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UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance presented their fall Conservatory Wind Symphony program last Friday evening for a modest audience. The program was an interesting mix of early twentieth-century masters and also featured works by celebrated living Christopher Theofanidis and UMKC graduate student composer Brad Baumgardner.

The program opened with Paul Dukas’ Fanfare pour précéder La péri, a feature for the brass section alone written as an opening fanfare for a never-performed piece for the famed Ballets Russes. Conservatory Wind Symphony director Steven D. Davis led the group in a tight, strong, performance with solid tone throughout.

UMKC student conductor David W. Clemmer led the full ensemble in Virgil Thomson’s A Solemn Music. The piece was quintessential Thomson, with Americana harmonies moving through a wide range of moods; solemn, macabre, regal, and martial.

The most substantial piece on the program’s first half was Brad Baumgardner’s Pictures of Strangers, a four movement work for the complete ensemble, and winner of the 2011 Gerald Kemner Composition Prize. The title for the work referred to the promotional photos of strangers used in retail picture frame displays and marketing materials, while the title of individual movements came from works by Kurt Vonnegut, Robert Ashley, and Laurie Anderson.

“Goodbye Blue Monday” opened with medium thick textures accentuated by triangle and chimes. An adept, steady pacing lead to several effective forte climaxes, while a foreboding motive passed throughout the ensemble. “Bookmarks (Your Petrochemical Arms...)” was built of fragmented motives with lots of percussion and ending in a crescendo to a fortissimo cluster. “Broken Landscapes, Fade Edges (Big Muscle Gone to Seed)” was my favorite movement, with a moody clarinet/bassoon texture punctuated by a marimba and clave ostinato that eventually grew to a fuller texture with some lovely harmonies along the way. “Wayne Hoobler Rides Again” featured a fun E-flat clarinet solo in an energetic and difficult “circus march.”

In the second half, guest conductor dean Peter Witte led the ensemble in Christopher Theofanidis’ I wander the world in a dream of my own making. The piece featured a confident opening before delving into the thematic technique of the piece, which was an exercise in creating reverberation, spatialization, and echoes through orchestration. It was an intriguing idea and well executed in composition and performance. Heterophonic textures were layered to sound like delayed echoes, while pedaled vibes were used to hold out soft tones in the woodwinds. The piece came to a strong climax with rich, beautiful, brassy chords.

Also memorable on the second half was Arnold Schoenberg’s Theme and Variations, Op. 43a. The piece eschewed strict serialist techniques without sacrificing the artistry of the master composer. The piece presented the “Theme” as a series of layered motives which were shifted in cycles from the background to the foreground in the variations as the piece morphed between an adagio, waltz, fugue, and choral fantasy. The Wind Symphony brought the piece to a rousing finish.

REVIEW:
UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance
Conservatory Wind Symphony
Friday, December 9, 2011
White Recital Hall,  James C. Olson Performing Arts Center, UMKC Campus
4949 Cherry St, Kansas City, MO
For more information visit http://conservatory.umkc.edu

Top Photo: UMKC Wind Symphony woodwinds (Photo by James Allison) 

By Topher Levin

Classical Editor and Contributor

Christopher (Topher) Levin is a composer, pianist, music theorist, and music blogger based in Kansas City, MO. His compositions have been performed at music festivals across the US and in Europe. He has spent two summers in Paris, France studying music at the Ecole Normale de Musique through the EAMA program. His trio for clarinet, piano, and percussion is published in the SCI Journal of Scores.

Topher holds degrees from the University of Missouri-Kansas City (M.M.) in music theory and (M.M.) in composition and from James Madison University in Virginia (B.M.) in composition. Primary composition teachers have included John S. Hilliard, Paul Rudy, Zhou Long, James Mobberley, Chen Yi, Claude Baker, Narcis Bonet, Michel Merlet, and João Pedro Oliveira. His piano teachers have included Patricia Brady and Karen Kushner. Topher maintains a piano studio of 22 students.

Having recently completed a Master's thesis on the beautiful complexities of Chinary Ung's trio, Spiral I, Topher turned his writing attention to the more informal blogging medium. He has taken to it quite well, sharing posts on strange and wonderful music and art found across the web with a modest but growing number of blog followers. He looks forward to writing for KCM and sharing with its readers the stories of all the amazing musicians performing in Kansas City.