Ouachita Wind Ensemble to present spring concert on March 12
March 04, 2015
- Katy FirminThe Ouachita Baptist University’s Wind Ensemble will present its spring concert on
Thursday, March 12, at 7:30 p.m. in Jones Performing Arts Center. The performance
is free and open to the public.
“I’m excited for this concert because there is such a wide variety of music choices,”
said ensemble member Elizabeth Lawson, a senior music education major from Texarkana,
Texas. “There are traditional and modern pieces, and it’s been a lot of fun learning
and preparing.”
The ensemble includes 52 students who auditioned in January and is directed by Dr.
Craig Hamilton, OBU’s Lena Goodwin Trimble Professor of Music and director of bands.
The concert also will feature solos from the co-winners of the 2014 W. Francis and
Mary McBeth Concerto Competition, December 2014 Christian studies graduate Sara Walker
on clarinet and Brent Nessler on saxophone. Nessler is a senior instrumental music
performance major from Rowlett, Texas.
“I am very proud of the Wind Ensemble. They have worked hard and are playing very
well,” Hamilton said. “We are fortunate to have two excellent soloists joining us
for this concert.”
The program begins with “Irish Suite” by Leroy Anderson and is a collection of six
movements drawn from familiar Irish folk tunes. The second selection on the program
will be the fourth movement of “Brooklyn Bridge” by Michael Daugherty, “North,” featuring
Walker on clarinet. Dougherty said about the piece, “I imagine Artie Shaw, the great
jazz swing clarinetist of the 1940s, performing with his orchestra in the once-glorious
Rainbow Room on the 65th floor of the Rockefeller Center.” “Be Thou My Vision” by David R. Gillingham will
be the third selection. “Tosca Fantasy” will showcase Nessler on saxophone. It features
an arrangement of themes from Giacomo Puccini’s opera Tosca. The concert will close with “Pandemonium” by Roger Cichy, an exciting piece intended
to evoke several meanings of the term.
The ensemble has been rehearsing four hours a week since January on the music. “It
is a lot of work,” said Emily Tual, junior dietetics and nutrition major from Plano,
Texas, “but I think we are ready. I think the audience will really enjoy the diversity
of the music.”
The concert also will be streamed live at www.obu.edu/band. For more information, contact Dr. Craig Hamilton at [email protected] or (870) 245-5137.
By Katy Firmin
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