CARTHAGE WIND AND CONCERT BAND TO PERFORM “BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS”

Instrumental music students at Carthage will present a concert of music that explores the balancing of environmental and industrial concerns in contemporary society on May 17 at 7:30 pm in the A. F. Siebert Chapel. Selections will range from the very traditional to highly experimental in nature, but all focusing on how to make the “best of all possible worlds.”

Both Concert Band and Wind Orchestra will perform, as well as a special selection for senior members of both ensembles.

Christopher Marshall’s “Rust Belt” is the featured work of the Wind Orchestra, that includes trumpet soloists Kevin Natoli and Jacinda Ripley, recent graduates of Northwestern University’s Beinen School of Music Master’s program. Ms. Ripley is a 2012 Tremper High School alumna. “Rust Belt” was written by Marshall, referring to the region of the United States facing economic, population, and environmental issues stemming from the closing of factories and a once powerful industrial sector, such as Kenosha and Racine. The music suggests the vibrancy, blue-collar energy and optimism that characterized those regions in the “good times” and a yearning to return to relevancy through re-vitalizing its community.

Other music to be performed by the Wind Orchestra includes “Cloud Factory” by Johan de Meij, a programmatic depiction in sound of a seaside industrial site in The Netherlands; “Laurie’s Song” by Aaron Copland and “The Girl in 14G” by Janinie Tesori – two selections that describe moving into a big new world and making the most of it; and music of a similar context taken from Leonard Bernstein’s “Candide” – “Make our Garden Grow” and “Best of All Possible Worlds”.

Selections by the Concert Band are from the large-scale “Pageants” held in London during the early twentieth century to celebrate a re-written history of the English Empire through staged outdoor scenarios, accompanied by music. Music by Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, and Frank Bridge, including a rarely performed “Funeral March” by Vaughan Williams using themes from his Ninth Symphony will be heard.

Completing the Concert Band program will be “Rock Music” from composer Alex Shapiro, that incorporates a recorded “soundscape” within the musical texture, as well as the sounds of rocks struck together. Ms. Shapiro’s music depicts glacial movement, including their splitting, or “calving” to form an iceberg.

Admission to the concert is free, and open to the public. Doors to concert will open at 7:00 pm.