The University of Wisconsin-Platteville’s Symphonic Wind Ensemble will perform a concert at 7:45 p.m. in the East Troy High School gym on Friday, April 20.
The concert will be performed for middle school and high school band students as well as other high school students who are able to attend. The concert is also free and open to the community to attend.
“It is wonderful for our students and community to have the opportunity to listen to collegiate level musicians.” said John Rash, East Troy Middle School band director and alumni of UW-Platteville.
Performing in the concert is 2015 East Troy alum, Jacob Thoreson, who will be playing tuba in the wind ensemble.
Barry Ellis, director of bands and professor of music at UW-Platteville, and Matthew Gregg, senior lecturer, associate director of bands and director of the Marching Pioneers at UW-Platteville, will conduct the ensemble performance.
The tour concert will celebrate the centennial of American composer Leonard Bernstein with “Mass,” his monumental theatrical work composed for the opening of the John F. Kennedy Center of the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. Arranger Michael Sweeney took selected movements from the work and set them in a suite for wind band and brass quintet.
The UW-Platteville music program’s Ensemble Nouveau will be the featured performers on this piece as well as Bernstein’s “Mambo,” the frenzied, competitive dance number from “West Side Story.” The spring tour concert will also celebrate the music of American women composers Shelley Hanson and Cindy McTee.
A special highlight of the concert will be “Albanian Dance” by Shelley Hanson, conducted by Keeley Denton, winner of the annual Symphonic Wind Ensemble Conducting Competition. Denton, a senior music education major with an emphasis in instrumental and general education at UW-Platteville, competed in the conducting competition and was declared the winner by a panel of judges.
“The opportunity to conduct ‘Albanian Dance’ means that I can connect to the ensemble and audience on a new level,” said Denton, a native of Bristol. “It is an honor to work with the ensemble under the guidance of excellent professors. I am looking forward to sharing the excitement and talent of this ensemble in the upcoming concert.”
Ellis said every work in the concert commemorates an important event or individual who has made a lasting impression on music, on musicians, on students of music and music education. Additional concert repertoire will include “Circuits” by Cindy McTee.
The Symphonic Wind Ensemble is the premier wind and percussion group of the UW-Platteville music program, with members chosen by audition. The repertoire is chosen to provide a variety of musical experiences from the traditional to the historical to contemporary art literature.
