MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — The MTSU Wind Ensemble’s reputation for excellence has attracted one of America’s most influential composers to campus for a week that will feature master classes with students and public pre-recording rehearsals of his pieces created especially for wind orchestras.
David Maslanka, a Massachusetts native renowned for his music for winds, is the university’s latest composer-in-residence, drawn by hearing the work of MTSU’s premier performing group for wind, brass and percussion students.
“They contacted us,” Reed Thomas, director of bands at MTSU,
said of Maslanka and his team. “They'd been listening to our CDs and asked if
we'd be interested in doing some recording of a few of his projects. We of
course said we'd be honored to.”
Maslanka, who now lives in
Montana, has taught at the State University of New York at Geneseo, Sarah
Lawrence College, New York University and Kingsborough Community College of the
City University of New York.
He’s been a freelance composer
since 1990 and has published nearly 100 pieces, including nine symphonies. Many
of his works, including “A Child's
Garden of Dreams” and “Rollo
Takes a Walk,” have become standards for bands.
The Wind Ensemble's free public rehearsals for performances of Maslanka’s works will be held in Hinton Music Hall in the University’s Wright Music Building. The rehearsal schedule includes:
· 2:05-4:05 p.m.
Tuesday, Oct. 25, for an open Wind Ensemble rehearsal.
· 3-4:30 p.m. Wednesday,
Oct. 26, for a rehearsal of Maslanka’s “California” and “Alex and The Phantom Band.”
· 2:05-4:05 p.m.
Thursday, Oct. 27, for an open Wind Ensemble rehearsal.
“The students are very excited about this opportunity,”
Thomas said. “They were quite nervous when they first heard, because some of
the compositions are more challenging than they may be accustomed to. They
started practicing and put a lot of pressure on themselves to be perfect, but now
they're feeling more comfortable. I know they're going to do great!”
The recordings will become part of the ensemble’s fourth CD for Naxos of
America, the Franklin, Tennessee, U.S. headquarters for the Hong Kong-based
Naxos classical music group.
MTSU’s Wind Ensemble released “Angels in the
Architecture,” featuring works by composer Frank Ticheli and two of his
mentors, Pulitzer Prize winner Leslie Bassett and 2007 Musical America
Composer of the Year William Bolcom, in 2011. They followed that
successful release in 2014 with “Earthrise,” which included works by British
composers Nigel Clarke and Kit Turnbull and Spanish
composer Jesús Santandreu, who earned his master’s degree from the MTSU
School of Music.
“Our third CD
is in production right now; it’s exclusively Nigel Clarke compositions,” Thomas
said.
Clarke is a
previous composer-in-residence at MTSU and collaborated last year with Danish
writer Malene Sheppard Skærved on "A Richer Dust,” his first symphony for
a speaker and symphonic wind orchestra. Thomas and the Wind Ensemble
commissioned Clarke to create the piece and premiered it in Hinton Hall in
April 2015.
You can learn more about Maslanka and hear his
compositions at his website, http://www.davidmaslanka.com. You can
learn more about the MTSU Wind Ensemble, plus listen to one of its performances
in streaming audio, at http://ow.ly/UfbdU.
For more MTSU School of Music concert information,
call 615-898-2493 or visit http://www.mtsumusic.com and click on the
"Concert Calendar" link.
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