The University of Massachusetts Wind Ensemble and Symphony Band will be performing at 8 p.m. on Wednesday Oct. 23 in the Fine Arts Center Concert Hall. Two guest conductors, Jeffrey Holmes and Larry Harper, will conduct the concert. Professor Malcolm W. Rowell Jr., who had been the director of bands for 18 years at UMass, retired last May.
Jeffrey Holmes has been the Director of the African-American Music and jazz studies program at the UMass since 1979. He also conducts the University Jazz Ensemble I and Studio Orchestra. He has been a two-time winner of the National Endowment for the Arts Grant in Jazz Composition and has twice won the National Association of Jazz Educators Composition Contest. His compositions, arrangements, and performance can be heard on recordings with the Tillis/Holmes Jazz Duo, the Valley Big Band, Sonny Costanzo Big Band and the 16-piece Jeff Holmes Big Band.
Larry Harper is an associate professor at Carroll College in Waukesha, Wisc., as well as their director of bands and chair of the music department. Harper also founded and conducts the Wind Symphony at Carroll College, which the American Record Guide called “top quality” and said Harper was “a stickler for detail, a motivator and a first-rate musician who brings nuance and insight to a piece of music.”
Jeffrey Holmes will conduct William Schuman’s “George Washington Bridge” and his own composition, “Passage.” Schuman, an American composer, wrote “George Washington Bridge” in 1950.
Larry Harper will be conducting Shostakovich’s “Festival Overture, Op. 96” and sections one through thirteen of Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana.” Shostakovich, a Russian composer wrote the “Festival Overture” in 1954. Orff’s “Carmina Burana” was originally written for chorus and orchestra, but has been transcribed for wind ensemble by John Krance.
Tickets for this event are $5 for students, children under 18 and senior citizens, and $10 for the general public. Tickets can be purchased at the Fine Arts Center Box Office (413-545-2511).
– Gretchen Keller
