On Thursday, March 10th beginning at 7:30 pm at the Beach/Schmidt Performing Arts Center, the Fort Hays State University Bands will present their first concert of the semester. The Symphonic Winds, under the direction of Dr. Lane Weaver, will open the program with Jay Bocook’s grandiose Gloriana, to be followed by Francis McBeth’s Of Sailors and Whales, Five Scenes from Melville. Thursday’s performance will be led by four student conductors, Ashley McKinley, Ben Williams, Katie Glading and Renee Trevino. All are seniors majoring in Music Education.
The second half of the program will feature the Wind Ensemble lead by Jeff Jordan and will open with David Maslanka’s Mother Earth, A Fanfare followed by the premiere of Jordan’s own original composition Too Soon for Thunder. The piece, which takes its title from a 1943 painting of the same name by American artist Kay Sage, was a result of a concern over the second world war coming so soon on the heels of the first. The band composition does not attempt to depict extra-musical ideas through standard musical notation, but to create a work built around the idea of conflict.
Too Soon for Thunder is the second of Jordan’s compositions to receive a recent premiere. His Psalms, Praises, and Gifts was performed by Terry Crull and the Fort Hays State University Concert Choir at the Kansas Music Educators Convention last month in Wichita and his Salute! will serve as a concert prelude to a Dallas Wind Symphony performance later in March.
The concert will also feature the suite from Leonard Bernstein’s Mass and Timothy Mahr’s Fantasia in G.
Tickets are $6.00 for adults and $4.00 for Seniors and children twelve and over. Children eleven and under are admitted free as are FHSU students with their ID.