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, December 11 and 14, 2025
University of Tennessee
Concert & Symphonic Bands
Tuesday, February 25, 2025 at 7:30 p.m.
James R. Cox Auditorium
Alumni Memorial Building
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
CONCERT BAND
Michael Stewart, conductor
Fanfare and Call to the Post
Richard Saucedo (b. 1957)
Grace Before Sleep
Susan LaBarr (b. 1981)
arr. Wilson
Matthew Waymon, graduate assistant conductor
Summer Dances
Brian Balmages (b. 1975)
Tyler Hamilton, graduate assistant conductor
SYMPHONIC BAND
Fuller Lyon, conductor
Fandango
Frank Perkins (1908-1988)
Alex Jett, graduate assistant conductor
á la Machaut
Andrew Boss (b. 1988)
From Every Horizon
Norman Dello Joio (1913-2008)
Circus Days
Karl L. King (1891-1971)
arr. Schissel
PROGRAM NOTES
Fanfare and Call to the Post
Fanfare and Call to the Post is the first movement of the suite "Homage to Barbaro." Barbaro (April 29, 2003 – January 29, 2007) was an American thoroughbred racehorse that decisively won the 2006 Kentucky Derby, but shattered his leg two weeks later in the 2006 Preakness Stakes, ending his racing career and ultimately leading to his death. On May 20, 2006, Barbaro ran in the Preakness Stakes as a heavy favorite, but after he false-started, he fractured three bones in and around the fetlock of his right hind leg. The injury ruined any chance of a Triple Crown in 2006 and ended his racing career.
Mr. Saucedo was Director of Bands and Performing Arts Department Chairman at Carmel High School in Carmel, Indiana. Under his direction, Carmel bands received numerous state and national honors in the areas of concert, jazz, and marching. As a freelance arranger and composer, Saucedo has released numerous marching band arrangements, concert band works and choral compositions. He is currently on the writing staff for Hal Leonard Corporation, and is constantly in demand as an adjudicator, clinician, and guest conductor for concert band, jazz band, marching band, orchestra and show choir. He has served as Music Caption Head for the Drum Corps Midwest Judges Guild, and as a brass and music judge for Drum Corps International.
Grace Before Sleep
Susan LaBarr is an American composer living and working in Cleveland, Tennessee.Susan attended Missouri State University in Springfield, Missouri, where she received a Bachelor of Arts in music and a Master of Music in music theory. She studied piano with Dr. Peter Collins and composition with Dr. John Prescott.
Susan is an active, published composer. In 2011, Susan won the Opus Award for her compositions Two Songs of Love Lost: Forever Gone and At Dawn of Day, an award nominated and voted on by members of the Missouri Choral Directors Association. Susan has served as the Missouri Composer Laureate for 2012 and 2013. In 2012, Susan served as composer-in-residence for the Chattanooga Girls Choir. She is currently the composer-in-residence for the Tennessee Chamber Chorus, a professional choir based in Cleveland, Tennessee.
Composed in 2011, Grace Before Sleep was inspired by a poem of thanks written by Sara Teasdale. A quiet opening builds into a gorgeous, resounding climax before coming to a more reflective, thankful close. This wind setting, arranged in 2013 by J. Eric Wilson, Director of Bands at Baylor University, draws upon the warm sonorities of the concert band to reflect LaBarr’s musical intent and Teasdale’s poetic sentiments.
How can our minds and bodies be
Grateful enough that we have spent
Here in this generous room, we three,
This evening of content?
Each, one of us has walked through storm
And fled the wolves along the road;
But here the hearth is wide and warm,
And for this shelter and this light
Accept, O Lord, our thanks tonight.
Summer Dances
Summer Dances is a light and lively piece worthy of its namesake. Structured in contrasting sections, ABA’, the piece opens with sparkling woodwinds followed immediately with the energetic main theme played by the trumpets and horns. The theme returns frequently accompanied in a new manner with each reprisal. The slow, lyrical B section contains its own miniature rounded binary form (aba’), with frequent use of chamber-like scoring. After its return to the “energetically” section, the piece ramps up again with an extended transition of woodwind polyphony before the main theme returns in the trumpets and horns.
Fandango
The Fandango is a song and dance that originated in Spain and Portugal in the early 18th century. By the end of the 18th century, it had become popular as an instrumental form for serious composers. Set in waltz time, the dance is usually accompanied by castanets and descending harmonic progression of chords. The dance itself expresses the passion of the dancers, who often taunt each other by following the other’s steps or by using gestures. Therefore, it is synonymous with a quarrel or an argument. Many variations of the dance began to spring up as its popularity hit Europe’s courts. The big fandangos often started slowly and gradually increased in speed. The little fandangos were much livelier and more festive. Frank Perkins’ version is a “fandango grande.”
á la Machaut
á la Machaut integrates thematic material from three works of the great Medieval composer Guillaume de Machaut and adds a colorfully modern touch. The piece opens with a slow introduction using melodic and harmonic material from his polyphonic chanson Puis qu’en oubli (“Since I am forgotten”). The upbeat percussion transitions the piece to the main material, quoting the melody of his secular virelai, Douce dame jolie (“Sweet, lovely lady”) – beginning in the bassoon and passed around to numerous instruments in a soloistic and variation-like manner throughout the piece. This piece also uses material from the opening measures, the triplum voice, and the cantus firmus from the Kyrie to Machaut’s Messe de Nostre Dame. A reflective middle section brings back the slow material from the introduction while maintaining the upbeat rhythms introduced earlier in the percussion. A short recapitulation revisits the virelai in several contrasting textures, leading to a climactic variation with shimmering winds, blasting percussion and low brass. A final tutti variation harmonizes the virelai and closes the piece. The horns outline the parallel 5th motion of the #4-5 and #7-1 scale degrees in the last two measures, a cadential signature for many of the Medieval composers.
From Every Horizon
From Every Horizon recreates a series of moods that are an evocation of the spirit of New York. For example, the opening movement reflects little-known pastoral mood that pervades the outskirts of the big town. The hurly-burly of the commuter, the bustle of the typical New Yorker, the tired out-of-towner, all inspired the composer in writing this score. The music is a version of a score done for the film of the same title shown at the New York World’s Fair.
Circus Days
Circus Days is one of 13 gallops or marches that Karl King wrote. As in the case of many circus-type marches, the intent is to provide energy and excitement to the performance and bring a sense of joy and happiness to the listeners.
University of Tennessee
Wind Ensemble Concert
John Zastoupil, conductor
with Dr. Fuller Lyon, guest conductor
Thursday, March 13, 2025 at 7:30 p.m.
James R. Cox Auditorium
Alumni Memorial Building
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Some treasures are heavy with human tears (2022)
John Mackey (b. 1973)
Dr. Fuller Lyon, guest conductor
Brilliant Brushstrokes (2025)
Ryan Lindveit (b. 1994)
*world premiere
PROGRAM NOTES
Some treasures are heavy with human tears
At 1:05 AM on Sunday, August 4, 2019 in the Oregon Historic District of Dayton, Ohio, a man armed with a semi-automatic AM-15 approached a crowded neighborhood bar and opened fire. In under thirty seconds, he fired 41 rounds, killing nine people and injuring another 17.
That’s where the story of John Mackey’s Some treasures are heavy with human tears begins.
One of the victims of the shooting was a young woman who had played trumpet in her high school band in nearby Bellbrook. The Bellbrook program reached out to Mackey to commission a work that would commemorate the tragedy, a task he approached with some reluctance:
“I’ve been asked on several occasions to write pieces in response to tragedies, but I’ve rarely felt like it was appropriate. Something about this, though—happening in Dayton, where I’ve been many times, and so close to Columbus, where I grew up—that I felt like I wanted to try to say something musically, even though I was at a loss for what I could say verbally. Fortunately, Abby (my spouse) found this incredible title, which says so much before the music even starts. The last thing the community needed was a piece of music that relived the event. The piece isn’t trying to sound like what happened; it’s trying to convey what it feels like to know that it happened.”
The piece is not programmatic. Rather, it exists in abstraction: a meditation on grief. In framing the work in this way, Mackey’s music transcends elegizing a singular horrific event and instead provides an artistic representation of how we cope with all tragedies, both those that are intensely personal and the ones that are communal. It explores a wide range of emotions, from denial through shock, fury, and anguish before finally finding an incomplete peace.
Some treasures are heavy with human tears begins with a simple motivic gesture: a rocking oscillation between flute and vibraphone that sounds akin to a lullaby. This principal motive carries throughout the piece, acting as the listener’s avatar through the emotional journey. A melody spins out from it, accompanied by ethereal ringing provided by crystal glasses and whirly tubes, and although the overall mood is one of melancholy, the atmosphere is also peaceful until a disorienting fog of trombone glissandi passes over. The songlike melody continues, at times abruptly shifting from the resigned mood of the home key of G minor to the distantly bright C major, evoking a fleeting remembrance of a more hopeful spirit, before just as quickly dissipating back. The simplicity of the opening returns, but this time fuller, with more voices joining before the glissando cloud returns (this time augmented by timpani), ushering in a new mood: confusion. The opening gesture reemerges, ceaselessly rocking in a rhythmic nature, oblivious to a building torment in the surrounding harmonies which become brasher and angrier as the piece approaches its dramatic climax. The apex of the piece is a wail, acknowledging the reality of the trauma in a moment of agony bordering on rage. This too, however, subsides, and the peacefulness of the beginning of the work returns to stay with one exception: as the final phrase of the work cadences and the last tones decay, a single muted trumpet rises from the silence in a bright flash and is suddenly extinguished.
-Program note by Dr. Jacob Wallace
Brilliant Brushstrokes
Brilliant Brushstrokes is inspired by an overwhelmingly colorful and bold painting that the Knoxville-born artist Beauford Delaney (1901-1979) painted on a fragment of his old raincoat when he was living in Paris in 1954. Delaney’s raincoat fragment overflows abstractly with swirls, rings, splotches, and lines of forest green, deep orange, bright yellow, fire-engine red, hazy gray, spacious white, peaceful azure, and deep ocean blue. Upon closer viewing, the seams and pockets of the cut-up raincoat are also visible, revealing that the fanciful artwork is the result of Delaney’s resourcefulness in the face of limited money and art supplies. As a fellow artist, I find Delaney’s unrelenting and restless impulse to be creative even when he lacked proper materials to be almost inspiring as the painting itself. Although Brilliant Brushstrokes is tightly constructed around only a few melodic gestures, the music constantly cycles through changes in instrumental texture, density, harmony, and energy. Musical phrases are often cut-off abruptly with a quick down-up gesture that I view as related to the stitched seams on the raincoat. Overall, the composition uses the vast and variegated color palette of the wind ensemble to capture the inventive spirit and brilliant dynamism of Delaney’s brushstrokes, splatters, and daubs.