This conference is really GOING now, so I’ve hardly had a moment to digest and write! So here’s a two day catch-up. Day 3 began with the next steps in WASBE’s conducting competition, this time with the full force of the Brazilian Marine Symphonic Band. Together, they and the contestants worked on:
Fantastic Dream – Frank Ticheli
Paris Sketches – Martin Ellerby
Sinfonia no. 1 – Enrique Hernandis Martinez
The three finalists will conduct a concert on Friday, which should be great!
I caught the Rio Youth Wind Orchestra concert, led by Elias Campos, over at the university after lunch. They played a great mix of Brazilian music with a ton of soloists, including an 11 year old euphonium player and a new piece by the conductor’s 15 year old son. It was a great spotlight of the young, local talent.
I then wandered over to the Cecilia Meireles Symphony Hall, where Evan Feldman was in the midst of presentation on performance practices across style periods. Despite some technical issues, he worked with members of the Brazilian Army Band to open our eyes on the importance of period-specific style. Their dissection of the Mozart Gran Partita was particularly revealing.
I was particularly interested in the Fringe Festival performances that afternoon at the Gustavo Capanema Palace Building, given that one of the bands was the Javeriana Symphonic Band that blew us all away the night before. So I went early, and also saw the Anchieta Concert Band, from UME Padre José de Anchieta in Cubatão, Brazil, led by Luiz Carlos Ferreira de Araújo. They began with several American band standards, including James Swearingen’s Novena, which I played in high school! After some Brazilian music, they ended with The Stars and Stripes Forever! I don’t think I’ve ever heard that piece outside of the final position in a concert, and today was no exception. And it was a treat to hear it interpreted by a band from another country, without all of the barnacles of tradition attached. The Javeriana Symphonic Band followed, giving a musical and even visual (with costumes and dancing) tribute to Colombia that I think turned us all into Colombianos for an hour. Especially astonishing was the spoon solo! Bravo once again to maestra Vanegas and her extraordinary students.
The evening concerts began with the SAMP soloists, led by Alberto Roque. (Their official bio on the WASBE website was clearly written by AI and not proofread. Boo.) They are a professional chamber group from Portugal, using flexible instrumentation as the repertoire demands.
Petite Suite Galoise – Louis Theodore Gouvy (Felix Hauswirth, guest conductor)
Bomtempo no Canal – Eurio Carrapataso (Neuza Bettencourt, flute)
Intimidade – João Santos (Anna Maria Pinto, soprano)
Não me peçam razões – Anne Victorino d’Almeida (Anna Maria Pinto, soprano)
Divertimento on a Portuguese Folk Tune – Sérgio Azevedo (world premiere)
The Gouvy was clearly a Paul Taffanel commission, with harmonie plus flute, and sounded very much of that period. The Carrapataso saw the ensemble setting up in stereo, with the two woodwind quintets opposite each other (but close together) on stage and the flute soloist in front. The third movement was especially fun with its periodic stops in the music. The Santos and the d’Almeida used the same ensemble of essentially solo brass (including euphonium!) and orchestral winds and soprano soloist. The Santos was ponderous and pensive with a modernist harmonic pallet. The d’Almeida was even more modern-sounding, leaning in the direction of Sprechstimme. The Azevedo was a fairly straightforward set of variations on its tune, and at times it echoed Copland‘s Appalchian Spring. The ensemble brought all of it to vivid life.
From small, we went to BIG with the University of New Mexico Wind Ensemble under the baton of Emily Moss.
Fantasy of Colors – Paul Dooley
Concerto para violino – Stephen Melillo (Carmelo de los Santos, violin)
Ballad for Band – Morton Gould
Enigma – David Biedenbender
Baião N’ Blues – Clarice Assad, trans. Joe Jaxson
This was another joyous show that also dug deep. The Dooley was somehow witchy! The Melillo featured just the second and third movements, which contrasted with each other, the first being essentially Romantic, and the second leaning more contemporary, both serving as a great spotlight for de los Santos’s musicianship. Gould evoked the mid-twentieth century fully, enhanced by the ensembles polish and Moss’s guidance. The Biedenbender was a highlight, no surprise as it won the William Revelli Composition Prize in 2024. It started with pointilistic echoes passed around the ensemble, only to reveal a Bach Passacaglia as its underpinning, which served as the dramatic basis for the rest of the piece. The Assad was a feisty finale to an excellent night!
Onto Day 4! My day began with my conference roommate Chris Westover-Muñoz and his presentation on Chilean band music. There’s a lot of good stuff in there for anyone, including original band music and transcriptions of Chilean music and street band music that work for any size and type of ensemble. Later that afternoon, I went to other presentations about the Swiss Group of Five and Tangos in Paris, the latter featuring my former office-mate Trae Blanco. I was also pumped for a session on Astor Piazzolla‘s Sinfonia de Buenos Aires, but the presenter (Eric Laprade from The College of New Jersey) had insurmountable flight delays. I eagerly await the change to hear about his work!
I went to A TON of concerts for most of the rest of the day. There were three Fringe Festival bands at the Leopold Miguez Concert Hall around lunchtime, and I saw at least a bit of all of them. The Volta Redonda Concert Band played a mix of European transcriptions, American originals, and Brazilian showpieces in an exciting show. The Villa-Lobos Symphonic Band showcased a series of leveled suites by Prof. Hudson Nogueira, presented in polished performance. The Unicamp Symphonic Band played music from around Latin America, including an arrangement of the Arturo Marquez Danzón no. 2 that I had not heard before. Bravo to all of these fine Brazilian bands!
Sadly, an emerging theme of this conference is that sometimes things start late. In Rio, it seems like 40 minutes late is common. This was the case this afternoon for the Volta Redonda Philharmonic concert at Cecilia Meireles Hall, billed as a Latin American Reading Session. Perhaps because of their late start, their published program was done in a different order. They started with Tim Rescala’s As Aventuras de Pedro Malasartes, a 20-minute dramatic work featuring tenor soloist and narrator Cleyton Pulzi, with the composer conducting. Next came Edmundo Villani-Côrtes’s Frevata, featuring a trombone quartet. It was essentially a party with stacked fourths. I stayed for one more piece, but I was not sure what it was due to the order change, and no announcement was made. Later that evening, I went over to the stunningly beautiful São Francisco de Paula church for another Fringe Festival concert, this time with the Barra Mansa Music in Schools Project Symphonic Band. It was slated to start at 6. I left at 6:30, having not heard a single note of music.
Why couldn’t I stick around? I was excited to hear the University of Michigan Chamber Winds, led by Courtney Snyder and Jason Fettig, at 7! (And yes, they started on time). Much like SAMP the day before, they had a rotating cast of players that came on as needed for each piece. Theirs was a phenomenal program:
Overture to Fosca – Antonio Carlos Gomes, arr. Richard Frey (the arranger conducting)
China Breeze – Gao Hong
You Are Here – Gilda Lyons
Siempre Hay una Primera Vez – Rubén Dario Gómez (world premiere)
The Gomes was a light piece from the late Romantic era, a world premiere of this version. The Hong was light in a different way, evoking China through gentle pastoral scenes that really drew me in. The Stravinsky is super famous, and was played with panache by these outstanding musicians as Fettig seemed to dance the music to life in front of them. Not only was everything in its right place (a feat in itself for this piece), but they seemed to be thoroughly enjoying themselves amidst all of this thorny technical stuff! The Lyons was sparse in comparison, even with a larger ensemble, adopting some minimalist textures in a contemporary language. The Gomez was a wonderful finale. It started as a heroic party until and oboe candenza signaled a change. Throughout, Synder shaped and paced the music towards its exuberant end.
The evening’s final concert was the Rio de Janeiro Federal University Wind Orchestra, led by our host, Marcelo Jardim, who received a warm ovation when he stepped on stage. They began with two Villa-Lobos original wind pieces. First was Pro Pax, from relatively early in his career (1912), which could have passed for a Romantic-era overture. Next, led by Shawn Smith, came his Concerto Grosso from 1959, the last year of life, which sounded like it was from a different era altogether. It included four of the Villa-Lobos Quintet members (no horn), and mostly consisted of an angular fugue. Liduíno Pitombeira’s A Dobra, a world premiere, started in dissonance and ended in a cluster chord, with moments of calm in between. Tibor Fittel’s Quintetônica featured the full Villa-Lobos Quintet in a fairly contemporary-sounding piece (parallel chord movement helped that impression) underpinned by a solid, if sparse to the point of implication at times, groove underneath. Dimitri Cervo’s Toronubá explored the percussive side of the band’s sound in a dazzling mixed meter groove before going slow and dark. The groove returned at the end and was somehow comforting despite its asymmetry. All of this was nearly blown to bits by the Gilson Santos’s Xapiri, which could be described of the revenge of the horns set in the jungle. In addition to the seven horns already in the ensemble, a solo horn quartet joined them, more than making up for the horn’s absence in the Concerto Grosso. The horns dominated the piece utterly. The finale was a song that every Brazilian in the audience seemed to know, Cidade Maravilhosa by André Filho, capably arranged by Gilson Santos. Once again, joy and life sent us home.
Afterwards, I had a “wow” moment sitting at dinner. Joking with conference friends, we somehow came up with a slogan. Someone said about coming to the conference “we chose wisely.” Someone else replied “we chose WASBE!” Of course, we wanted to tell the next conference host! That’s Angela Schroeder in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. So I looked around at everyone there, and realized I was sitting at the American-Polish-Chilean-British-Australian-Estonian table (our Chinese friend had gone home early). That mix of nationalities speaks to the wonder that is WASBE.
More to come tomorrow!