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Conference Article Archive

An Overview of the Conference

[Editor's Note: Mark Heron wrote this article on July 6, the day after the Conference concluded. It was originally published on July 12, 2003. Mark directs a very successful community wind band just outside of Manchester, England.]

As I sit on a Swedish tilting train en route to Stockholm thinking back on the last 7 days I thought it might be interesting to offer a few thoughts on what seem to me as the "hot topics".

One Size Fits All?

This was the title of an article in the July 5th Financial Times in which Richard Fairman laments the globalisation of opera, asserting that productions in, for example, Vienna are too often indistinguishable in terms of personnel, direction, and sound from those of the other major houses in London, New York, Paris, Milan, Madrid etcetera.

Such a view is also often expressed in relation to symphony orchestras where globe-trotting maestros, international study, and a glut of widely available recordings are contributing factors to the emergence of an "international" orchestral sound and style at the expense of national traditions.

One of the great things about this conference has been the diversity of the many fine ensembles present. Clearly the fact that most ensembles focused on repertoire from their own country was a factor in this, but it was by no means the only reason. I very much hope that as the medium develops in terms of professionalism, and the interchange of conductors, soloists, repertoire and recordings continues apace, that we do not lose these distinctive characteristics.

[School/ Community/ Military/ Professional/ University]* Bands
*(delete as appropriate)

In a session on Saturday morning composer Chris Marshall warned against compartmentalisation. He was referring to the wind world's penchant for isolating itself from colleagues in the orchestral, choral and opera worlds, but it also seems to me to be a problem within the field of wind music itself.

The daily sessions at 16:00 were the only times during the conference when there was a choice of events, with up to 6 or 7 different clinics or lectures taking place simultaneously. Whilst many attracted a wide range of audience I did pick up on a geographical split at certain times.

My own session on Thursday, was about repertoire selection and the commissioning process. Of the good-sized audience with the exception of one Canadian there were no other North Americans. Something to do, perhaps, with the fact that the title of the session had "Community Bands" somewhere within it? Equally, some of the research presented by our transatlantic colleagues was very much focused on the university and college field, something that I heard commented on more than once.

On separate occasions during the conference Tim Reynish and Adam Gorb suggested dropping the "wind" and "new" prefixes and just talking about music. Perhaps we can draw an analogy with that and delete everything in the square brackets?

Programme of the Week

I wrote earlier in the week about the Sunday night concert by the Staff Band of the Norwegian Army and as a logical, coherent concept their programme remains for me the highlight of the conference.

If by "programme of the week", however, we refer to the printed material handed out to the audience as they entered the concert hall there can only be one winner. The high quality offering by the National Youth Wind Ensemble was professionally designed and printed, there were English and German language versions available, and the content provided a wealth of information about the composers, the works (mostly written by the composers themselves), and their commissioning history.

In short, nothing that one wouldn't expect as a matter of course at a professional symphony orchestra concert. It was unfortunate, then, that the NYWE's offering stood out a mile from the rest of the pack.

Perhaps this seems a trivial thing to pick up on, but in addition to the need to present a professional image, given the nature of the repertoire that we believe in and want to promote helping the audience in every way possible is vital – even in such a specialised environment as a WASBE conference.

The paucity of spoken introductions in the concerts was also disappointing. Maybe some kind of verbal communication with the audience about the music could be mandatory for Singapore in 2005. I for one would have preferred that to the introductions at the beginning of the concerts, which generally duplicated information about ensemble and conductor which was covered in even the most scant of programmes.

Too much back-slapping?

I was excited early in the week by the views and opinions of "non-WASBE" clinicians Charles Peltz and Gary Hill, and of course Tim Reynish can always be relied on to challenge the status quo.

However, towards the end of the conference I did feel that some of the sessions which could have stimulated lively debate contained a little too much mutual congratulation. Of course it is important to recognise progress, and in artistic terms this conference was extremely well conceived, but I do hope that constructive, substantiated criticism, and dare I say a little controversy, continue to have a part to play.

The Conductors

Don't worry webmaster – I'll be careful here!

On the whole I thought the standard of conducting, with not many exceptions, was very good and often considerably better than that. But is that enough?

An event such as this with 14 concerts in 7 days permits the evaluation and comparison of many different techniques and styles and I think I still feel that wind bands are still too willing to accept a time-beater instead of a conductor. It also seems to me that too many wind band conductors conduct wind bands as if they were conducting a wind band - have a think about that one.

To return once more to the Norwegians, it was great to see a string player turned conductor on the podium, and as a rule I felt that the most effective conductors throughout the week were those who have broad experience in many different genre. Obviously in some parts of the world the system makes it more difficult for young conductors to achieve this wide range but it would be nice to see WASBE encouraging members to get their bands to look outside the genre for their guest conductors and clinicians, as well as to those at the top of the band tree.

It would also be a hugely significant step to have more top quality orchestral conductors performing at the next conference. Rattle and Tilson Thomas now regularly programme wind music in their seasons, and whilst they may be a step too far just yet there are many just below their exalted level who could offer a different dimension.

Repertoire

Finally, the thread which holds the whole thing together, causes the most controversy, and without which none of us would have been here.

It is natural, I think, to experience a little bit of overkill at some point in 7 days of largely challenging contemporary music. My only previous comparable experiences have been the 3 day BASBWE conferences in the UK so I was a little daunted by the prospect of listening to over 100 pieces of music written for the same medium, much of it for the first time.

However, the quality has been generally high, and whilst in most of the concerts I could have done with a greater variety of instrumentation and more frequent reductions in velocity and decibel level, I think I coped pretty well. That I did suggests to me that either I am completely sad and utterly beyond help, or – hopefully more likely for all sorts of reasons – that there was enough emotional and intellectual stimulation in the music and performances I have heard this week to prevent the slide into that twilight zone of wind-band-fatigue.

I look forward with interest to revisiting much of the repertoire through the conference recordings, and discovering with the pieces which were new to me where the second impression differs from the first. For the moment though, if you will permit me to adopt the mantle of "arbiter of taste" here are the 11 works (it was going to be 10 but I couldn't decide what to leave out) that made the biggest impression as a result of the performances they received this week. In chronological order of performance:

Mark Heron