{"id":518652,"date":"2022-04-14T16:33:31","date_gmt":"2022-04-14T20:33:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=518652"},"modified":"2022-08-04T20:56:40","modified_gmt":"2022-08-05T00:56:40","slug":"eastman-wind-ensemble-modern-musical-invention-remains-cutting-edge-518652","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/eastman-wind-ensemble-modern-musical-invention-remains-cutting-edge-518652\/","title":{"rendered":"Nearing its eighth decade, a modern musical invention remains cutting edge"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first ensemble of its kind, the Eastman Wind Ensemble launched a movement in wind music.<\/h2>\n
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\"Eastman<\/p>\n

Eastman Centennial<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The Eastman School of Music is 100 years old. Learn more<\/a> about our history and how we\u2019re celebrating the century to come.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Ask an accomplished American wind musician when they first heard of the Eastman Wind Ensemble<\/a>, and the responses are likely to be similar.<\/p>\n

\u201cHigh school,\u201d says Jenna Kent \u201920, \u201920E, a master\u2019s degree student at the Ä¢¹½´«Ã½<\/a>\u2019s Eastman School of Music<\/a> and clarinetist in the ensemble. \u201cAny time you go to look up a recording of a major piece of band rep,\u201d says Kent, who grew up near Columbus, Ohio, \u201cthe first thing that comes up is an Eastman Wind Ensemble recording.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cProbably late middle school,\u201d says Luke Camarillo, a doctoral student in conducting at Eastman who played clarinet in his school band program in Corpus Christi, Texas. \u201cBecause almost any recording of major wind music that you might listen to in [a band program] was recorded, likely for the first time, by the Eastman Wind Ensemble.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI assume in high school,\u201d says Jamal Rossi \u201987E (DMA), the Joan and Martin Messinger Dean of the Eastman School, recalling the band program he participated in growing up in the Philadelphia suburbs.<\/p>\n

Like Kent and Camarillo, Rossi, a saxophonist, traces his awareness of the ensemble to the moment he began to see himself as a serious wind musician.<\/p>\n

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\"Black
Frederick Fennell \u201939E, founder of the wind ensemble concept, leads the Eastman Wind Ensemble in a dress rehearsal. Fennell founded the ensemble in the early 1950s and led it until 1962. (Courtesy of Sibley Music Library)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Eastman Wind Ensemble, founded at the Eastman School of Music in the early 1950s, is\u2014and remains\u2014legendary. \u201cThat\u2019s not an overstatement,\u201d says Rossi. \u201cThrough its commissions of new works and recordings, that are as robust today as at any point in its history, the Eastman Wind Ensemble continues to be the \u2018gold standard\u2019 among wind and percussion instrumentalists.\u201d<\/p>\n

That will be evident Friday night when, in a performance as part of the Eastman Centennial celebration, the wind ensemble premieres works by Tonia Ko<\/a> \u201910E, a Guggenheim fellowship winner whose compositions have been performed at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and other major venues; and Robert Paterson<\/a> \u201995E, whose accolades include the Classical Recording Foundation\u2019s Composer of the Year. Both are testaments to the ability of wind ensembles in general, and the Eastman Wind Ensemble in particular, to interest dynamic and celebrated living composers.<\/p>\n

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\"David<\/p>\n

Listen in on the latest<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Hear samples from the Eastman Wind Ensemble\u2019s most recent recording, Brightening Air<\/em><\/a> (New Focus Recordings), with soprano Tony Arnold, performing music by David Liptak, professor and chair of composition at Eastman.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Mark Scatterday \u201989E (DMA),<\/a> who has been conductor of the ensemble since 2003, was a master\u2019s degree student in trombone performance at the University of Michigan when he heard a recording that would change the course of his career: Carnaval<\/em>, a collaboration of the Eastman Wind Ensemble and jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I heard that recording, I knew I wanted to come here,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd I also knew that I wanted to be a wind ensemble conductor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nearly 80 years after the founding of the ensemble, to conduct or perform with a wind ensemble is still to feel part of a movement.<\/p>\n

The \u2018wind ensemble concept\u2019<\/strong><\/h3>\n

When Frederick Fennell \u201939E called the first rehearsal for the group in the fall of 1952, he was responding to a vexing problem for lovers of wind music. The golden age of the band\u2014the era of John Philip Sousa\u2014had come to an end. Bands were still widely popular among the public, and partly for that reason, directors relied on familiar music, much of it written for other instrumentation. Composers responded accordingly, with few writing for band.<\/p>\n

A second problem was the neglect of a fine body of music written for winds, but not for the instrumentation of the modern band.<\/p>\n

In what\u2019s often referred to as his \u201cmanifesto\u201d\u2014Time and the Winds <\/em>(1954)\u2014Fennell wrote: \u201cMusic which does not fit the large instrumentation for the concert band or does not fall with ease into the carefully guarded categories of program routine which the band and orchestra maintain from the traditions established by the famous conductors, has no organized instrumental body which concerns itself with its performance. This music is, therefore, little known and seldom played.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fennell\u2019s solution was an ensemble modeled on \u201cflexible instrumentation.\u201d The ensemble\u2019s composition would change from piece to piece to reflect the music exactly as the composer scored it. If the composer scored the music for only three clarinets, it would not be performed with six or eight, as was customary in high school and college bands. There would be only one musician per part. With this instrumentation, \u201cit is possible to perform, with but few exceptions, all of the great music written for wind instruments dating from the 16th century through the years to so recent and important a score as the Symphony in B flat (1951) by Paul Hindemith,\u201d Fennell wrote.<\/p>\n

\"Side
Every musician in the wind ensemble plays a distinct part, placing a high level of responsibility on each member. The Eastman Wind Ensemble is made up of juniors and seniors in the bachelor of music program, and some master\u2019s degree students. Every undergraduate wind musician at Eastman performs in the ensemble during the course of their four-year program. (Ä¢¹½´«Ã½ photo \/ J. Adam Fenster)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The wind ensemble was also a means to build a robust repertoire of new wind music. In the summer of 1952, Fennell wrote to hundreds of composers announcing his formation of the new ensemble. He described it not as a rigid instrumentation, but as a musical resource from which composers could draw. To underscore that flexibility, the invention of the wind ensemble is sometimes called the invention of \u201cthe wind ensemble concept.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fennell\u2019s invitations to composers bore fruit for decades to come. In the 1950s and 1960s, the ensemble produced 24 recordings on the Mercury Records label. Says Camarillo: \u201cAny wind band, from high school to community or military bands, pretty much in the world, owes what it\u2019s playing in front of them to Fred Fennell and the Eastman Wind Ensemble.\u201d<\/p>\n

The\u00a0<\/strong>\u2018Eastman Wind Ensemble sound\u2019<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Fennell left the Eastman School in 1962 to become music director of the Minneapolis Symphony. The ensemble was led for two years by A. Clyde Roller, followed by Donald Hunsberger \u201954E, \u201959E (MM), \u201963E (DMA), who in his 37-year tenure brought the ensemble to the international stage. Hunsberger joins the ensemble as a guest conductor this Friday.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon is my teacher and my mentor,\u201d says Scatterday. \u201cAnd he\u2019s one of my best friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scatterday credits Hunsberger, who authored all of the arrangements for the ensemble during his tenure, with establishing an \u201cEastman Wind Ensemble sound.\u201d That sound is warm and flowing, but it\u2019s also a sound \u201cthat projects and has clarity.\u201d And that combination can be challenging to achieve.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very easy to project a sound that\u2019s not warm,\u201d Scatterday says, referring to the bright, brassy sound that comes easily with volume. He\u2019s made a point to continue to hone the sound Hunsberger envisioned. At a rehearsal, he reminds the musicians: \u201cWe can project, but we don\u2019t have to be bright all the time to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sound is so important in the ensemble, Scatterday says, that his approach to the start of a new piece, \u201cSound is first. The technique will come.\u201d<\/p>\n

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