On December 8th, I spent my evening in the Music Building and saw the Queens College wind ensemble and concert band perform. As a former woodwind player, (recorder and bass clarinet throughout elementary and middle school), I felt somewhat nostalgic sitting in the audience watching the show. What I was more impressed by, however, was the stellar quality of the ensembles as a whole, the wind ensemble in particular. Even when revisiting the podcast later, I felt that I was hearing professionals (which is rather ironic, considering how unsure a lot of the performers felt of their sound prior to the show).
The concert consisted mostly of modern repertoire – my favorite – written by composers I had previously never heard of. The first song was the fun “Florentiner March”, a parade-like piece that reminded me of the festive beginning of the Overture from the opera Carmen. Another song utilized the humongous organ in the LeFrak concert hall, which of course sounded amazing in the high ceilinged room with wonderful acoustics.
I was pleasantly surprised to see just how much jazz music influences how I listen to other genres. I’ve been listening to a lot more instrumental jazz music lately, particularly the work of horn players, so it was fun to find sections of the songs that would unexpectedly start swinging, or if a melodic line suddenly followed a blues scale. I was especially pleased that saxophones were utilized at all; as a more modern instrument, they aren’t found in classical repertoire (as cool as it would be, there are no saxophones in Suor Angelica or Don Giovannni), but they were definitely a lovely addition to this concert: they had all the difficult “riffs” in the backgrounds of the songs, and it made the sound of the band all the more warm. On top of that, I left knowing pieces by seven composers I previously hadn’t heard of, my favorite being the last one, “Give Us This Day – Short Symphony for Wind Ensemble.”
Click this link and scroll down to where it says Queens College Concert Band in boldface to hear a podcast of the concert!
