Patriotic voice of Wind Symphony complemented by local honor band

The Eastern Utah Wind Symphony, a college-community ensemble at College of Eastern Utah, will present the second concert of its 2005-06 season on Saturday, Nov. 5 at 7:30‚ p.m. in the CEU Geary Theatre.
Also performing will be the Castle Country Honor Band, featuring talented eighth and ninth-grade students from Canyon View, Helper, Mont Harmon and San Rafael junior high schools in Carbon and Emery counties.
The Wind Symphony will open the program with The Star-Spangled Banner and America the Beautiful. The National Anthem Project is a campaign that encourages singing The Star-Spangled Banner and spotlights the important role of music education in giving our country a patriotic voice.
In support of this endeavor, Eastern Utah Wind Symphony concerts regularly include the playing and singing of our National Anthem.
Carmen Dragon’s lush setting of America the Beautiful will follow. Dragon was a prolific composer and arranger who also appeared often as conductor with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra during the 1950s and 1960s.
Next on the concert will be a newly-published work, Urban Dances. This composition is reminiscent of busy city life and is built on rhythms drawn from today’s popular music. A persistent and lively pulse is apparent throughout the piece.
The composer, Erik Morales, is a freelance musician whose works have been performed by high schools and colleges across the country.
Down a Country Lane will be offered as a contrast to Urban Dances. The great American composer Aaron Copland was commissioned by Life magazine in 1962 to write Down a Country Lane for solo piano.
Copland subsequently created a version for orchestra in 1964, from which a transcription for wind band was produced in 1991.
The last piece to be presented by the Wind Symphony will be a salute to the U.S. armed forces. American Heroes is a recent publication that effectively blends instruments, voices and narration in presenting the familiar songs of the Army, Marines, Navy and Air Force. The final measures of America the Beautiful bring the arrangement to a dramatic conclusion.
The Honor Band’s portion of the program will open with The Summit, a programmatic work that depicts a journey to the top of a mountain – relentless walking, beautiful vistas, uncertainty over finishing the trek and the final ascent.
Next will be a beautiful Welsh song, The Ash Grove, featuring trumpeter Paul Brown as soloist.
The Honor Band will conclude, performing a novelty work, Family Fugue, that tells a musical story about teamwork between the woodwind, brass and percussion sections.