THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY College of Music presents
University Symphonic Band
David Plack, Director
Aaron Ovsiew, Graduate Associate Conductor
Keith Griffis, Graduate Associate Conductor with Devan Moore, Guest Conductor
Thursday, April 16, 2026 7:30 p.m. | Ruby Diamond Concert Hall
March from “Symphonic Metamorphosis” (1972)
PROGRAM
Paul Hindemith (1895–1987)
arr. Keith Wilson
Hymn to the Infinite Sky (2006)
Angels in the Architecture (2008)
Aaron Ovsiew, graduate associate conductor
Satashi Yagisawa (b. 1975)
Frank Ticheli (b. 1958)
Madison Roths, soprano
INTERMISSION
Rolling Thunder (1916)
Elsa’s Procession to the Cathedral (1938)
Devan Moore, guest conductor
Henry Fillmore (1881–1956)
ed. Frederick Fennell
Richard Wagner (1813–1883)
tr. Lucien Calliet
The Frozen Cathedral (2012)
Keith Griffis, graduate associate conductor
John Mackey (b. 1973)
To Ensure An Enjoyable Concert Experience For All…
Please refrain from talking, entering, or exiting during performances. Food and drink are prohibited in all concert halls. Recording or broadcasting of the concert by any means, including the use of digital cameras, cell phones, or other devices is expressly forbidden. Please deactivate all portable electronic devices including watches, cell phones, pagers, hand-held gaming devices or other electronic equipment that may distract the audience or performers.
Recording Notice: This performance may be recorded. Please note that members of the audience may at times be included in this process. By attending this performance you consent to have your image or likeness appear in any live or recorded video or other transmission or reproduction made in conjunction to the performance.
Florida State University provides accommodations for persons with disabilities. Please notify the College of Music at (850) 644-3424 at least five working days prior to a musical event to request accommodation for disability or alternative program format.
Hindemith: March from “Symphonic Metamorphosis”
Paul Hindemith (1895–1963) was a leading German composer of the first half of the twentieth century. Despite growing up at the end of the rich, sonorous Romantic Era and living through the beginning of the experimental, atonal, and “non-conventional” early 1900’s, his primary focus was on tonal music, which he called Gebrauchsmusik or “utility music.” Similarly, he believed his role as a composer was to be a craftsman who met the needs of his fellow citizens, not that of an artist who only fed his own ego. He was specifically against the 12-tone system developed by Arnold Schoenberg, and instead developed his own harmonic system based on the twelve chromatic intervals of Western music. Hindemith believed that he was “enlarging” tonality, not abandoning it. While his earlier works united a post-World War I Germany, his opera Mathis der Maler was banned by the Nazi party, and his music was labeled as “degenerate.” In response, he continued to compose, but left his home country and found teaching positions at the Conservatory in Ankara, Turkey, Yale University in the United States, and finally the University of Zurich in Switzerland. Some of Hindemith’s famous students at these institutions include Warren Benson, Norman Dello Joio, and Lukas Foss.
Keith Wilson (1916–2013) served as Conductor of the Yale University Band and Professor of Wind Instrument Playing from 1946 to 1973. He earned his Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees from the University of Illinois, and, following his graduation in 1938, was immediately appointed woodwind instructor, opera conductor, and assistant conductor of bands. After eight years at Illinois, two and a half years of which were interrupted by military service, Wilson was appointed to the faculty at Yale in 1946. He was a founding member of the College Band Directors’ National Association (CBDNA), serving as the organization’s president from 1962 to 1964. In 1959, he took the Yale Concert Band to Europe, the first of his five trips to the continent with the band. While it has become a staple of the wind band repertoire, Symphonic Metamorphosis is Wilson’s only known transcription for concert band. Most of his arrangements and compositions feature his primary instrument, the clarinet.
The process of Hindemith’s writing of Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes of Carl Maria von Weber began with a ballet project he was working on with Leonide Massine. Hindemith sought to honor his fellow German-born composer, Weber, by sharing his lesser-known music with a broader audience. However, the ballet quickly stalled after Massine found Hindemith’s music “too personal,” and Hindemith believed that the ballet’s backgrounds (painted by Salvador Dalí) were “too weird.” As a result, Hindemith reworked his score into a four-movement piece for symphony orchestra, which was premiered by the New York Philharmonic in 1944. After its premiere, Hindemith believed the work should be made available for band, so he asked his colleague, Yale Director of Bands Keith Wilson, to transcribe it. While Wilson completed all four movements, the fourth movement, “Marsch,” which you will be hearing tonight, is often performed on its own.
Yagisawa: Hymn to the Infinite Sky
Japanese composer Satoshi Yagisawa (b. 1975) graduated with both undergraduate and graduate degrees from the Musashino Academia Musicae. There, he studied composition under Kenjiro Urata, Hitoshi Tanaka, and Hidehiko Hagiwaya; trumpet under Takeji Sekine; and music education with Masato Sato. In Japan, his music has been performed at the National Arbor Day celebration, National Sports Festival, and Japan Intra-High School Athletic Meets. In 2010, the prefecture of Chiba, Japan appointed Yagisawa the Ceremonial Music Director for the National
Sports Festival. His music has been introduced to international audiences through the Teaching Music Through Performance in Band book series, as well as performances at the 2005 World Association for Symphonic Bands and Ensembles (WASBE) conference in Singapore and the 2008 Midwest Clinic in Chicago. He currently supports his composition colleagues as a member of “Kyo-En”, an organization that premieres original works by Japanese composers. In addition to composing, Yagisawa also serves as a festival adjudicator, guest conductor, and guest lecturer around Japan.
Hymn to the Infinite Sky was commissioned by the Ichikawa Shinahama Elementary School Band in Chiba, Japan. The piece was inspired by the ensemble’s director, who spoke to his students about how the sky above may mean peace and calm for them, but for some children, it is a symbol of fear and war. He shared his hope that all children around the world can live under a peaceful sky. The one-movement work is not necessarily meant to evoke images of the sky, but the struggle, constant change, and infinite hope of those living below it as they strive to maintain peace.
Ticheli: Angels in the Architecture
Composer Frank Ticheli (b. 1958) is an award-winning composer who has written numerous works that have become standards of the wind band repertoire. He earned his Bachelor of Music in Composition and Music Education from Southern Methodist University, where he studied with orchestral composers Donald Erb and Jack Waldenmaier. Later, Ticheli earned both the Master’s degree and Doctoral degree in Composition from the University of Michigan, where he had the opportunity to learn from famed band composers Leslie Bassett and William Bolcom. Moving back to the state he grew up in, Texas, Ticheli served as Assistant Professor of Music at Trinity University in San Antonio. In this position, he also served on the board of directors for the Texas Composers Forum, as well as the San Antonio Symphony’s “Music of the Americas” project. In 1991, Ticheli was named Professor of Composition at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music – a position he held until his retirement in 2023.
Ticheli has won the National Band Association/William D. Revelli Memorial Band Composition Contest twice, the first in 2006 for Symphony No. 2, and then again in 2023 for Lux Perpetua. Other awards he and his music have won include the Walter Beeler Memorial Prize and the A.A. Harding Award. As a conductor, Ticheli has conducted his music around the world, including in New York, Beijing, Shanghai, London, Manchester, Singapore, Rome, and Sydney.
Angels in the Architecture was commissioned by the Kingsway International, and received its premiere performance at the Sydney Opera House on July 6, 2008 by a massed band of young musicians from Australia and the United States, conducted by Matthew George. The work unfolds as a dramatic conflict between the two extremes of human existence – one divine, the other evil.
The work’s title is inspired by the Sydney Opera House itself, with its halo-shaped acoustical ornaments hanging directly above the performance stage.
Angels in the Architecture begins with a single voice singing a 19th-century Shaker song:
I am an angel of Light I have soared from above I am cloth’d with Mother’s love. I have come, I have come, To protect my chosen band And lead them to the promised land.
This “angel” – represented by the singer – frames the work, surrounding it with a protective wall of light and establishing the divine. Other representations of light – played by instruments rather than sung – include a traditional Hebrew song of peace (“Hevenu Shalom Aleichem”) and the well-known 16th-century Genevan Psalter, “Old Hundredth.” These three borrowed songs, despite their varied religious origins, are meant to transcend any one religion, representing the more universal human ideals of peace, hope, and love. An original chorale, appearing twice in the work, represents my own personal expression of these aspirations.
In opposition, turbulent, fast-paced music appears as a symbol of darkness, death, and spiritual doubt. Twice during the musical drama, these shadows sneak in almost unnoticeably, slowly obscuring, and eventually obliterating the light altogether. The darkness prevails for long stretches of time, but the light always returns, inextinguishable, more powerful than before. The alteration of these opposing forces creates, in effect, a kind of five-part rondo form (light – darkness – light – darkness – light).
Just as Charles Ives did more than a century ago, Angels in the Architecture poses the unanswered question of existence. It ends as it began: the angel reappears singing the same comforting words. But deep below, a final shadow reappears – distantly, ominously.
– Frank Ticheli
Fillmore: Rolling Thunder
James Henry Fillmore Jr., was an American publisher and composer. Notably, Fillmore was among the most prolific composers of American marches. He sang in his church choir and began composing at 18, with his first published march, Higham. After studying at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music in 1901, Fillmore traveled the U.S. as a circus bandmaster with his wife, Mabel May Jones. Prolific and versatile, he wrote over 250 tunes, arranged hundreds more, and published under numerous pseudonyms such as Harold Bennett and Henrietta Hall. While best known for his marches and energetic “screamers,” Fillmore’s repertoire included waltzes, foxtrots, hymns, novelty numbers, and overtures. Later in life, after gaining fame in Cincinnati, he moved to Miami, Florida, where he was celebrated his vibrant personality, humor, and rapport with young musicians.
Program note from the editor:
Rolling Thunder is a great circus march, as breath-taking in its excitement as the action feats by horsemen riding full tilt around the narrow confines of a sawdust track under canvas. The track is known in the circus as the Hippodrome and the music played by the band to accompany the riding is invariably exciting and driving in its manner, and it is always played at an appropriate breath-taking speed.
–
Frederick Fenell
Wagner: Elsa’s Procession to the Cathedral
Richard Wagner, one of Western music’s most influential and controversial figures, started his formal education in Dresden and later attended Leipzig University in 1831. Wagner was deeply inspired by Beethoven, and early in his career, he secured his first position as a choirmaster at the theater in Würzburg with help from his brother, composing operas influenced by Weber and Bellini. Wagner’s breakthrough came with the premiere of Rienzi in Dresden in 1842, followed by Der fliegende Holländer and his appointment as assistant choirmaster for the Dresden court, where he premiered Tannhäuser. Known for redefining opera, which he referred to as “music-dramas,” Wagner pushed the genre’s limits with innovations such as the leitmotif, the invention of new instruments like the Wagner-tuba, and the building of his own opera house at Bayreuth. His massive Ring Cycle includes four operas and about 16 hours of music, while Tristan und Isolde famously challenged traditional harmonic resolution, making it the first modern opera.
Program note from the score:
Elsa’s Procession to the Cathedral, with its medieval color and pageantry, prefaces her betrothal to Lohengrin, mystic Knight of the Holy Grail, who comes to deliver the people of Brabant (Antwerp) from the Hungarian invaders.
In the operatic presentation, a large double chorus (representing the people of Antwerp) adds its song of solemn praise to that of the orchestra. It is in this music, mystic yet powerful, that we find Wagner striking out with those new and intense musical thoughts that were to culminate in Tristan, The Ring, and Parsifal. Not quite emancipated from the musical speech of his operatic contemporaries, one finds in the Lohengrin score those unmistakable flights into musicodramatic magnificence transcending all that preceded it in idiom and musical adventure.
In this transcription of Elsa’s Procession for symphony band, Lucien Cailliet, with his great talent for instrumentation, has succeeded in building into the instrumental framework of the modern band a true and delicate representation of all that Wagner so eloquently describes with orchestra and chorus.
In the present score, the instrumental solo voices of the original score are paralleled, the choral voices deftly absorbed in the rich instrumental texture and all the luxuriant Wagnerian color recreated in terms of the instrumentation for the band.
Mackey: The Frozen Cathedral
John Mackey is an American composer who holds a Master of Music degree from The Juilliard School and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music. Mackey’s composition teachers include John Corigliano and Donald Erb. His works have been performed at the Sydney Opera House; the Brooklyn Academy of Music; Carnegie Hall; the Kennedy Center; Weill Recital Hall; Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival; Italy’s Spoleto Festival; Alice Tully Hall; the Joyce Theater; Dance Theater Workshop; and throughout Italy, Chile, Japan, Colombia, Austria, Brazil, Germany, England, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States.
Excerpt of program note from the score:
The Koyukon call it Denali, meaning “the great one,” and it is great. It stands at more than twenty thousand feet above sea level, a towering mass over the Alaskan wilderness. Measured from its base to its peak, it is the tallest mountain on land in the world, a full two thousand feet taller than Mount Everest. It is Mount McKinley, and it is an awesome spectacle. And it is the inspiration behind John Mackey’s The Frozen Cathedral.
The piece was born of the collaboration between Mackey and John Locke, Director of Bands at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Locke asked Mackey if he would dedicate the piece to the memory of his late son, J.P., who had a particular fascination with Alaska and the scenery of Denali National Park. Mackey agreed, and immediately found himself grappling with a problem: He had never been to Alaska.
How could I tie the piece to Alaska, a place I’d never seen in person? I kept thinking about it in literal terms, and I just wasn’t getting anywhere. My wife, who titles all of my pieces, said I should focus on what it is that draws people to these places. People go to the mountains -- these monumental, remote, ethereal and awesome parts of the world -- as a kind of pilgrimage. It’s a search for the sublime, for transcendence. A great mountain is like a church. “Call it The Frozen Cathedral,” she said.
Piccolo
Anna Todd
Flute
Ryleigh Templeton
Kayla Crider
Sofía Vélez-Santiago
Nicki Howard
Allie Mattice
Alto Flute
Sofía Vélez-Santiago
Bass Flute
Kayla Crider
Oboe
Alejandro Lopez*
Emma Druggan
Richard Wilson
English Horn
Richard Wilson
Bassoon
Marcus Palermo
Robin Moussier
Jake Noroña, Contra
E-flat Clarinet
Nia Thompson
University Symphonic Band Personnel
David Plack, Director
Aaron Ovsiew and Keith Griffis, Graduate Associate Conductor
Clarinet
Nathan Edwards*
Nia Thompson
Mia Guerrero
John Rodda
Nate Odom
Ryan Golbe
Amanda Stewart
Jamari Richards
Daniel Stevens
Bass Clarinet
Gabriel Dos Santos
Caron Braggs
Contrabass Clarinet
Alexei Kovalev
Saxophone
Parker Button, soprano/alto*
Jamari Spears-Screen, alto/baritone
Caitlyn Jones, alto
Luis Angel, tenor
Jakub Zella, baritone/bass
Trumpet
Angelo Del Oro*
Kate Moncada*
Franki Stressman
Addie Elliott
Evan Workman
Joshua Briley
Kai Okamoto
Mikey Moore
Horn
Brandon Bourdeau*
Coen Taylor
Nolan Beighley
Maren Smith
Wes Vaden
Trombone
Micah Hreczkosij
Sam Cote
Sam Mercier
Allen Wroten
Austin Boudi
Connor Casey
Marcus Lampkin Jr., bass
Caleb Couchois, bass
Euphonium
Darius Drullard
Lee Anderson
Karina Benton
Tuba
Sebastian Davey Bravo
Braden Meyer
Noah Bryant
Grant Markiewicz
Allegra Hreschak
Bass
Jean-Philippe Montas
Keyboard
Alex Barton
Sophia Wright
Harp
Ava Crook
Percussion
Sami Smith
Aidan Lenski
Chance Douglas
Ethan Brink
Aiden Pippin
Waylon Hansel
Caitlin Magennis
Cole Martin
Owen Montgomery
Ethan Turner
Jessica Weinberg
*Principal/Co-Principal