CCM Wind Symphony welcomes Lakota East guest ensemble in season finale on April 21

The CCM Wind Symphony closes its 2023-24 season with “Urban Requiem,” a concert that contemplates the complex emotions of endings while celebrating life. Joined by the members of the Hinotori Saxophone Quartet and the Lakota East High School Winds, the  performance features Michael Colgrass’ Urban Requiem, for four saxes and wind orchestra and Steven Bryant’s blockbuster Concerto for Wind Ensemble. Tickets are on sale now through the CCM Box Office.

Michael Colgrass’ Urban Requiem, which premiered in 1995, gives the concert its title. Like a liturgical Requiem Mass, Colgrass’ music is meant to lament and contemplate loss—though he specifically looks to the violence and tragedies that occur in cities. Colgrass chose to highlight the saxophone because of its association with jazz, a genre associated with American cities, as well as the instrument’s versatility.

In addressing the complex emotions evoked by a requiem, the saxophone “can be highly personal and poignant in character but also powerful and commanding. It can howl like a banshee or purr like a kitten,” wrote Colgrass in a program note for the piece’s premiere. He went on to say that the four saxophones are meant to sound like “a vocal quartet, a music that was liturgical in nature but with a bluesy overtone, a kind of 'after hours' requiem.” The Hinotori Quartet, which joins the CCM Wind Symphony for Urban Requiem is comprised of James Bunte, Masahito Sugihara, Om Srivastava and Jim Romain.

Steven Bryant’s “Concerto for Wind Ensemble” is “a tour de force for all members of the CCM Wind Symphony,” says Adam Friedrich, Graduate Conducting Associate for CCM Wind Studies. Composed over the course of several years, the Concerto began as a commission for the United States Airforce Band in 2006. Instead of simply evoking the idea of flight through musical motifs, Bryant instructs the players to imitate formations performed by the USAF Thunderbirds Air Demonstration Squadron, with musicians dividing into groups and playing from all sides of the auditorium. The result is a showstopping, surround-sound experience for the audience.

Bryant later partnered with a consortium of universities to expand the piece into five movements, incorporating moody jazz solos and full-throttled percussion fanfares. The fifth movement, a brilliant, tutti finale, is sure to excite.

With music influenced by everything from jazz to Baroque progressive rock, “this concert has something for everyone to enjoy,” says Friedrich.  Showcasing the broad range of the Wind Symphony’s capabilities, the program is a celebration of the end of an academic year, as well as the students whose hard work made the season possible.