“In a Station of the Metro” by Ezra Pound

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

I have been fascinated by miniatures ever since I was a boy. The first souvenir I can ever remember purchasing was a tiny, palm sized painting of the San Francisco Bay from a street artist in Ghirardelli Square—it still sits on a shelf in my childhood home. The birds are just tiny u’s and v’s, but if you look carefully, you can see the care the artist took in his tiny brush to shade and shape them naturally.

Wildflowers, too, have always been a special point of fascination to me. There seems to be a universe of color and shape in something that can just be the size of my fingernail. I remember one particular hike through the Sandia mountains outside of Albuquerque, when I turned a corner and stumbled into a meadow ablaze with tiny flowers. I can still feel the breath leaving my lungs—dizzy as my focus vacillated between individual petals and the entire meadow.

Psychologist Dacher Keltner recently published his groundbreaking book Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life. I’m usually averse to a book that looks so much like it might shelve in the Self-Help section, but this book isn’t really that. He reveals scientific studies that confirm something I think we’ve all known for a long time—the experience of awe is important for all of us. I’m struck particularly by his observation that if we’re observant, we can find awe frequently. Yes, we can find it in the mountains, in the picture of the Tiny Blue Dot, in the wonder of Mahler’s Second Symphony. But we can also find it in a ladybug, the taste of bread, a heartfelt folk song.

Tonight’s concert is a study in miniatures and contrasts. All three composers, Biedenbender, Gulda, and Grainger, have remarked on their pursuit of awe in perhaps unexpected places: a regular morning near the Huron river, the twelve-bar blues, the meadows outside Lincolnshire. This music is also incredibly demanding of our students in a short amount of time. In less than five minutes, they have to emulsify temporal layers drawn from South Indian Carnatic music (“Daybreak Crossing”), in a single movement they have to characterize both polka and heavy metal (the finale of the cello concerto), and in two-and-a-half minutes they have to paint both the soft grandeur of the folksinger George Gouldthorpe while also telling a story of dreadful violence (“Horkstow Grange” from Lincolnshire Posy). We hope you enjoy our posies of wildflowers as much as we have in preparing them for you.

-C.R.

Daybreak Crossing was commissioned by the Washtenaw Community Concert Band for their 35th anniversary. I lived in Ann Arbor, Michigan in Washtenaw County for seven years, and I wanted to capture some of the spirit of that wonderful place in this piece. When I think about Washtenaw County, there are many images and experiences that come to mind: warm summer evenings spent in Depot Town along the railroad tracks sharing a meal with family and friends, quiet autumn walks in the Arboretum, and incredible, exciting concerts in Hill Auditorium, just to name a few. All of these places find a small role in the sound-world of this piece, but one place in particular remains firmly and fondly my favorite: the beautiful Huron River at Argo Park in Ann Arbor. On many quiet, summer mornings, I found myself on or along the Huron, either in a kayak or on a running trail, taking in the serene, glassy surface of the water as the sun slowly rose. As a new day began, I remember feeling an overwhelming sense of adventure and resolve at the thought of all that the new day held. This image—this feeling—served as the inspiration for Daybreak Crossing—that of excitement, energy, nervousness, determination, and hope as the brilliant light from the rising sun slowly filled the sky and danced on the surface of the water in that beautiful place I called home.
 
-Program Note by the Composer

Composed in 1989, the charming and popular Concerto for Cello and Wind Orchestra exemplifies Gulda’s blurring of boundaries between musical genres. Scored for a modified eighteenth-century Harmoniemusik wind ensemble with the addition of a jazz rhythm section of guitar, bass, and drum set, the work alternates seamlessly between what Gulda described as “jazz, a minuet, rock, a smidgen of polka, a march, and a cadenza with two spots where the star cellist must improvise.” The Ouverture launches the concerto with a smooth rock feel, which then alternates with lyrical sections that sound like they could have been written by Mozart. The second-movement, Idylle, opens with a beautiful hymn-like chorale, first in the brass choir and then in cello, before a lilting Ländler breaks the repose. 
 
The third movement is a six-minute cadenza for unaccompanied solo cello that calls for extended techniques and improvisation and segues directly into the Menuett. Cast in ABA form, the outer sections sound predictably like a Renaissance dance -- complete with tambourine -- but the middle section surprises with a beautiful tune that evokes Appalachian folk music. The Finale—part march and part polka—recalls classical and rock genres from earlier in the concerto before drawing to a thrilling close, complete with a screaming high note from the lead trumpet.
 
-Program Note by Travis J. Cross for the UCLA Wind Ensemble concert program, 10 March 2015

Lincolnshire Posy, as a whole work, was conceived and scored by me direct for wind band early in 1937. Five, out of the six, movements of which it is made up existed in no other finished form, though most of these movements (as is the case with almost all my compositions and settings, for whatever medium) were indebted, more or less, to unfinished sketches for a variety of mediums covering many years (in this case, the sketches date from 1905 to 1937). These indebtednesses are stated in the score.
 
This bunch of "musical wildflowers" (hence the title) is based on folksongs collected in Lincolnshire, England (one notated by Miss Lucy E. Broadwood; the other five noted by me, mainly in the years 1905-1906, and with the help of the phonograph), and the work is dedicated to the old folksingers who sang so sweetly to me. Indeed, each number is intended to be a kind of musical portrait of the singer who sang its underlying melody—a musical portrait of the singer's personality no less than of his habits of song—his regular or irregular wonts of rhythm, his preference for gaunt or ornately arabesqued delivery, his contrasts of legato and staccato, his tendency towards breadth or delicacy of tone.
 
- Program Note by the Composer

Dr. Christopher Ramos

Conductor