Vittorio Giannini (1903-1966) was an Italian-American composer and teacher. He wrote operas, songs, symphonies, and a handful of wind band works. His Symphony no. 3 is one of the staple long-form works in the wind band repertoire. For most of his career he taught in New York at the Juilliard School and the Manhattan School of Music. He also taught at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute and founded the North Carolina School for the Arts.
Fantasia for Band was written in 1963 on a commission from the Northern Westchester and Putnam County Music Teachers Association. The piece unfolds in Giannini’s typical neoromantic style, with fluid melodic motion amidst sometimes aggressive dissonance.
Vittorio Giannini on Wikipedia
Short bio on Giannini from Voices In the Wilderness by Walter Simmons, a book about neo-romantic American composers.
There is a CD of Giannini’s complete band works available at Naxos. Both sites allow you to play short clips of the tracks, and Naxos MAY even allow folks on college campuses to listen to full tracks by logging in. For some more information on him, read the reviews of the CD on the Naxos site.
An unnamed ensemble plays Fantasia for Band: