American composer and conductor Timothy Mahr (b. 1956) has more than 50 wind band pieces to his credit, including dozens of commissions. Since 1994, he has served on the faculty of St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, where, among other duties, he has led the St. Olaf Band. He has led this group through national and international tours and several acclaimed recording projects, and he has guest conducted in 35 states and several countries. His compositions have similarly traversed the nation and the world to great acclaim. His piece The Soaring Hawk received the ABA/Ostwald Award in 1991. Visit his website.
Mahr provides the following program note in the score of his 1989 piece Daydream:
Daydream was written on a request from Miles “Mity” Johnson to be used as a quiet tune with the Festival Band at the 1989 St. Olaf College Festival of Bands. It is intended to be a musical daydream, with introspective sound eliciting mood changes and shifting images. I hope to conjure up in the listener the sense one perceives when he or she “pulls out” of a daydream, returning to reality after a transient mental trip to places of flight and fancy. I conducted its premiere on November 11, 1989.
Conductor Tyler Ehrlich elaborates in his own program note. In part, he says:
Daydream is one of Timothy Mahr’s most atonal works for the wind band medium. Where the majority of composers utilize compositional tools to create commonalities throughout their works, Mahr’s usage purposefully causes disjunction. Phrases are divided irregularly, brass fanfare motives appear and disappear at a rapid rate, trombone portamenti last multiple beats, aleatoric ideas are included ad nauseam – all the while leaving listeners wondering the basic question, “to what am I even supposed to listen?”
From the album The Music of Timothy Mahr comes this recording by the University of New Hampshire Wind Symphony:
This more brooding performance showcases a video created to accompany the piece (complete with sound effects):
Read more at the Wind Repertory Project.