lack confidence, or the willingness to lead, is the Staff Band of the Norwegian Armed Forces who gave a stunning concert on Sunday evening. A terrifically well-constructed programme of mostly Norwegian music was given a very fine performance. A range of instrumentation from nonet to full wind orchestra, quality soloists, variety of pace, repertoire which challenged and communicated, a conductor whose background is as a professional string player, and all from an orchestra whose principal role is military and ceremonial duties. Bravo!

The Danish Concert Band has many fine players and soloist Jesper Juul Sørensen is a first rate trombonist by any standard. One might describe this as a great band concert, but judged alongside their Nordic colleagues the whole experience was, for me, endemic of many of the wind band’s problems.

Much of the repertoire simply washed over me without provoking an emotional or intellectual response. Even Ito’s Gloriosa, which I know well and regard as a fine work did not seem to work. Much of the detail in the woodwinds in the first movement was obliterated by the brass, many of the tempi seemed uncomfortable, and the composer’s explicit instructions for the movements to be played attaca were curiously disregarded. In the last movement, the architecture of dynamics is critical to a successful performance but very little attention was paid to the relationship between f, ff & fff.

The DCB is a big group and dynamic control is difficult with bands at the best of times, but I found the constant high dynamic level a little wearing. I couldn’t help but wonder what the music critic of a major newspaper would have made of the concert. Given that the Danish group is non-professional some might feel my comments are a touch brutal and a little unfair, but the players on show were to my mind more than good enough to have reached a much higher level of performance.

Tuesday night’s concert was by the excellent Florida State University Wind Orchestra. Frank Ticheli’s Symphony No.2 and Scott McAllister’s Black Dog for clarinet solo & winds, both receiving their European premieres, were I thought excellent works and two of the best things I have heard so far this week.

It is great to see composers of the stature of David del Tredici writing for wind orchestra, although I must confess to not being familiar with much of his work. I found his In Wartime interesting but feel I need another hearing before coming to a judgement about it.

So some great repertoire and very fine playing but the evening was really about one man and his contribution to the medium. Jim Croft’s final appearance before retiring as Director of Bands at FSU was a great occasion and it was wonderful to see such a large audience, including many of Jim’s family, friends and former students who had flown in specially, there to mark the occasion.

The warmth of the long ovations given to Jim spoke far more eloquently that any words I could call upon, so I will simply say that it was a pleasure to be there.

Mark Heron