Potpourri of music for season finale

Tradition is created when passing on cultural beliefs and practices. One of the oldest traditions in every culture is music.

For Ray Baril, music director of New Edmonton Wind Sinfonia, it seemed perfectly natural to close their four-concert season with Traditions next Wednesday at Convocation Hall.

“There are a number of important traditions in band, especially the traditions from the British band movement,” Baril said.

From the British heritage, Baril introduces two specific styles – that of composers Malcolm Arnold and Percy Grainger.

Arnold’s Four Scottish Dances, for instance, is a set of light music inspired from Scottish country folk tunes. Best known for his film scores, Arnold set the dances to evoke images of Scotland with sounds that imitate bagpipes; a reel and the Scotch snap rhythm. In the mid-section there’s even a comic element.

“You get the sense the band is a bit tipsy. There’s a lightness to it.”

On the other hand Grainger, a rather eccentric Australian, defined the sound of wind ensembles in ways predecessors never accomplished.

“Unlike John Philip Sousa or British military music, Grainger had a specific colour and character. For his time in the late 1920s and 1930s it was innovative and defined a sound new to wind bands.”

Opening the program is a Canadian tradition, Elizabeth Raum’s Fanfare for Brass and Percussion. Raum is the oboist for the Regina Symphony Orchestra. After coming in contact with wind bands, she composed this piece for one of the symphony’s season openings.

“It’s powerful. It’s melodic. In some ways it’s reminiscent of Giovanni Gabrielle’s approach to antiphonal (call and response) choirs in the 1500s.”

The American band world has also been a powerful influence on Canadian music, and the 51-member wind ensemble goose-steps into Samuel Barber’s Commando March.

Switching gears, the band also plays Hymn to the Blue Hour, a salute to that period after sunset when the blue horizon is not quite dark and not quite light.

“It has an element of the blues tradition. It’s not sad, but there’s a poignancy and what this time means to people.”

Gratis of Roberta Sierra, a composer for orchestra, the ensemble also performs Sinfonia No. 3 “La Salsa.”

“It’s a timbau, an underlying rhythmic pattern you find in Afro-Cuban music.”

Traditionally Baril pulls a soloist out of the ranks. This concert first flautist Dorothy Spears, a mainstay since the 1980s, takes centre stage in Bizet’s Carmen Fantasy.

Ambassadors from St. Albert include Darwin Krips (euphonium), Crystal Krips (piccolo/flute) and Sturgeon County’s Remi Noel (trombone).

“The variety is wonderful. It’s a great potpourri of music that fits in the band genre.”