Wind Ensemble: Undercurrents

PROGRAM

Undercurrents
Robert Buckley (b. 1946)

Hammersmith: Prelude and Scherzo, Op. 52
Gustav Holst (1874–1934)

Anahita
Roshanne Etezady (b. 1973)

1. The Flight of Night
2. Night Mares
3. Sleep and Repose / The Coming of Light

Intermission

Melodious Thunk
David Biedenbender (b. 1984)

Under the Butterfly’s Wing
Lindsay Stetner (b. 1976)

Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes, Op. 33a
Benjamin Britten (1913–1976)
arr. Joseph Kreines

1. Dawn
2. Sunday Morning
3. Moonlight
4. Storm

PROGRAM NOTES 

Undercurrents

Swarming is a kind of collective animal behaviour in which large groups of individuals move alongside and in close proximity to their neighbours without colliding. The most common and spectacular examples in nature are schools of fish and flocks of birds, especially murmurations of starlings. Biologists and mathematicians are still working to understand the rapid, spontaneous, and coordinated motion of which animal swarms are capable. Robert Buckley’s virtuosic showpiece Undercurrents was inspired by this kind of behaviour, and mimics swarming motion in its melodic lines and textures. “Every once in awhile a single solo shape will appear—or two or three,” explains Buckley, “they dance apart for a moment and then are drawn back into the ensemble.”

Hammersmith: Prelude and Scherzo, Op. 52

On the north bank of the River Thames in London sits the historic district of Hammersmith, which is home to several famous concert venues and was a setting in Dickens’ Great Expectations. Gustav Holst lived there from his appointment in 1905 as music director of St. Paul’s Girls’ School, in Hammersmith, until his death in 1934. It is this “long familiarity with the changing crowds and the changing river,” as described by his daughter and biographer Imogen Holst, that inspired his 1930 composition Hammersmith: Prelude and Scherzo. The lively middle sections are loose character sketches of the district’s daily life: the central market square, the street vendors hawking their wares, the ebb and flow of the crowds. But the slow and haunting outer sections are meant to represent the Thames itself, which Imogen describes as “the background to the crowd: it is a river that goes on its way ‘unnoticed and unconcerned.’”

Anahita

In 1846, the artist William Morris Hunt received from his brother a translation of a Persian poem about the Zoroastrian goddess Anahita. In her original form, Anahita was the goddess of the waters, but the poem depicts a more recent and striking incarnation of Anahita as the goddess of the night. Hunt was captivated by the poem, and its subject occupied him for over three decades. He worked out his ideas in a series of studies, including sketches, a plaster relief, and even a painted tea tray, before receiving a commission in 1878 to paint two murals for the New York State Capitol building in Albany, one of which would be his ultimate portrayal of Anahita, called The Flight of Night.

Drawing inspiration from the translated poem, Hunt’s painting depicts Anahita, “enthroned upon her car of light.” On her left, the fearsome side of night, three frenzied “night mares” that pull her chariot, and a shrouded figure bearing a dark torch. On her right, the calmer side, in the form of a child and its mother: “And floating in her train Repose lies nestled on the breast of Sleep,” protected from the rising sun by a curtain of clouds. Roshanne Etezady’s three-movement tone poem, Anahita, follows the same order in its perspective, beginning with the awesome and terrifying image of the goddess herself, followed by the ride of the night mares, and concluding with the peaceful portrait of Sleep and Repose, and the onset of the new day.

As for Hunt’s mural, it languishes mostly unseen—ten years after it was completed, the vaulted ceiling of the State Capitol was deemed unsafe and a lower ceiling needed to be built underneath it, almost completely obscuring The Flight of Night from view.

Melodious Thunk

Thelonious Munk and Dizzy Gillespie were born just days apart in October, 1917, and they would go on to become frequent collaborators and giants of the American jazz scene. Composer David Biedenbender was inspired not only by their music but also by the humorous nickname Munk’s wife Nellie allegedly gave him, “Melodious Thunk”, a pseudo-spoonerism. Biedenbender’s piece contains several great melodies, more than a few satisfying thunks, and a recurring reference to the distinctive main motif from Gillespie’s 1941 signature tune “Salt Peanuts”.

Under the Butterfly’s Wing

Written by Lindsay Stetner 2007, Under the Butterfly’s Wing is dedicated to Stetner’s mother-in-law, whom the composer describes as “a person who wants very little and buys what she wants.” This pairs nicely with a quote from the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore: “The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.” Stetner was fascinated by the symmetry and colours that butterflies exhibit, and expresses these ideas in the music, using a symmetrical form and exploiting the colours of the different sections of the ensemble.

Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes, Op. 33a

Although the sea is often described as being its own character in Benjamin Britten’s opera Peter Grimes, in some ways the sea is also represented in the opera’s title role. Like the sea, the fisherman Peter Grimes is brooding, unpredictable, and somewhat misunderstood. The opera does utilize a chorus that comments on the action in the tradition of Greek theatre, but Britten’s six instrumental interludes provide, in a way, the sea’s own perspective, demonstrating among them a wide range of moods and characters. Britten extracted four of the six into an orchestral suite. In the first, “Dawn”, the sea witnesses the townsfolk begin their daily grind. The second, “Sunday Morning”, alternates the pealing of church bells and the chirping of birds with a quieter, unsettled melody in the middle voices. The third interlude, “Moonlight”, which opens the opera’s final act, uses a slow tempo but deliberately avoids strong metric placement and root position harmonies, depriving the music of any sense of stability. And the “Storm” arrives in the middle of the first act, foreshadowing the tempestuous appearance of Grimes in the village pub, an intense and crucial scene in the narrative. In the opera, just as Grimes’ character is interwined with the sea, so too is his fate.

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Pratik Gandhi (he/him) is an award-winning freelance conductor and researcher based in Toronto. He is a sessional lecturer at the University of Toronto Faculty of Music, where he directs wind bands and teaches conducting. He is also music director of the Rouge River Winds and the Milton Philharmonic Orchestra, and was the founding music director of Soup Can Theatre. In addition to regularly guest conducting and adjudicating bands and orchestras, Pratik is active in several organizations that support music educators, most notably the Ontario Band Association. Since 2017, he has also served as Vice-Chair of the Concert Band Division of MusicFest Canada. Pratik is currently a doctoral student at York University, where his research, supported in part by an Ontario Graduate Scholarship, investigates issues of equity and representation among wind band composers in Canada. Pratik received a B.Mus. in music education and an M.Mus. in conducting from the University of Western Ontario, where he studied conducting with Colleen Richardson, Jerome Summers, and James McKay, and percussion with Jill Ball.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

CONCERT OFFICE
Eric Chow, supervisor

PERFORMANCE COLLECTION
Karen Wiseman, librarian; Sara Ainsley Ko, student library assistant

PERFORMANCE OFFICE
Eddy Aitken, administrator; Amanda Eyer Haberman, performance assistant; Ilinca Stafie, performance staff

YORK UNIVERSITY PERFORMANCE FACILITIES
Ian Albright, manager; Kimberly Guidolin, events administrator; Victor Wolters, coordinator, technical services; Angela Kegel, technical services assistant

Ticket Prices: $30 Adult, $20 Senior, $10 Student. 
University of Toronto students with a valid T-Card are admitted free at the door (space permitting, some exceptions apply). No ticket reservation necessary.