Belmont University School of Music
FRIDAY,
OCTOBER 24, 2025
7:30 P.M.
MCAFEE CONCERT HALL
Belmont University School of Music presents
String Chamber Orchestra with Jazz Small Group I
with Guest Artists
AJ Huang, Brian Nathan Seay, and Andrew Maxfield
String Chamber Orchestra & Jazz Small Group I
They Can’t Take That Away From Me
April in Paris
Repetition
Summertime
Just Friends
Waltz for a Loverly Wife
AJ Huang*, saxophone
Jazz Small Group I
I. Gershwin/G. Gershwin
Nick Plumlee, guitar
Eli Dranow, piano
Carter Ferris, bass
Cianan Reed, drums
10-Minute Intermission
I. Gershwin/G. Gershwin
Duke
Hefti
Klemmer
Jeannine
Pearson
Woods
Ceora
Morgan
String Chamber Orchestra & Jazz Small Group I
Songs About Darkness (World Premiere) Maxfield
I. Quiet
II. Can’t Sleep Now
III. Lady Luck
IV. The Idea of Birds
Brian Nathan Seay**, vocals
*School of Music Alumnus
**School of Music Faculty
Program Notes
Charlie Parker with Strings - When Billie Holiday signed Decca Records in 1944, she requested to her producer, Milt Gabler, that she wanted to record with strings. Realizing her talent, he hired six strings players to record her first session and the chart, Lover Man, became one of her biggest hits. This in turn inspired Charlie Parker to do the same when he signed with the legendary manager/producer Norman Granz on the Verve label. The result was one of Parker’s most monumental recordings and in the eyes of many critics, some of his best playing.
The musicians Granz hired were the very best New York session players from Toscanini’s NBC Radio Symphony Orchestra. As the story goes, Parker “walked out on a few sessions without playing a note (the number has never been authenticated). He later explained that the sound of the strings and the thought of working with such distinguished musicians scared him; he thought they were greater artists than he. What finally took place was sheer magic. The parts of the string players were relatively easy, so they listened and enjoyed Parker’s improvisations. It would appear that all of the released performances came from a single recording date, November 30, 1949.”
“Parker would later say that these recordings were his favorites of his own work, despite jazz critics’ condescending reactions and their claims that he was ‘selling out.’ As it turns out, he was selling ‘in.’...Just Friends is one of Parker’s finest records and his solo is remarkable.”
Program notes by Christopher Fashun, School of Music Faculty.
Songs About Darkness - I turned forty in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, just as fall was sinking into winter. Not only had all of my music work dried up, but my two kids were young, and rightly, needed a lot from me. Within a few more months, my two remaining grandparents died, and I encountered a certain kind of heaviness almost everywhere I turned. I found refuge in writing my mainstay “classical” choral and orchestral music (including a full symphony!) but I surprised myself by writing song after song after song. Once a songwriter, always a songwriter, I suppose.
I accumulated a dozen or so of what I called “Songs of Darkness.” Granted these aren't particularly “dark” songs, but rather they were my attempts to make sense of what felt like darkness at the time. I’ve since come to see a certain illumination in the darkness I experienced, which is part of what makes practicing any art useful and necessary to the human experience. I relate then and now to this poem by Kentuckian Wendell Berry:
To go in the dark with a light is to know the light To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight, And find that the dark, too, blooms and sings, And is travelled by dark feet and dark wings.
You’ll hear four songs from the larger collection in this concert, each of which engages with the idea of darkness in different ways, whether it’s the darkness on a hillside, in a family grave, in a casino, or in the black plumage of a bird in a parking lot.
“Quiet” - I sometimes hike in the foothills that rise just above the neighborhood where I live. From a trail on the mountain, I can make out the rooftop of my own house. Especially when my kids were little, I’d find some solace in hiking in the very early morning, while things were still dark. I’d walk and think and write and watch the sky brighten by degrees before sunrise.
“Can’t Sleep Now” - When the last of my grandparents died (my dad’s dad), I felt this intense sensation, like a generational wheel somewhere had made a noisy quarter-turn. At the funeral, I looked at my kids next to me and at my parents. I realized that my dad was now the grandfather, that I was the dad, and that my kids not I were now the kids. I wrote “Can’t Sleep Now” as a meditation on burying my grandfather and seeing myself passing through a long, generational chain.
“Lady Luck”- Once on a flight, I looked down and saw the illuminated patchwork of the Vegas Strip and city lights, far below me. It struck me that that place, in particular, is a strange and artificial imprint on an otherwise nearly Martian landscape. Even stranger, I thought about how the casinos typically have no windows, and how they curate a sort of endless, alluring atmosphere like the island of the Lotus Eaters in the Odyssey. Stranger still, I imagined being in a Vegas casino at the moment when the power goes out everywhere else in the world, for whatever cataclysmic reason. Seamlessly, the casino switches to backup generators, and the illusions continue on and on and on. Do the inhabitants know what’s going on in the outside world or just keep appealing to Lady Luck?
“The Idea of Birds” - I love the poetry of William Carlos Williams because he finds something remarkable in ordinary things, which are always concrete and specific. His writing bears fewer marks of “artistic self-expression” and more of deep attention and attachment to the world around him, which included his family and his medical patients, etc. He summarizes his point-of-view in his famous maxim: “no ideas but in thing.” His attachment to the specific was on my mind when I thought about “Blackbird” by Lennon & McCartney. Was the blackbird in question a specific bird? (There actually is a good answer to that question, and it's worth learning about the civil rights story in the song.) I wasn’t concerned with the answer so much as having found an interesting question: was I more aware of specific, real, avian creatures, or more vaguely aware of the idea of birds? To what extent am I really paying attention?
Program notes by Andrew Maxfield, composer
Artist Biographies
AJ Huang is a saxophonist, arranger, and composer currently based in Nashville, Tennessee. He is a rising young musician on the scene, known for his ability to fit harmoniously into any musical setting. Growing up in a suburb near Cleveland, Ohio, and being taught by jazz greats of the area such as Chris Coles, Dominick Farinacci, and Mark Mauldin, Huang’s abilities are rooted in jazz, but his influences range widely from funk and neo-soul to indie acoustic pop. His ability to seamlessly transition between all saxophones and musical styles while keeping his unique voice on the instrument is versatile and allows him to blend or stand out in any situation. Huang was recently named a Finalist in the 2024 North American Saxophone Alliance College Jazz Competition, being awarded Honorable Mention.
After moving to Nashville in the middle of 2020, Huang began attending Belmont University to pursue the Bachelor of Music in Commercial Music with a double emphasis in Performance and Music Business under the tutelage of Dr. Alex Graham, Evan Cobb, and Kevin Gatzke. There, he was a part of Belmont’s top jazz ensembles as well as a leader of the horn sections for Belmont’s premier pop and gospel vocal groups. He graduated in May, 2024. As a result of Dr. Graham’s mentorship, he has also been working seasonally as a musician at the Grand Hotel in Mackinac Island, Michigan, where he plays alongside incredible jazz musicians every night. It is here that he has been able to fully develop and realize his talents as a musician in both the jazz world and pop world. In addition to his involvement at Belmont, Huang is a force on the Nashville music scene and beyond. Most notably, he is a founder and leader of the Pitch Horns, a horn collective that is a part of Pitch Meeting, a non-profit artist development organization that was named “Nashville’s 3rd Best Band” in 2022 by the Nashville Scene. With Pitch Meeting, Huang has had the opportunity to share the stage with renowned artists such as Theo Katzman, Jacob Jeffries, Jeremy Passion, Tommy Sims, and Joseph Wooten, to name a few.
Furthermore, Huang is co-founder and co-manager of The PitchPockets, a funk/soul/pop band that just recently won Belmont University and Lightning 100’s Battle of the Bands. Their debut EP “Pool Party” has gained a large local following for the band, and the single “Woman” has achieved radio airplay on Lightning 100. Additionally, he spearheads his own project as AJ Huang a versatile jazz/fusion group that plays anything from large corporate events to intimate house parties. This group has been a vessel of Huang’s ambitious jazz/fusion compositions that reflect influences from the likes of Snarky Puppy, Braxton Cook, Ghost-Note, Dynamo, and more. Huang also does lots of freelance work as a horn arranger, session musician, and live musician around the Nashville area and beyond.
Born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, Brian Nathan Seay, known professionally as Brian Nathan, is an artists, producer, and educator whose work reflects creativity rooted in sound, story, and spirit. His music moves between gospel, R&B, and soul, using rhythm and emotion to communicate love, joy, and resilience.
Seay has performed at Lincoln Center’s Jazz Appel Room and the National Museum of African American Music, and has shared the stage with numerous artists as a background vocalist. With more than fifteen years of experience in live performance and studio production, his is known for combining musical excellence with authenticity across a wide range of styles.
Seay discovered his love for the intersection of music and education at Alabama A&M University, where he studied Music, and later at Middle Tennessee State University, where he earned the Master of Fine Arts in Recording Arts and Technologies. That same passion now shapes his work as a professor and director of Voxology, Belmont University’s Gospel and R&B commercial ensemble. Under his leadership, the group has achieved international acclaim, including performances in Luxembourg as part of the “Harmony Across Borders” cultural initiative. Voxology’s performances and projects have reached audiences around the world, with more than twenty million views online.
Beyond the stage, Seay mentors artists, songwriters, producers, and worship leaders, equipping the next generation to create with excellence, awareness, and heart. He will return to the performance scene with a new album in 2026.
The compositions of Andrew Maxfield - hailed as “rhythmically vital … superbly judged … [and] tender” by Fanfare Magazine have been performed throughout the United States and Europe. A recent winner of the King’s Singer’s New Music Prize (Jury Special Commendation), Andrew has been a Composer Fellow of the National Collegiate Choral Organization and Composer in Residence for Newburyport Choral Society, Southern Virginia University, and Sound of Ages.
Ensembles which have been performed Maxfield’s music recently include Utah Symphony, Utah Opera, The Choir of Royal Holloway, The Gesualdo Six, University of Southern California Thornton Chamber Singers, Emporia Symphony Orchestra, Utah Philharmonic, The Piedmont Singers, University of Pennsylvania Chamber Choir, Choral Chameleon, and Choral Arts Initiative. Andrew’s work has also been performed and commissioned by soprano Chelsea Helm.
Recent commissions include Barlow Endowment for Music Composition, Southeast Kansas Symphony Orchestra, NEXT Ensemble, Center for Latter-day Saint Arts in New York City, and a concert-length score for SALT Contemporary Dance, showcased at Lincoln Center. His album, Celebrating Wendell Berry in Music, was released by Tantara Records and his “well-crafted, approachable” works (George Case, The Boston Cecilia) are published by Walton, Santa Barbara, and Yalecrest.
Maxfield learned his craft at Brigham Young University, the European American Musical Alliance - Nadia Boulanger Institute in Paris, Boston Conservatory at the Berklee College of Music, and the University of Bristol, United Kingdom, via mentorship with Philip Lasser (Juilliard), John Pickard, Jonathan Bailey Holland, and Marti Epstein. He also holds the Master of Business Administration in Arts Administration from the University of Wisconsin Madison.
Maxfield lives with his wife Liz Davis Maxfield a professional cellist, expert in Irish traditional music, and rock climber and their two handsome, high-octane boys (plus a hyper puppy) just downhill from Sundance in Provo, Utah.
Personnel
String Chamber Orchestra
Violin 1
Kate Borosky, principal
Ella Markwald
Maya Statz
Kate Rothlisberger
Violin 2
Soren Bortnem, principal
Bea Arielle Balde
Natalia Hernandez
Sophia Thompson
Amina Brugoni
Reem Alnuaimi
Viola
George Graefen, principal
Rebecca Wise
Cello
Caylie Radar, principal
Samuel Garcia
Sarah Brewer
Hudson Lankford
Casey Hale
Winnie Grober
Guitar
Nick Plumlee
Piano
Eli Dranow
Jazz Small Group 1
Bass
Claire Walker, principal
Talon Seidel
Mark Watson
Whitney Gabriel
Oboe
Lily Chantler
Horn
Caroline Homes
Harp
Aliyah Wenneker
Electric Bass
Talon Seidel
Bass
Carter Ferris Drums
Cianan Reed
Upcoming Concerts and Events
Voxology
Saturday, October 25, 7:30 p.m.
Massey Concert Hall
Bel Canto & Chorale
Sunday, October 26, 5:00 p.m.
McAfee Concert Hall
Jazz Small Group I & Jazz String Quartet
Monday, October 27, 7:30 p.m.
Harton Recital Hall
Southbound
Thursday, October 30, 7:30 p.m.
Massey Concert Hall
Piano Concert Series Rosângela Sebba
Thursday, October 30, 7:30 p.m.
McAfee Concert Hall
Belmont Opera Scenes: Opera Through the Ages
Monday, November 3, 7:30 p.m.
Massey Concert Hall
World Fiddle & Bluegrass Ensembles
Wednesday, November 5, 7:30 p.m.
Massey Concert Hall
Guitar Ensemble
Thursday, November 6, 7:30 p.m.
McAfee Concert Hall
PHNX
Friday, November 7, 7:30 p.m.
Massey Concert Hall
For more information on upcoming concerts and events, please visit www.belmont.edu/cmpa or “like” Belmont University School of Music on Facebook.
