Eastern Utah Wind Symphony
Music by women composers will be the highlight of the Eastern Utah Wind Symphony concert, a college-community concert band at Utah State University-College of Eastern Utah, on Saturday, Nov. 10 at 7:30 p.m. in the Price Civic Auditorium. Also appearing will be a special guest ensemble, the Carbon Junior Honor Band, featuring outstanding students from Helper and Mont Harmon junior high schools.
This archived article was written by: Greg Benson, Ph.D.
Music by women composers will be the highlight of the Eastern Utah Wind Symphony concert, a college-community concert band at Utah State University-College of Eastern Utah, on Saturday, Nov. 10 at 7:30 p.m. in the Price Civic Auditorium. Also appearing will be a special guest ensemble, the Carbon Junior Honor Band, featuring outstanding students from Helper and Mont Harmon junior high schools.
Opening the concert will be Fanfare Aureus, a powerful work that Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville professor Kimberly Archer composed for her alma mater, Florida State University. Next will be Julie Giroux’s The Bonsai Tree, a gentle piece featuring expressive melodies and prominent mallet percussion.
The centerpiece of the concert will be a new composition, West Wind Overture, also by Julie Giroux. The Eastern Utah Wind Symphony is one of 16 bands from nine states that commissioned Giroux to compose West Wind Overture last spring, with premiere performances occurring across the country in the coming months. Julie Giroux is an Emmy Award winner with many notable television and film music credits. She began writing music for concert band in 1983 and now devotes much of her time to composing for professional, military, college and school groups.
The concert will continue with Paper Cut, a modern work by Seattle-based composer Alex Shapiro. Three distinct elements—prerecorded sounds, sheets of paper, and traditional instruments—create interesting audio and visual combinations in this piece.
Next, Shelley Hanson’s Albanian Dance will lend an eastern European flavor to the concert. Hanson holds a Ph.D. in music from Michigan State University and composed Albanian Dance for the East Lansing (MI) High School Concert Band. The Wind Symphony’s final selection, American Heroes, will be a salute to Veterans Day and the United States Armed Forces, including “The Caisson Song,” “The Marines’ Hymn,” “Anchors Aweigh,” “The U.S. Air Force,” and “America the Beautiful.”
Performing after the Wind Symphony will be the Carbon Junior Honor Band, a group organized by music directors Adam Cunningham and Tana Jenson, and comprised of oustanding students from Helper and Mont Harmon junior high schools. The Honor Band will have prepared its program in two days of intensive rehearsal and will be conducted by Matthew Krause from Carbon High School and Gregory Benson from USU Eastern.
The Nov. 10 concert is co-sponsored by the Carbon School District, Price City Culture Connection and USU Eastern. Admission is free.
