Upcoming Band Concert

Annabelle Thompson ’28

thompsonama@lakeforest.edu

Staff Writer

Concert Band and Symphony Orchestra will host their winter concert Dec. 5 at 7 p.m. at the Gorton Center.

The band will be performing four pieces, one of them being a piece by David Maslanka called “Give Us This Day,” which he called a short symphony and is 20 minutes long. 

Band director Dr. Scott Edgar is excited to play this piece. “The first movement is slow and lyrical, but hauntingly intense, which sets the stage for the second movement which is at a breakneck quarter note equals 184. It is just a wonderful piece of music that Maslanka handles the instruments much less like a concert band and more like a symphony, where everyone’s a soloist,” he said.

Joanna Nguyen, a senior music education major and bassoonist, is most excited to play the 20-minute piece. 

“It’s a lot to tackle and it is very technical,” Nguyen said. 

Atlas Gregory is also excited for “Give Us This Day,” a senior flute and piccolo player and music minor, said that sometimes piccolo parts can be kind of lame. “Sometimes they are just like a discount flute part and I think ‘oh man, I wish I was playing flute on this piece’ But the Maslanka uses the piccolo really well and it’s pushed me in fun ways.”

Another piece being played at the concert is “Nimrod” from “Enigma Variations” by Edward Elgar. 

Dr. Edgar says that this piece is one of his all time favorites and said, “It was a piece that Elgar wrote as a gift to his friends, so we will be offering it as a gift to our audience.”

Another highlight of the concert for the band is the world premier of “Golden Hour” by Cait Nishimura. It features Professor J Holzen, a cello instructor at the College, who will be playing a solo, which the band will incorporate into practice in the next couple of weeks. 

The last piece is “Symphony No. 8” by Dvorak, which the band will play with the Symphonic Orchestra.. 

Gregory said that the Dvorak “has a lot of tricky runs and stuff for the flute part and since there are only two flutes in the symphony piece, I actually have to know what I’m doing.” 

Dr. Edgar says, “Bring a friend on Friday December 5, at 7 p.m. at the Gorton Center!”