UT Concert Hall brings you excellent performances that were given at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, spotlighting faculty, guest artist, and graduate student recitals, as well as student ensemble performances. Join local host and producer, Melony Dodson, for this hour-long program, as she transports you to Cox Auditorium and/or the Sandra G. Powell Recital Hall to hear these world class performances. Thursday night at 8pm and Sunday evenings at 7pm.
UT Concert Hall, April 23 and 26, 2026
University of Tennessee
Spring Bands Concert
Thursday, April 24, 2025 at 7:30 p.m.
James R. Cox Auditorium
Alumni Memorial Building
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
University Band
Australian Up-Country Tune (1930/1970)
Percy Aldridge Grainger (1882-1961)
arr. Glenn Cliff Bainum (1888-1974)
Alex Jett, conductor
Concert Band
Michael Stewart, conductor
Flourish for Wind Band
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
Ashley Waller, guest conductor
I Am
Andrew Boysen, Jr. (b. 1968)
Graduate Assistant Conductor, Alex Jett
Courtly Airs and Dances
Ron Nelson (1929-2023)
I.Intrada
II.Basse Danse (France)
III.Pavane (England)
IV.Saltarello (Italy)
V.Sarabande (Spain)
VI.Allemande (Germany)
Symphonic Band
Fuller Lyon, conductor
Tunbridge Fair (1950)
Walter Piston (1894-1976)
Matthew Waymon, graduate assistant conductor
Symphony No. 1 “Nordic” (1922/1938)
Howard Hanson (b. 1896-1981)
arr. Maddy
II.Andante teneramente, con semplicita
Tyler Hamilton, graduate assistant conductor
Godzilla Eats Las Vegas (1996)
Eric Whitacre (b. 1970)
PROGRAM NOTES
Australian Up-Country Tune (1930/1970)
Percy Aldridge Grainger (1882-1961)
arr. Glenn Cliff Bainum (1888-1974)
This piece (written for chorus in 1928) is based on a tune I wrote in 1905 called “Up-Country Song”. In that tune I had wished to voice Australian up-country feeling as Stephen Foster had with the American country-side feelings and his songs. I have used this same melody in my Australian “Colonial Song” and in my Australian the “Gum Suckers March”.
This choral version was first sung at my wedding to Ella Viola Strom at the Hollywood Bowl, California, August 9, 1928 by the exquisite Smallman a capella Choir.
Program note by Percy Aldridge Grainger
Flourish for Wind Band
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
Flourish for Wind Band was written as an overture to the pageant Music and the People and was first performed in the Royal Albert Hall, London, on April 1, 1939. The score was subsequently lost and then rediscovered in 1971 and published in 1972. It has since been adapted for brass band and orchestra.
Ralph (pronounced “Ray-ph”) Vaughan Williams was born on October 12, 1872 in Gloucestershire, England. He studied violin and piano during his youth, but focused on the piano during his adulthood. An avid collector of English folk music, Vaughan Williams traveled the countryside collecting folksongs and carols, notating down the melodies that had typically ben passed down orally over the generations. While he was primarily an orchestral composer (composing nine symphonies, various works for string orchestra, chamber orchestra, many works for voice, and even film scores), Vaughan Williams wrote a handful of compositions for winds, including Toccata and Marziale, English Folk Song Suite, and his Variations for Wind Band.
I Am
Andrew Boysen, Jr. (b. 1968)
Andrew Boysen began composing at the age of nine for piano and has written several works for concert band, full orchestra, and small ensembles.Currently, Dr. Boysen serves and an assistant professor in the music department at the University of New Hampshire.
I Am was commissioned by Craig Aune and the Cedar Rapids Prairie High School Band of Cedar Rapids, Iowa in February 1990. It was written in memory of Lynn Jones, a baritone saxophone player in the band who was killed in an auto accident during that winter. The work is basically tonal in nature, but includes extended techniques such as an aleatoric section and singing from members of the ensemble. The aleatoric section is intended to represent the foggy morning of the crash in which Jones died. The words "I Am" are taken from a poem that he wrote just days before his death. The piece is not intended in any way to be an elegy. Instead, it is a celebration, and reaffirmation, of life.
Program note by Andrew Boysen, Jr.
I Am
Life, Music, Competition.
I like exciting things, and doing good for others.
Beauty, Successfulness and Smartness are important to me.
I like to achieve recognition.
I can succeed if I really put my mind to it.
I am very set in my ways,
But I can change when I realize my ignorance.
I like a simple nonchalant lifestyle.
I hate ignorance.
I hate structuredness.
This is me. I am!
Lynn Jones, January 1990
Courtly Airs and Dances
Ron Nelson (1929-2023)
Courtly Airs and Dances is a suite of Renaissance dances, which were characteristic to five European countries during the 1500’s.Three of the dances (Basse Dance, Pavane, and Allemande) emulate the music of Claude Gervaise by drawing on the style of his music as well as the characteristics of other compositions of that period.
Ron Nelson was an American composer, conductor, and professor holding a Doctor of Music Arts degree from the Eastman School of Music and teaching post at Brown University. Dr. Nelson received numerous commissions from university, military, and professional performing ensembles and in 1994, was awarded the Medal of Honor by the John Philip Sousa Foundation for his outstanding contributions to the field of music.
Tunbridge Fair (1950)
Walter Piston (1894-1976)
Tunbridge Fair, subtitled “Intermezzo for Band,” depicts one of Vermont’s oldest and most cherished events, the annual county fair at Tunbridge. The work is a jazz-influenced contrapuntal tour de force commissioned by the League of Composers at the suggestion of Edwin Franko Goldman and was premiered by the Goldman Band.
Piston’s style derives from a disciplined technique in harmony, counterpoint, and orchestration. It emphasizes the manipulation of musical ideas, embracing both the contrapuntal patterns of Bach and the developmental practices of Mozart and Beethoven. The ragtime-like first theme captures the interaction of the crowd, while the lyrical second theme depicts the evening dancing at the fair.
Symphony No. 1 “Nordic” — Movement II
Howard Hanson (b. 1896-1981)
arr. Maddy
Composed in 1922, Nordic Symphony is Hanson’s first symphony. Hanson was the first American to win the Prix de Rome fellowship, and was in Italy for three years, during which time he composed this symphony. A fine example of late-Romantic tonal musical language, “Nordic” has often been described as an American gloss on the early symphonies of Sibelius. Certainly Sibelius, along with Ottorino Respighi, Bach, and Palestrina, influenced his musical style. He was never ashamed of his Nordic roots and was the first American composer of the twentieth century to attain worldwide prominence.
Hanson conducted the Nordic Symphony in New York in 1924 and was invited to head the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester that same year. Hanson remained at Eastman the rest of his life, creating a doctorate in musical composition and building the finest music school in the country.
Godzilla Eats Las Vegas (1996)
Eric Whitacre (b. 1970)
The composer states, “It took me seven years to get my bachelor’s degree from UNLV, and by the time I graduated, I was ready to eat Las Vegas. Tom Leslie asked me to write another piece for the group as I was leaving, and I thought it would be a blast to do something completely ridiculous. The players are called upon to scream in terror, dress like Elvises (Elvi), and play in about thirty different styles from mambo to cheesy louge music. The audience follows a ‘script’ that I wrote, simulating a camp, over-the-top Godzilla movie (is there any other kind?).
I wrote the bulk of the piece while in my first year at Juilliard, and no kidding, I used to act out the script every morning devouring animal crackers, wreaking havoc all over the breakfast table. The ‘script’ was originally twice as long, and had an entire subplot devoted to a young scientist and his love interest. As I started to finish the piece, however, it didn’t seem that funny and that story (along with an extended Elvis tribute) ended up on the cutting room floor.
The idea that this piece is being played all over the world in such serious concert venues is the single funniest thing I have ever heard. It has been played on the steps of the Capital by the United States Marine Band, by the Scottish National Wind, and I have a video of Japanese audience visibly confused and shaken by the whole experience. Can you imagine? I’m laughing my head off even as I write this!”