The President's Corner
July 4, 2002; additional material added July 8
Life or Death
I think it was Bill Shankly, manager of Liverpool Football Club, who said famously, "Football is not a matter of life and death, it is more important than that!"
How important is WASBE to you? I suspect that like most of us, you may well go to a great concert, hear a great recording, attend a great lecture, and come away bursting with enthusiasm, enthusiasm that disappears in the cold light of day, when you face thirty incoming emails, a rehearsal of works that you just have not had time to prepare, a missing saxophone section for that rehearsal, a lost second oboe part, a broken flute key or a star trombonist who is giving up band!
That is the importance of the WASBE Conference, to take us out of our everyday life and its problems and give us a chance to experience great music being performed at the highest level. That does not always work, because bands at Conference suffer from the pressures of touring, a commissioned work might turn out to be really quite poor, a star player or two might suddenly be unable to make the trip, but realistically Conferences are usually a magic time for hearing and meeting and greeting.
As I write this, there are just 360 days to go to meeting you all in Jönköping.
The Family Conference
In the Newsletter and the Website in the coming weeks, we shall give you an idea of Jönköping and its surrounding countryside. The conference hotel itself is three minutes from the Conference Centre, and one minute from the most superb swimming pool. You can camp, take a caravan or hire a chalet on the fields along the lake, or you can stay in the city with a wide choice of hotels at very cheap rates.
International Trumpet Guild
Here in Manchester we are just finishing the Conference of the International Trumpet Guild. Over 400 trumpet and cornet fanatics from round the world gathered, and the first major concert was a wind orchestra concert with two great new concerti for trumpet and wind orchestra.
John Hagstrom Chicago Symphony Orchestra
James Thompson Eastman School of Music
Martin Winter Bergen Symphony Orchestra
David Guerrier International soloist
RNCM Wind Orchestra
Conducted by James Gourlay and Tim Reynish
Awake, You Sleepers Larry Bitensky
World Premiere
Leader Lieder Dana Wilson
World Premiere
Concerto Richard Rodney Bennett
2nd Concerto André Jolivet
What a programme and feast of trumpet playing. To get some of the flavour of the ITG Conference and this concert in particular, follow the link to their website
Executive in Jönköping
Our own Conference took a big step forward in the last week of June, when the Executive met in Sweden to review the site and discuss the plans for the next five years of WASBE. As you see elsewhere on the WASBE site, prices in Sweden of hotels and food are low; the facilities at the Elmia Conference Centre are second to none, with great spaces for the trade exhibition and for restaurants, bars, meetings, and conference library. We worked for twelve hours a day and developed not only a terrific conference but also business plans for WASBE for the next five years.
Look on this website for profiles of the bands, and later for news and details of conductors, composers and programmes. Have a great summer or winter holiday, and plan your 2003 holiday in Sweden now.
Recruit a Member
Even if WASBE is not quite a matter of life and death, music, and wind music, is probably pretty important for you. Why not get a friend or colleague to join — on-line at WASBE.ORG — and build on the incredible potential of this very young musical medium.
I think when members of the New York Philharmonic and Chicago Symphony are beginning to play wind music, it is maybe time that we had a lot more confidence and pride in what has been achieved in the past fifty years in terms of repertoire and performance standards. Recruit a new member and help build WASBE into a major musical force in the 21st century.
Turin Hemispheres
Eric Rombach-Kendall <rombach•unm.edu> writes from New Mexico
The same weekend the San Francisco Symphony was performing George Washington Bridge, the New York Philharmonic was premiering a new wind work by Joseph Turrin called Hemispheres. The work was commissioned by Kurt Masur for the Philharmonic's final subscription concerts with Masur and for its tour of Germany and Asia. The work has been well received by audiences in New York and Germany and has received positive reviews every place it has been performed.
Hemispheres is in three movements, approximate length 20 minutes, and is scored for large orchestral winds, percussion, harp, and piano/celeste. I believe this is a substantial new work for winds and its high profile premiere has given the work some momentum. Another wind work of Turrin's, Fandango, will be broadcast live on PBS on July 18 from the Lincoln Center. Fandango features principal Trumpet Phil Smith and Principal Trombone Joe Alessi as soloists with the NY Philharmonic wind section.
Thanks to Eric for his newsflash. This contact with the profession is of course crucial to our development.
ITG Conference
At the current ITG Conference in Manchester, UK, I was privileged to talk with delegates about the extraordinary wealth of trumpet concertos available, including the Turrin Chronicles and Fandango which Eric Rombach-Kendall commissioned and premiered.
In the evening concert on Tuesday 2nd July I was very fortunate to take part in an extraordinary programme of trumpet concertos:
TRUMPET CONCERTOS July 2002, RNCM Manchester With the RNCM Wind Orchestra Conductors James Gourlay, Clark Rundell & Timothy Reynish Awake you Sleepers Larry Bitensky Soloist John Hagstrom, Chicago Symphony Orchestra Concerto no 2 Andre Jolivet Soloist David Guerrier, International soloist Lieder Leader Dana Wilson Soloist James Thompson, Eastman School of Music Trumpet Concerto Richard Rodney Bennett Soloist Martin Winter, Bergen Symphony Orchestra
What a programme and feast of trumpet playing. To get some of the flavour of the ITG Conference and this concert in particular, follow the link to their website. [Editor's Note: This link, as well as many more, is always available on our World Links page. Just click on the Resources tab, then on World Links.]
Played on July 4th:
Dialogue for Trumpet, Cornet and Wind Band Peter Lawrence Soloists Richard Carson Steuart & Russell Gray
My paper was called:
"Think Hagen, Hetu & Husa Instead of Haydn & Hummel"
TRUMPET CONCERTOS With wind ensemble/band accompaniment (A partial listing made for WASBE and the ITG) Concerto for Trumpet Mary Jean van Appledorn Trumpet Concerto Richard Rodney Bennett Trumpet Concerto Jerry Bilik Concerto for Trumpet or Alto Saxophone Henry Brant Concert Piece for Trumpet and Band Timothy Broege Concertino for Trumpet Patrizio Esposito Blow the Wind Southerly Robert Farnon Le Gai Paris Jean Fran�aix When speaks the signal-trumpet tone David Gillingham Evensong Stephen Gryc Concerto for Flugelhorn & Wind Ensemble Daron Hagen Concertino for Trumpet Walter Hartley Concerto for Trumpet Bernard Heiden Concerto for Trumpet Jacques Hetu Return and Rebuild the Desolate Places Alan Hovhaness Concerto for Trumpet and Wind Ensemble Karel Husa Concerto no 2 for Trumpet Andre Jolivet Omaggio alla Tromba Jan Kapr Sonata for Trumpet and Wind Ensemble Kent Kennan Fantasy William Latham Suite for Trumpet William Latham Concerto for Trumpet and Wind Symphony Orchestra Kamillo Lendvay Tango-Tarantella Jukka Linkola Concerto Grosso (horn, trumpet, trombone) William Linn Concertino for Trumpet and Band Martin Mailman Concerto for Trumpet and Wind Orchestra Andrei Petrov Serenades Daniel Pinkham Trumpet Concerto Amilcare Ponchielli Concerto for Trumpet, Cornet and Flugel Horn Alfred Reed Concerto for Trumpet and Winds Jerzy Sapieyevski Exchanges Hale Smith Rhapsody for Trumpet and Winds Fisher Tull Chronicles Joseph Turrin Fandango for Trumpet and Trombone & Wind Band Joseph Turrin Concertino for Trumpet Maurice Whitney Concerto no 1 for Trumpet and Wind Ensemble Alec Wilder Concerto no 2 for Trumpet, Flugel Horn and Wind Ensemble Alec Wilder Concerto for Jazz-Trumpet & Symphonic Band Thorstein Wollmann Arrangements with "expanded Harmonie" Trumpet Concerto in Eb Haydn/Rumbelow Double Concerto for Two Trumpets Vivaldi/Rumbelow
My own personal contribution to the genre of Trumpet with wind is in commissioning one of my favorite works, a "Desert Island disc", the Concerto for Trumpet and Wind Orchestra by Richard Rodney Bennett, with its haunting slow movement, a tribute to Miles Davis based on The Maid of Cadiz, which happens to be very similar to the theme of the whole concerto, (a twelve-note theme which you can come away whistling).
Researching the repertoire has been a terrific pleasure; I believe that there are more significant works for trumpet and wind ensemble/band than for any other combination. These include Kennan's own arrangement of his Sonata, Turrin's Chronicles written for Philip Smith of the New York Philharmonic, Lendvay's virtuosic Concerto which was premiered by Martin Winter at the 1991 Manchester WASBE Conference, Hagen's "funk" crossover Concerto �.think Bogart in a trenchcoat, night-time (again) and falling rain, Jean Fran�aix's little chamber work with wind dectet, Alfred Reed's exploration of popular idioms and Robert Rumbelow's expert realizations of Harmonie accompaniment to the Haydn and Vivaldi Double, written for the Eastman Wind Ensemble. And after the ITG Conference in Manchester, July 2002, we shall have three more concertos; THANKS, ITG!
Tim Reynish, President of WASBE, former Head of School of Wind and Percussion, RNCM
Many thanks to Eric for his work in commissioning the Turrin and Gryc works.
The above listing is incomplete of course - anyone wishing to add to it, please get in touch. We are talking with ITG about putting it on our websites jointly, possibly with brief sound bytes, publishers, length, as a model for development of future information on quality repertoire.
We hope to build WASBE web www.WASBE.ORG into a major resource for information on all aspects of repertoire. Do help in this please. You can check in to the ITG Conference web via the WASBE site.
Tim Reynish