Casella Sinfonietta
2025-09-10 19:30 - 21:00 (America/New_York) | Tew Recital Hall, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, 27412, United States
https://youtube.com/live/SfHopSvdivI

Jonathan Caldwell, conductorLindsay Kesselman, soprano

Program

STEVE REICHDouble Sextet (2009)

FastSlowFast

MARIA SCHNEIDERWinter Morning Walks (2013/2025)trans. Andrew Keiser

Walking By FlashlightI Saw a Dust Devil This MorningMy Wife and I Walk the Cold RoadHow Important it Must Be

AARON COPLANDAppalachian Spring (1944)

Choreography by Martha GrahamMusic by Aaron CoplandDanced by Martha Graham, Stuart Hodes, Bertram Ross, Matt Turney, Helen McGehee, Ethel Winter, Miriam Cole, YurikoProduced by Nathan KrollCourtesy of Martha Graham ResourcesFilmed and Produced by Metropolitan Pittsburgh Educational Television (1958)

The copyright for Appalachian Spring is held by the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance. No reproduction any kind is allowed without permission from the Center.

About the Program
“Don’t get me wrong. Berg, Schoenberg, and Webern were very great composers. They gave expression to the emotional climate of their time. But for composers today to recreate the angst of ‘Pierrot Lunaire’ in Ohio, or in the back of a Burger King, is simply a joke.”

— Steve Reich (1986)

Titled “Prized Compositions,” tonight’s faculty and student side-by-side concert features two Pulitzer Prize–winning compositions in Steve Reich’s Double Sextet and Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring and a GRAMMY Award–winning composition in Maria Schneider’s Winter Morning Walks. However, beyond their award-winning appeal and framed by Steve Reich’s 1986 quote, these pieces also offer a perspective on access and belonging in the concert hall. Given that, a better title for this concert might be: “Popular Compositions.”

Written in 2008, Steve Reich’s Double Sextet is a classic example of minimalism. Minimalism began in the mid-1960s as a reaction against some of the more “extreme” movements of the mid-20th century including the total serialism of Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen and the indeterminacy of John Cage. As opposed to other modernist movements that explore an expansion or even destruction of 19th-century musical language, minimalism embraces relatively straightforward rhythmic, pitch, formal, and harmonic materials as well as non-Western and popular music. This approach to composition, which emphasizes accessibility to audiences, stands in direct opposition to a central tenet of many modernist movements which is clearly articulated in Milton Babbitt’s 1958 article/manifesto “Who Cares if You Listen?” In the essay, Babbitt describes “modern” music (modern for 1958, at least) as “…for, of, and by specialists” thereby explicitly denying the average listener access. Minimalism rejects this principle on its face and instead creates music which is “spun out” from a germinal cell and, through repetition and gradual change, is clearly revealed to the listener. In Reich’s words, “[w]hat I’m interested in is a compositional process and a sounding music that are one and the same thing.” In this way, minimalist music is often viewed as more listener-centric when compared to other streams of modernist music which seem more composer-centric. Or put differently, music that could be performed in the back of a Burger King.

Winner of the 2013 GRAMMY® for Best Classical Contemporary Composition, Maria Schneider’s Winter Morning Walks is a contemporary song cycle based on the poetry of Ted Kooser. Typically, when audiences think of song cycles, they imagine pieces like Franz Schubert’s Winterreise or Robert Schumann’s Dichterliebe, both 19th-century mainstays. If anything, though, Schneider’s offering to the genre is more Sondheim than Schumann. Rather than distancing herself from the audience, Schneider’s musical language freely synthesizes elements of classical music, jazz, and musical theater to create an intimate landscape that is uniquely accessible, personal, and touching.

Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring (1943) is the most famous work from the composer’s third period: his so-called populist or Americana period of the 1940s. While Copland’s work prior to 1940 tended towards abstraction, his work in the 1940s represents a more direct and accessible form of expression. As Copland described in Our New Music (1941):

During these years [the 1930s], I began to feel an increasing dissatisfaction with the relations of the music-loving public and the living composer. The old “special” public of the modern music concerts had fallen away, and the conventional concert public continue apathetic or indifferent to anything but the established classics. It seemed to me that we composers were in danger of working in a vacuum. Moreover, an entirely new public for music had grown up around the radio and the phonograph. It made no sense to ignore them and to continue writing as if they did not exist. I felt that it was worth the effort to see if I couldn’t say what I had to say in the simplest possible terms.

Subtitled “Ballet for Martha,” Appalachian Spring also bears direct connection to Martha Graham, the founder of the Martha Graham Dance Company which will celebrate its centennial in 2026. Like Reich, Schneider, and Copland, Graham offers a kind of natural and accessible technique albeit in a very different context. While audiences may find Graham’s choreography to be abstract and inaccessible, it must be considered in contrast to classical ballet technique. In classical ballet, the dancer is in a constant state of suspension while they hold themselves up (quite unnaturally) against the forces of gravity. By contrast, Graham’s technique and other schools of modern dance focus on the relationship between the dancer and gravity, a form of tension and release as the dancer works within the constraints of a natural force. In that sense, it is Graham’s floorwork and use of falling techniques that offers the dance a different kind of “natural” than classical ballet. Specifically with regards to Appalachian Spring, Graham’s choreography also incorporated folk dancing including square dance, skips, paddle turns, and curtsies, to complement the populist and folk elements found in Copland’s score and the ballet’s dramatic narrative.

Questions like “Who belongs in this space?” and “For whom is this music written?” are certainly not new for classical musicians. Tonight’s concert offers four different answers to those questions about belonging from Steve Reich, Maria Schneider, Aaron Copland, and Martha Graham. But we may be asking the wrong question. Using Reich’s framework, perhaps the question would better be posed as “Is this music giving expression to the emotional climate of our time?” If that is the question, this evening’s concert should hopefully yield a satisfactory answer.

The following people contributed significant time and effort to support tonight’s concert. Thank you to each of them.

Ian Jones

Shar Joyner

Dennis Hopson

Brad McMillan

Mark Engebretson

Ally Harvel and the UNCG Electronic Music Studio

Andrew Keiser and Maria Schneider

Molly Allman, Jaden Brown, Jordan Owen, and Patty Saunders

Joyce Herring, Raíssa de Sousa Lima, and Antonio Fini (Martha Graham Dance Company)

Nick Nosko (WQED)

Funding for tonight’s performance was provided, in part, by the John R. Locke Endowment for Excellence in Music fund. For more information on giving to the UNCG School of Music, please visit https://vpa.uncg.edu/music/giving/

Program Notes
Double Sextet

There are two identical sextets in Double Sextet. Each one is comprised of flute, clarinet, vibraphone, piano, violin and cello. Doubling the instrumentation was done so that, as in so many of my earlier works, two identical instruments could interlock to produce one overall pattern. For example, in this piece you will hear the pianos and vibes interlocking in a highly rhythmic way to drive the rest of the ensemble.

The piece can be played in two ways; either with 12 musicians, or with six playing against a recording of themselves.

The idea of a single player playing against a recording of themselves goes all the way back to Violin Phase of 1967 and extends though Vermont Counterpoint (1982), New York Counterpoint (1985), Electric Counterpoint (1987) and Cello Counterpoint (2003). The expansion of this idea to an entire chamber ensemble playing against pre-recordings of themselves begins with Different Trains (1988) and continues with Triple Quartet (1999) and now to Double Sextet. By doubling an entire chamber ensemble one creates the possibility for multiple simultaneous contrapuntal webs of identical instruments. In Different Trains and Triple Quartet all instruments are strings to produce one large string fabric. In Double Sextet there is more timbral variety through the interlocking of six different pairs of percussion, string and wind instruments.

The piece is in three movements fast, slow, fast and within each movement there are four harmonic sections built around the keys of D, F, A-flat and B [Major] or their relative minor keys B, D , F and G-sharp. As in almost all my music, modulations from one key to the next are sudden, clearly setting off each new section.

Double Sextet is about 22 minutes long and was completed in October 2007. It was commissioned by eighth blackbird and received its world premiere by that group at the University of Richmond in Virginia on March 26, 2008.

— Steve Reich

Winter Walks

These nine poems were selected from Ted Kooser’s wonderful book, Winter Morning Walks: One Hundred Postcards to Jim Harrison.

They were written during his recovery from treatment for cancer, after he began taking two mile walks each morning. He’d been told to stay out of the sun for a year because of skin sensitivity, so he exercised before dawn, hiking the isolated country roads near his home in Garland, Nebraska. He sometimes walked with his wife but most often alone.

During the previous summer, depressed and preoccupied, he’d stopped writing. But as that winter (1998) approached, his health began to improve. One November morning, following his walk, he tried his hand at a poem, and soon was writing every day.

As he wrote in his foreword to Winter Morning Walks, “Several years before, my friend Jim Harrison and I had carried on a correspondence in haiku. As a variation on this, I began pasting my morning poems on postcards and sending them to Jim, whose generosity, patience and good humor are here acknowledged. What follows is a selection of one hundred of those postcards.”

These poems feel so like home to me, connecting with my southwest Minnesota roots at so many different levels, that I find it almost astonishing. There’s nothing to explain about this music, except to say it was very hard to pick which poems from Ted Kooser’s Winter Morning Walks I would choose. I could have gone on composing more, and someday hopefully will.

These poems were originally titled with the date, for instance Perfectly Still This Solstice Morning was titled December 21, Clear and five degrees. I changed the titles, as the dates were no longer chronological once musical considerations for song ordering entered the picture. But it did feel natural to open with the poem he wrote on the winter solstice, and to close with the poem he wrote on the vernal equinox, which seemed like the perfectly natural way to bookend Winter Morning Walks.

— Maria Schneider

Appalachian Spring

Some of Copland’s most populist “American” music was produced during the Depression and war years, including the overtly patriotic morale boosters Lincoln Portrait and Fanfare for the Common Man. Appalachian Spring capped a trilogy of dance interpretations of the American frontier spirit, beginning with Billy the Kid (1938) and continuing with Rodeo (1942). This was music that created the concert and theater equivalent of the poignant “high lonesome” bluegrass sound emerging at the same time, music of open chords and spare textures that often drew on traditional sources.

Appalachian Spring was commissioned by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge for Martha Graham. Copland began work on Graham’s then-untitled scenario in Hollywood in June 1943, completing the ballet a year later in Cambridge, MA. “After Martha gave me this bare outline, I knew certain crucial things—that it had to do with the pioneer American spirit, with youth and spring, with optimism and hope,” Copland later wrote.

Graham took the eventual title from “The Dance,” a poem by Hart Crane, though not the narrative of an Appalachian housewarming for a pioneer and his bride. Copland originally scored the ballet for an ensemble of 13 instruments, since the premiere was in the small Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Auditorium at the Library of Congress (with Graham herself as the Bride, Erick Hawkins as the Husbandman, and Merce Cunningham as the Revivalist). In the spring of 1945 he arranged a suite from the ballet for full orchestra, which won the Pulitzer Prize for music that year.

O Appalachian Spring! I gained the ledge;Steep, inaccessible smile that eastward bendsAnd northward reaches in that violet wedgeOf Adirondacks!—wisped of azure wands,

— from “The Dance,” Hart Crane

Graham told Copland that she wanted the dance to be “a legend of American living, like a bone structure, the inner frame that holds together a people,” and the ballet and its music were immediately understood as reflections of a national identity, of hope and fulfillment in a difficult time. “… the Spring that is being celebrated is not just any Spring but the Spring of America; and the celebrants are not just half a dozen individuals but ourselves in different phases,” John Martin wrote in his New York Times review.

— John Henken

About the Artists
Lindsay Kesselman

Lindsay Kesselman is a twice GRAMMY®-nominated soprano known for her warm, collaborative spirit and investment in personal, intimate communication with audiences. She regularly collaborates with orchestras, wind symphonies, chamber ensembles, opera/theater companies, and new music ensembles across the United States, often premiering, touring and recording new works written for her by living composers. She is a passionate advocate for contemporary music, and has commissioned/premiered over 100 works to date.

Recent and upcoming highlights include performances of Darkening, then Brightening by Christopher Cerrone across the country, National CBDNA with the UNC Greensboro Wind Ensemble, premieres of wind transcriptions of Caroline Shaw’s Is a Rose and Maria Schneider’s Winter Morning Walks, Pierrot Lunaire with Ensemble ATL, Energy in All Directions by Kenneth Frazelle with Sandbox Percussion at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, the role of Anna in Kurt Weill’s The Seven Deadly Sins with the Charlotte Symphony, Astronautica: Voices of Women in Space with Voices of Ascension, the John Corigliano 80th birthday celebration at National Sawdust (2018), a leading role in Louis Andriessen’s opera Theatre of the World with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Dutch National Opera and an international tour of Einstein on the Beach with the Philip Glass Ensemble (2012–15).

She is featured on several recent recordings, including: David Biedenbender’s all we are given we cannot hold (2023, Blue Griffin), Chris Cerrone’s opera In a Grove (2023, In a Circle Records), Caroline Shaw’s Is a Rose (2023, Blue Griffin), Chris Cerrone’s The Arching Path (2021, In a Circle Records), and Louis Andriessen’s Theatre of the World with the Los Angeles Philharmonic (2017, Nonesuch).

Kesselman is Assistant Professor of Voice and Choral Music at UNC Greensboro and co-directs the Heretic’s Guide to Musicianship with Kevin Noe. She holds degrees in voice performance and music education from Rice University and Michigan State University. She is represented by Trudy Chan at Black Tea Music and lives in Charlotte, NC with her husband Kevin Noe and son Rowan.

Personnel
FluteErika Boysen*Amrutha KoteeswaranJoeli Schilling

OboeKristen Daniel

ClarinetConcetta BrehmerLuke Ellard*Cat Keen Hock*Sarah Lucas-PageTaylor StirmAnthony Taylor*

BassoonEmily KlinkoskiAngela MorettiRyan Reynolds*

SaxophoneRobert Young*

TrumpetNinon Kirchman

HornAbigail Pack*

EuphoniumJohn Cowger

PercussionShunan GuiJoe TurnerEric Willie*

HarpAlyssa Hall

PianoAngelita BerdialesJim Douglass*Annie Jeng*Matthew Roxas

ViolinMarjorie Bagley*Xin-Yu ChangChloe LiFabián López*Yi-Ju ShihSiana Wong

ViolaSarah BahinScott Rawls*

CelloAlex Ezerman*Davis LingnerCori Trenczer

Double BassZach Hobin*Jack Hopper

* School of Music Faculty/Staff

UNCG Bands
The renowned UNCG Bands are dedicated to the performance, study, and cultivation of wind band music of the highest quality, and are a serious and distinctive medium of musical expression. The UNCG Bands are considered to be among the very finest collegiate band programs in America based upon our active profile of excellence in our performances, recordings, tours and convention performances.

Through exemplary practices in organization, training, and presentation, the UNCG Bands provide exceptional experiences for our members, sharing outstanding performances throughout the year and enhancing the institutional spirit and character of UNCG.

The UNCG Bands seek to support music education in the state of North Carolina and in our region by providing leadership and sponsorship to secondary school band programs and other organizations.

UNCG Bands

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Program Notes

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Ethno USA
2025-09-11 19:30 - 21:00 | Tew Recital Hall, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, 27412, United States
Ethno is JM International’s program for folk, world and traditional music. Founded in 1990, it is aimed at young musicians (up to the age of 30) with a mission to revive and keep alive global cultural heritage.

Present today in over 40 countries and on all 6 continents, Ethno engages young people through a series of annual international music camps as well as workshops, concerts and tours, working together with schools, conservatories and other groups of youth to promote peace, tolerance and understanding.

At the core of Ethno is its democratic, peer to peer learning approach whereby young people teach each other the music from their countries and cultures. It is a non-formal pedagogy that has been refined over the past 33 years, embracing the principles of intercultural dialogue and understanding. Ethno provides a unique opportunity for young people from across the globe to come together and engage through music in a manner that is characterised by respect, generosity and openness.

The goal of Ethno is to inspire musicians through these interactions to deepen their musical interests and to build a global network that supports their careers. Each Ethno music camp combines workshops, jam sessions, rehearsals and performances that enable participants to develop both personal and professional skills. Through Ethno, musicians gain a greater understanding of each other’s cultures. At Ethno, music is a powerful tool that fosters inclusion, understanding and acceptance.

Additional EVENT

Masterclass Thursday, September 114:00 pm | Tew Recital Hall

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Graduate Clarinet Showcase
2025-09-16 19:30 - 21:00 | Tew Recital Hall, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, 27412, United States
https://youtube.com/live/ubrrIzOq7lM?feature=share

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Rahsaan Barber Quintet
2025-09-19 19:30 - 21:30 | Organ Hall, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, 27412, United States
Since earning a Master’s Degree in Jazz Performance from the Manhattan School of Music in 2005, Rahsaan Barber has set out on a singular path of musical excellence in performance, composition, education, and entrepreneurship. Rahsaan enjoys a career that encompasses an ever-expanding range of musical styles, including jazz, blues, funk, classical, fusion, soul, Latin, and world music.

Rahsaan’s passionate, sincere, and studious approach to music-making has garnered professional appearances onstage alongside such heavyweights as Christian McBride, Brian Blade, the Temptations, Delfeayo Marsalis, the Spanish Harlem Orchestra, Duffy Jackson, Winard Harper, Kirk Franklin, Meghan Trainor and the Wooten Brothers. The saxophonist has performed on many of the world’s most prestigious stages for music including The Ryman, The Village Vanguard, Birdland, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, the Montreux Jazz Festival, and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. Rahsaan joined the ranks of the nation’s rising jazz stars as the leader of his own quintet, Everyday Magic, and co-leader of the groundbreaking Nashville-based Latin-jazz septet El Movimiento. Rahsaan has entered the ranks of the nation’s premier jazz artists following several celebrated releases, most recently including “Mosaic,” a double-disc collection of original works released in April of 2021, featuring trumpeter Nathan Warner and trombonist Roland Barber, Rahsaan’s twin brother. Prior to the release of “Mosaic,” Barber received critical acclaim for “The Music In The Night” (2017) and “Everyday Magic,” (2011) both released on the saxophonist’s record label, Jazz Music City, which he founded to showcase his hometown’s (Nashville, TN) diverse and impressive musical talent. In addition to his own jazz outfits, the saxophonist founded The Nashville Salsa Machine in 2016, a twelve-member ensemble featuring Music City’s most celebrated Latin-music performers. Barber is also an in-demand saxophonist for recording sessions and touring work, most recently completing a year-long tour with pop icon Kelly Clarkson and multiple tours with Lauren Daigle.

Rahsaan currently serves as Assistant Professor of Jazz Studies and Saxophone at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Barber has taught extensively at the collegiate level for over a decade, including six years of instruction at Belmont University, where he began his collegiate teaching career as instructor jazz and classical saxophone, jazz ensembles, and commercial music styles at the impressive age of twenty-five. Barber has given masterclasses and concerts at multiple Jazz Education Network conferences and at numerous colleges and universities, including the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, the University of Memphis, Lipscomb University, UNC-Pembroke, UNC-Wilmington, Indiana University, The University of Wisconsin (OshKosh), the University of Evansville, and many more. In addition, Rahsaan has served as Vice-President of the Tennessee Jazz and Blues Society and as a board member for the Nashville Jazz Workshop’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion panel.

The Miles Davis Jazz Studies Program at UNCG is a unique and innovative undergraduate jazz program designed to emulate the traditional process of learning jazz, through a combination of mentorship, real-world playing experiences, and a communal approach to learning. Although the program is housed in one of the largest music schools in the Southeast, it is kept intentionally small, resulting in an intensive and highly personalized learning environment.

UNCG offers the following degree programs for students interested in studying Jazz:

Bachelor of Music (B.M.) – Performance

Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Jazz Studies

Additional Event
Masterclass3:00 pm, Organ Hall

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Adam Frey, euphonium
2025-09-22 19:30 - 21:00 | Tew Recital Hall, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, 27412, United States
https://youtube.com/live/Y834VVlhA80?feature=share

Adam Frey travels the globe sharing his talents as a performer and advocate for live music. Adam has soloed with orchestras and bands the world over, including the world famous Boston Pops, Cheju Symphony Orchestra (South Korea), US Army Orchestra (Washington DC), Harvard Pops (MA), Fort Collins (CO), Indian Hill (MA), the Vaasa Symphony Orchestra (Finland), Atlanta Philharmonic (GA), Camerata Eleutheria (Argentina), Cascade (WA), Greensboro (NC), Clemson (SC), LaGrange (GA), Minot (ND), Bellevue Philharmonic (WA), and Northeastern (MA) Symphony Orchestras. He also performs regularly with wind bands and brass bands that have included Soli Brass in Holland, Point of Ayr in Wales, the National Youth Brass Band of Switzerland and wind bands from Singapore, Thailand, Brazil, South Korea, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Columbia, Peru, Australia, Russia, Finland, China, Germany, Hong Kong, and the United States.

Adam has been guest soloist at festivals around the globe, including four times at the Midwest Clinic (USA), the WASBE Convention (Singapore), Melbourne International Festival of Brass (Australia), Trombonanza (Argentina), Carlos Gomez Festival (Brazil), Jeju International Wind Festival (South Korea), Asia Pacific Band Directors Conference (South Korea), Westby Low Brass Workshop (Norway), Peru Low Brass Festival (Peru), Colombia Festubal (Colombia), Tubmania (Thailand), and Orquesta Latinoamericana de Vientos (Colombia) to name a few.

A native of Atlanta, Georgia, Adam Frey received his musical training at the University of Georgia, the Royal Northern College of Music, and the University of Salford. As a major ambassador of the euphonium, Adam has more than one hundred and twenty works that have been composed or specifically arranged for him. Most are published by Euphonium.com Publications, Pinnacle Brass Publications, and Absolute Brass.com.

For 17 years, Adam has hosted the International Euphonium Tuba (IET) Festival at Emory University. This event each June hosts more than 175 students and teachers from around the world in a week of playing, learning, and inspiration. Participants range from high school and college students to adult amateurs. More details at: www.IETFestival.com

Adam Frey is also Associate Professor at the University of North Georgia. His website, www.euphonium.com, contains sound files, performance schedules, photos from his world travels, and his recordings and publications.

Adam Frey is a Yamaha Performing Artist and Guest Clinician.

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Studio Voice Recital
2025-09-23 17:30 - 19:00 | Tew Recital Hall, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, 27412, United States
https://youtube.com/live/qDEC73okv9U?feature=share

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Luke Ellard, clarinet
2025-09-23 19:30 - 21:00 | Tew Recital Hall, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, 27412, United States
https://youtube.com/live/NgJe10aNkHw?feature=share

Clarinetist, composer, educator, and new music collaborator Luke Ellard strives for art that continually reaches out, valuing a relational spirit, informed engagement, and unapologetic authenticity.

For Luke, collaboration is what gives music life. As a clarinetist, they have performed with members of Bang On a Can All Stars, Eighth Blackbird, International Contemporary Ensemble, Fifth House Ensemble, Arkansas Symphony, Winston-Salem Symphony, and Mallarmé Chamber Music. As a composer, their music has been performed and commissioned by ensembles such as North Texas Wind Symphony, HOCKET, New Trombone Collective, Barkada Quartet, among others. Their current performance projects center around their self-produced solo cross-genre/electronic band LE, performing with their new music quartet Sounding Board, and commissioning new exciting works for the clarinet.

Dr. Ellard serves on the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro as Assistant Professor of Clarinet, having previously served on faculty at the University of Oklahoma and Midwestern State University while teaching privately and performing in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Luke earned their Doctor of Musical Arts in Clarinet Performance with related studies in Contemporary Music and Music Entrepreneurship at the University of North Texas, studying under Kimberly Cole Luevano. Additionally, Luke has earned degrees from Indiana University Jacobs School of Music (James Campbell & Eric Hoeprich), the University of Texas at Austin (Yevgeniy Sharlat, Dan Welcher, & Donald Grantham), and Louisiana Tech University (Lawrence Gibbs, Joe L. Alexander).

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Jazz Ensembles I and II: All Blues
2025-09-24 19:30 - 21:30 | The Crown at the Carolina Theatre, 310 S Greene St, Greensboro, 27401, United States
The Miles Davis Jazz Studies program begin their 2025-26 season at The Crown with “All Blues!” This concert celebrates the blues in all its forms – from the vocal prowess of Aretha Franklin to the energetic complexity of John Coltrane. Jazz Ensembles I and II will set your soul on fire in this very special concert. Get your tickets now, because they ALWAYS sell out!

The Miles Davis Jazz Studies Program at UNCG is a unique and innovative undergraduate jazz program designed to emulate the traditional process of learning jazz, through a combination of mentorship, real-world playing experiences, and a communal approach to learning. Although the program is housed in one of the largest music schools in the Southeast, it is kept intentionally small, resulting in an intensive and highly personalized learning environment.

UNCG offers the following degree programs for students interested in studying Jazz:

Bachelor of Music (B.M.) – Performance

Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Jazz Studies

TicketPriceAdult$16.20Seniors$10.20Military$10.20Students$10.20Ticket prices include a $3.00 processing fee and applicable sales tax.

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Robert Young, saxophone
2025-09-25 19:30 - 21:00 | Tew Recital Hall, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, 27412, United States
https://youtube.com/live/RBP9-DLsyog?feature=share

Fueled by a deep desire to create an enthusiasm surrounding the classical saxophone, Dr. Robert Young connects with audiences with his musicianship, virtuosity, and authenticity. Praised for his “effortless expression and facile technique” (The Saxophonist Magazine), Robert maintains an active career as a soloist, chamber musician, and educator. His artistry has afforded him opportunities to appear with ensembles and musicians from across the globe including the PRISM Quartet, The Crossing, Chris Potter, Ravi Coltrane, Uri Caine, Charlotte Symphony, Detroit Chamber Winds and Strings, and the Charleston (SC) Symphony Orchestra.

As a chamber musician, Robert collaborated with The Crossing and performed alongside the PRISM Quartet on the GRAMMY Award-winning album Gavin Bryars: The Fifth Century (available on ECM Recordings). The New York Times praised the collective performance on this album as “superb”and “eloquent.” Young has appeared with the PRISM Quartet on numerous concerts including residencies at the Curtis Institute, Shepherd School of Music (Rice University), and the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. He can be heard on several albums with this notable ensemble including The Curtis Project, Heritage/Evolution, Volume 2, and The Book of Days.

Appearing with the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra as soloist in the 2023-24 season, he was hailed as “uncommonly expressive…and technically prodigious” (San Francisco Classical Voice) for his performance of Guillaume Connesson’s acrobatic concerto, A Kind of Trane. He has also been a soloist with the United States Navy Band, performing Quicksilver by Chicago-based composer Stacy Garrop, and has been featured as a soloist with the Rock Hill Symphony Orchestra, Piedmont Wind Symphony, UNCSA Symphony, and Zagreb Soloists (Croatia).

Robert holds a teaching position at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro as Assistant Professor of Saxophone. Young’s students have received honors at several local, regional and national competitions and have been featured at several clinics and conferences throughout the country. He previously has served on the faculties of the UNC School of the Arts, The Crane School of Music – SUNY Potsdam, and Wichita State University. Young is often invited to give guest lectures and classes throughout the country. In Fall 2022, Robert was invited as be a guest teacher for the renowned University of Michigan saxophone studio as a sabbatical replacement for the award-winning saxophonist Timothy McAllister.

Robert earned his Doctor of Musical Arts (2011) and Master of Music (2008) degrees in saxophone performance from the University of Michigan where he studied with Professor Donald Sinta. At the University of Michigan, he studied jazz saxophone with Dr. Andrew Bishop and was a recipient of the Lawrence Teal Fellowship. Young received a bachelor’s degree from the University of South Carolina (2006) in saxophone performance where he studied with Dr. Clifford Leaman.

As a Conn-Selmer Artist, Robert Young plays exclusively on Selmer saxophones. He also serves as a D’Addario artist/clinician and endorses Key Leaves products.

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Aaron Goldberg
2025-09-26 19:30 - 21:30 | Tew Recital Hall, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, 27412, United States
featuring Garrett Arellano, Chad Eby, Brevan Hampden, and Thomas Heflin

https://youtube.com/live/n8l7Cs68C00?feature=share

The Miles Davis Jazz Studies Program at UNCG is a unique and innovative undergraduate jazz program designed to emulate the traditional process of learning jazz, through a combination of mentorship, real-world playing experiences, and a communal approach to learning. Although the program is housed in one of the largest music schools in the Southeast, it is kept intentionally small, resulting in an intensive and highly personalized learning environment.

UNCG offers the following degree programs for students interested in studying Jazz:

Bachelor of Music (B.M.) – Performance

Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Jazz Studies

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mOthertongue: Lived Experience in Asian America
2025-09-29 19:30 - 21:00 | Tew Recital Hall, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, 27412, United States
https://youtube.com/live/W5r6deD2y7k?feature=share

mOthertongue: Lived Experience in Asian America

Jennifer Lien, sopranoAnnie Jeng, piano

Exotic landscapes. Virtuous, submissive, sexualized women. Ineffective, emasculated, villainous men. These images of Asia have long been a staple of the European imagination, whether in colonial-era art song, grand Italian opera, film, or television. Here, in the 21st century, these stereotypes about Americans of Asian descent persist (see: pandemic-era anti-Asian hate).

I believe that the way to challenge outdated cultural ideas is by sharing new art with fresh cultural ideas. I wanted to perform songs that assert the Asian American lived experience, from the perspective of those of us who live it. But when I went looking for songs by Asian American composers set to contemporary Asian American texts, I came up empty. So I reached out to Chen, Dunphy, and Sankaram, three Asian American women composers in their prime who also write beautifully for the voice. To my surprise, all three readily agreed to my proposal.

The new songs on today’s program express the joys, pains, contradictions, and pride we experience as Asians living in this land we call home. I am struck by the recurring themes that resonate across the three song cycles: colonization; cultural shame; living in between cultures; culture loss; microaggression; pride. To sing these truths is to find and reclaim power that has been lost somewhere along the way.

My deepest gratitude goes to Justine, Melissa, Kamala, and the poet Ophelia Hu Kinney; to Sam Martin of Cincinnati Song Initiative for recognizing the importance of this project and co-commissioning these songs with me; to the Minnesota State Arts Board for awarding me a Creative Individuals grant in 2024; to all my Asian American pianist partners on this project, in particular Annie Jeng here in North Carolina; and to all the host institutions welcoming this project to their concert stages.

My wish for this project is that these songs feed the hunger of singers for repertoire that expresses their lived experience, and inspire marginalized composers to create works that assert their truths, take up space, and shift the cultural needle in the right direction. Our stories are all American stories. To answer the question in Chen’s second song: All of us belong here.

— Jennifer Lien

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Garrett Klein, Abigail Pack, and Marya Fancey
2025-09-30 17:30 - 19:00 | Organ Hall, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, 27412, United States
Trumpet artist Garrett Klein has garnered an international reputation for his varied performing career and dedicated teaching. He is currently serving as Associate Professor of Trumpet at UNC Greensboro where he leads the Trumpet Studio, directs the Trumpet Ensemble, and serves as Brass Area Chair. Aside from his teaching, Garrett is the Principal Trumpet of the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra and Principal Solo Cornet with North Carolina Brass Band. He is a former member of the world-renowned Dallas Brass and toured the nation with that ensemble for five years. He has also appeared as a guest musician with Charlotte Symphony, The Phoenix Symphony, the Tucson Symphony Orchestra, the New World Symphony, the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, and the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra. A new music advocate, Garrett has worked with composers to commission several new works for trumpet, presenting newly composed works at three International Trumpet Guild Conferences. Garrett earned his DMA and MM degrees at Arizona State University, along with a Certificate in Music Theory Pedagogy. Prior to ASU, he studied at the prestigious Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music in Singapore and St. Olaf College in Minnesota. Garrett Klein is an endorsing artist for Conn-Selmer and proudly performs on Vincent Bach trumpets.

Dr. Abigail Pack, Professor of Horn at UNCG and a native of Roanoke, Virginia, received her training from East Carolina University (BMA), University of Iowa (MM), and University of Wisconsin-Madison (DMA) where she was a Bolz Teaching Fellow. Before assuming her current position at UNCG she was horn faculty at James Madison University from 2001 to 2008. She has also been on faculty at Knox College in Galesburg, Il, Western State College in Gunnison, CO and in the Gunnison Watershed School District. An avid symphony player Dr. Pack has held positions with the Barton Symphony Orchestra, Quad Cities Symphony Orchestra, Des Moines Symphony Orchestra, Cedar Rapids Symphony Orchestra, Green-Bay Symphony Orchestra, the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra and currently has a position with the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra, the Southwest Chamber Orchestra, the Greensboro Opera, Amici Musicorum (chamber orchestra), and the Opera Roanoke Orchestra. Other orchestral subbing engagements include the Greensboro Symphony, Winston Salem Symphony, and the Charlotte Symphony. Other venues have included performances with the Western Piedmont Wind Symphony, North Carolina Brass Band, the Iowa Brass Quintet, Western Slope Brass Band, and Massanutten Brass Band. Performance and presentation highlights include the National Flute Association (Washington DC with the Montpelier Winds), the International Horn Symposium (University of Cape Town, South Africa, Ithaca, NY, Montreal, Canada), the International Midwest Band and Orchestra Conference (Chicago 2009, 2022), International Double Reed Society (Athens, GA), Western International Band Clinic (2022), the American Band College (2017, 2021, 2024) and The Kennedy Center of the Performing Arts (Washington). She is a founding member of System 5 Brass Quintet and CORalina Horn Quartet and can be heard on the Centaur label.

Scholar-performer Marya Fancey uses her research to bridge temporal and cultural gaps in music for students and audiences. She received a 2017–2018 Fulbright Student Research Award to Poland for Historical Music Performance. This grant supported her dissertation research on organ masses from the Tablature of Johannes of Lublin (ca. 1540), culminating in a performance of its three mass cycles with vocal ensemble Flores Rosarum at the fifteenth-century Church of the Holy Cross in Krakow. She has presented at meetings of the Historical Keyboard Society of North America and the SE chapter of the American Musicological Society.

Her concert programs frequently incorporate works by underappreciated composers. In 2016 Marya Fancey introduced Polish audiences to the music of Florence Price and David Hurd at the Podlaskie Organ Festival and the 18th International Festival of Organ Music at Pelplin Cathedral. She gave the 2015 world premiere of Passacaglia and Triple Fugue (organ) by Louise Talma. In 2011 she performed Sonata No. 2 (piano) by Grażyna Bacewicz at the 15th Annual Festival of Women Composers (Gainesville, FL).

In studio and classroom teaching she augments the traditional classical canon with lesser-known compositions as well as works from a variety of other musical styles. She has taught music studies courses at UNCG, Guilford College, and the University of Florida. Her past professional activities include apprentice organ builder, church organist and choir director, private music teacher, and assistant music editor.

Marya Fancey holds the DMA degree in Organ Performance from UNC-Greensboro, where she studied with André Lash (organ) and Andrew Willis (harpsichord and fortepiano), with a Post-Master’s certificate in Music Theory Pedagogy and a Post-Baccalaureate certificate in Historical Keyboard Performance. Her interest in the scholar-performer model arose from masterclasses with Marie-Claire Alain, Olivier Latry, John Grew, William Porter, Hank Knox, and Edoardo Bellotti at multiple McGill Summer Organ Academies between 2005 and 2015.

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Sinfonia
2025-09-30 19:30 - 21:00 | Tew Recital Hall, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, 27412, United States
https://youtube.com/live/PjFvnxPyjbs?feature=share

Scott Glasser, conductor

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UNCG Orchestras
The vibrant UNCG Orchestra program has long been recognized for performance excellence, adventurous programming, and high artistic standards. A diversity of offerings allow students the opportunity to perform repertoire for ensembles ranging from the largest cornerstone and contemporary works for full orchestra, to intimate pieces for chamber orchestra, to string orchestra.

Students in the UNCG Orchestra program are dedicated to the performance, study and cultivation of orchestral music of the highest quality. The UNCG Orchestras offer outstanding performances throughout the year and enhance the institutional spirit and community of UNCG. We seek to promote music education in the state of North Carolina and in our region by supporting secondary school orchestra programs and other organizations through our outreach activities and other annual events on campus.

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Coro di Belle Voci
2025-10-02 19:30 - 21:00 | Tew Recital Hall, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, 27412, United States
https://youtube.com/live/w4LFFoy2M-g?feature=share

Lindsay Kesselman, conductor

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UNCG Choirs
The mission of the UNCG Choirs is dedicated to the teaching, performance, study and cultivation of choral music of the highest quality representing not just the western choral canon but also choral music of other cultures by a diverse body of historical and new composers. We believe that the UNCG Choirs are a serious and distinctive medium of musical expression, of vital service and importance to its members and to UNCG. Through ensemble performance, we strive to create an environment of trust, communication, and expressive freedom, to present outstanding performances throughout the year, and to enhance the institutional sprit and character of UNCG. To music as an art and a profession, the UNCG Choirs seek to bring increasing artistry, understanding, and respect by efforts within our own immediate sphere and by providing leadership and sponsorship to school choral programs and through cooperation with all other agencies pursuing similar musical goals.

UNCG Choirs

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University Chorale
2025-10-03 19:30 - 21:00 | Tew Recital Hall, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, 27412, United States
https://youtube.com/live/ZMgLbcvDFMg?feature=share

Carole Ott, conductorKari Adams, guest conductor

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KATERINA GIMONElements (2014)

About the Program
Elements

Elements is set of choral works that abstractly depict the four classical elements and explores the wide range of capabilities of the human voice – from overtone singing, to vocal percussion, to colourful vocal timbres. Elements features no ‘text’ (at least not in the traditional sense), rather a series of syllables generated through improvisation meant to evoke the sound and energy of each element.

Elements was premiered in March 2014 by Laurier Singers under Lee Willingham. This set of works is a 2016 SOCAN Young Composers Competition winner, a 2015 Vancouver Chamber Choir’ Young Composers’ Competition winner, and a 2014 IAWM Search For New Music winner.

Earth is a beautiful, texturally-driven work depicting the simple yet unexplainable beauty of the earth. The work features harmonic overtone singing by a group of soloists; an accessible introduction to overtone singing in a choral setting.

Air traces the movement from calm breath to thick violent winds. Together singers gradually introduce new sounds and pitches, building an intricate texture with ever-shifting emphasis.

Fire is a fun, lively, and energetic work incorporating vocal percussion, body percussion, nasal singing, calls, nonsense syllables, as well as optional percussion.

Water presents powerful soaring textures and lilting melodies that grow and decay like waves in the ocean.

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UNCG Choirs
The mission of the UNCG Choirs is dedicated to the teaching, performance, study and cultivation of choral music of the highest quality representing not just the western choral canon but also choral music of other cultures by a diverse body of historical and new composers. We believe that the UNCG Choirs are a serious and distinctive medium of musical expression, of vital service and importance to its members and to UNCG. Through ensemble performance, we strive to create an environment of trust, communication, and expressive freedom, to present outstanding performances throughout the year, and to enhance the institutional sprit and character of UNCG. To music as an art and a profession, the UNCG Choirs seek to bring increasing artistry, understanding, and respect by efforts within our own immediate sphere and by providing leadership and sponsorship to school choral programs and through cooperation with all other agencies pursuing similar musical goals.

UNCG Choirs

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Student Composers Concert
2025-10-04 17:30 - 19:00 | Tew Recital Hall, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, 27412, United States
https://youtube.com/live/ZH57JkDx0u8?feature=share

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Chamber Singers
2025-10-06 19:30 - 21:00 | UNCG Auditorium, 408 Tate Street, Greensboro, NC, 27412, United States
https://youtube.com/live/EW6Xcs1mzuw?feature=share

Carole Ott, conductorAlexander Ezerman, celloErika Boysen, fluteMichaela Kelly, soprano

Program

THEODORE MORRISONA Chant for Peace in Our Time

MEIRA WARSHAUERAkhat Sha’alti

ANDREA CLEARFIELDPrayer for the Schechinah

REENA ESMAILShe Will Transform You

FRANZ SCHUBERTMirjam’s Siegesgesang

About the Program

About the Artists

UNCG Choirs
The mission of the UNCG Choirs is dedicated to the teaching, performance, study and cultivation of choral music of the highest quality representing not just the western choral canon but also choral music of other cultures by a diverse body of historical and new composers. We believe that the UNCG Choirs are a serious and distinctive medium of musical expression, of vital service and importance to its members and to UNCG. Through ensemble performance, we strive to create an environment of trust, communication, and expressive freedom, to present outstanding performances throughout the year, and to enhance the institutional sprit and character of UNCG. To music as an art and a profession, the UNCG Choirs seek to bring increasing artistry, understanding, and respect by efforts within our own immediate sphere and by providing leadership and sponsorship to school choral programs and through cooperation with all other agencies pursuing similar musical goals.

UNCG Choirs

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Symphonic Band
2025-10-07 19:30 - 21:00 | UNCG Auditorium, 408 Tate Street, Greensboro, NC, 27412, United States
https://youtube.com/live/Ca5-DGMkn_I?feature=share

Jonathan Caldwell, conductorStephanie Ycaza, tuba

Program

KEVIN DAYStride (2023)

IVETTE HERRYMAN RODRÍGUEZSantiago (2019)

NORMAN DELLO JOIOVariants on a Mediaeval Tune (1963)

GALA FLAGELLOVitality (2022)

DREW BONNERDeep, Dark Night (2019)

DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICHDance I from Suite for Variety Orchestra (1938)

About the Program
Stride (2023)

Kevin Day is a composer, jazz pianist, producer, and conductor who is known to juxtapose diverse musical traditions including contemporary classical, jazz, R&B, and soul with classical composition. His father was a prominent hip-hop producer, and his mother was a popular gospel singer. Day is one of eight founding members of the Nu Black Vanguard, a collective dedicated to the advancement of Black composers, and a graduate of Texas Christian University, the University of Georgia, and the University of Miami Frost School of Music. In 2024, Day joined the faculty at the University of California San Diego as a lecturer in theory and musicianship.

Stride celebrates Day’s college marching band experiences and the idea of walking with confidence and decisiveness to overcome obstacles within one’s path. The piece includes a high energy theme, a contrasting slower section, and a return to the theme for an optimistic, high-energy end.

— Note by Kevin Day and Patty Saunders

Santiago (2019)

Ivette Herryman Rodríguez, a Cuban-born composer, often incorporates elements of Cuban musical traditions into her work. Santiago takes its name from Santiago de Cuba, a city renowned for its vibrant musical life and carnival traditions. At the heart of this culture is the “Comparsa Santiaguera,” a parade of singers, dancers, and musicians that has become a defining feature of the city’s identity. The work celebrates Cuban musical traditions while paying tribute to Santiago de Cuba, capturing both the spirit of its music and the lively energy of the comparsa. The piece opens with a lyrical statement of the main melody played by the corneta china, a double-reed instrument with a piercing, trumpet-like sound that traditionally announces the comparsa. The theme is followed by three titled variations: Variation I: Chorale, which takes a lyrical approach to the main melody; Variation II: Lullaby and Dance, which introduces a waltz-like dance; and Variation III: Comparsa, which fully embraces the celebratory energy of the Cuban carnival.

— Note by Ivette Herryman Rodríguez and Molly Allman

Variants on a Mediaeval Tune (1963)

Norman Dello Joio, an American composer best known for his choral works, came from a musical family and first studied organ with his father before pursuing formal training. He is often identified as a postmodern, specifically neoromantic, composer. Postmodernism in music is characterized less by a unified style than by an emphasis on individual expression, extending modernism’s break from tradition by encouraging composers to reject past conventions and write freely. Neoromanticism is a branch of postmodernism but shows a distinct return to emotional expression in music seen in 19th-century Romanticism.

Variants on a Mediaeval Tune premiered on April 10, 1963, as Dello Joio’s first original work for band. It is based on a melody titled “In dulci jubilo,” a traditional Christmas carol, which acts as the main theme. It includes a brief introduction followed by the theme and five variants that strongly contrast in tempo and character, fully utilizing the possibilities of the band. The Mary Duke Biddle Foundation commissioned the piece for the Duke University Band with Paul Bryan, conductor.

— Note by Jaden Brown

Vitality (2022)

Gala Flagello is an American composer, teacher, and non-profit director. In 2022, Flagello was a composition fellow at the Aspen Music Festival. Part of her fellowship requirement was to submit a piece to be read and recorded by the Aspen Conducting Academy Orchestra. For this, Flagello chose to write Vitality.

Flagello wrote Vitality in 2022 for the Aspen Conducting Academy orchestral readings. It draws inspiration from a quote by Martha Graham, a renowned American dancer, teacher, and choreographer.

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.

Found in a letter from Graham to fellow dancer and choreographer Agnes De Mille, this quote contains three ideas: the what, the how, and the why. Graham defines the “what” as the universal life-force within each person, the “how” as its unique expression through individual actions, and the “why” as the necessity of expression, since otherwise that force would be lost. Flagello writes that “the piece loosely follows this structure, musically exploring the prickly and potent glimmers of one’s life force alongside the uncertainty of self-expression and vulnerability.”

— Note by Gala Flagello and Jaden Brown

Deep, Dark Night (2019)

Drew Bonner is a composer and euphonium player. As a performer and educator, he writes for a range of ensembles, including euphonium quartets and wind bands. Deep, Dark Night is originally written for solo tuba and British brass band and explores the thoughts and emotions that arise as night falls: moments of reflection, grief, anxiety, and ultimately resilience. The piece captures experiences we have all faced: the quiet heaviness of the mind at night, as well as the emotional struggles that can accompany it.

The first movement begins with percussion and introduces a four-note motif that recurs throughout. This movement reflects a sense of melancholy and inner weight, as the motif is developed and varied, leading to a cadenza that descends into the tuba’s lowest register. The second movement, “Agitato,” conveys anger and a willingness to fight, driving forward with continuous motion through repeated rhythms, shifting melodies, and overlapping parts. The main motif reappears in the accompaniment while the soloist rises above it, creating contrast and ultimately concluding the work with determination and strength.

— Note by Tiffany Galus and Molly Allman

Dance I from Suite for Variety Orchestra (ca. 1956)

Dmitry Shostakovich was a highly regarded 20th century Russian composer who lived in the Soviet Union for much of his life. As a composer, he lived in the shadow of constant criticism and fear from Soviet authorities which dictated the trajectory of his work. When Shostakovich died in Moscow in 1975, his legacy included a prolific oeuvre that also reflected his personal experience of composing within the context of political oppression.

Dance no. 1 is taken from Shostakovich’s Suite for Variety Orchestra which was compiled by Shostakovich’s colleagues in the 1950s from his film and stage scores. “Dance no. 1” was adapted from “No. 16, ‘The Market Place’” in Shostakovich’s film score for The Gadfly and is a galloping race from the start. The dance includes a main theme, a contrasting middle section, and a return to the opening with whirling, scalar flourishes in the woodwinds and punctuated brass.

— Note by Patty Saunders and Gerard McBurney

About the Artists
Stephanie Ycaza

Stephanie Ycaza is the Assistant Professor of Tuba and Euphonium at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She previously held the position of Instructor of Tuba and Euphonium at the University of Northern Iowa, and has also served on the music faculties of Virginia Commonwealth University, Virginia State University, Longwood University, the University of Richmond, and Shenandoah University. Stephanie is active as a masterclass teacher and as a clinician for middle and high school bands.

Stephanie is a founding member of Calypsus Brass, a brass quintet dedicated to performing new works and providing high-quality recordings for composers. Calypsus is committed to promoting the works of composers from historically marginalized groups, and serves as an Ensemble-in-Residence for Rising Tide Music Press. Stephanie is Principal Tuba of the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Symphony, and has also performed with the Virginia Symphony, the Williamsburg Symphony, the Capital Wind Symphony, and the Virginia Grand Military band. She has also contributed to recording projects at Spacebomb Records in Richmond, VA. Stephanie’s recent solo performances have focused on music for tuba with electronic accompaniment, music by women composers, and her own transcriptions and arrangements for low brass. She has appeared as a soloist at the International Tuba Euphonium Conference, the Northeast, Southeast, and Midwest Regional ITEA Conferences, the Army Band Tuba-Euphonium Workshop, and the International Women’s Brass Conference. Stephanie also writes and gives presentations on the topic of mindfulness in the practice and performance of music.

Stephanie holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Shenandoah University, a Master of Music degree and Artist Diploma from Yale University, and a Bachelor of Music degree from Virginia Commonwealth University. She studied with Dr. Ross Walter, Toby Hanks, Mike Roylance, Andrew Hitz, and Michael Bunn. Stephanie is a Miraphone tuba artist.

UNCG Bands
The renowned UNCG Bands are dedicated to the performance, study, and cultivation of wind band music of the highest quality, and are a serious and distinctive medium of musical expression. The UNCG Bands are considered to be among the very finest collegiate band programs in America based upon our active profile of excellence in our performances, recordings, tours and convention performances.

Through exemplary practices in organization, training, and presentation, the UNCG Bands provide exceptional experiences for our members, sharing outstanding performances throughout the year and enhancing the institutional spirit and character of UNCG.

The UNCG Bands seek to support music education in the state of North Carolina and in our region by providing leadership and sponsorship to secondary school band programs and other organizations.

UNCG Bands

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Symphony Orchestra: Pines of Rome
2025-10-08 19:30 - 21:00 | UNCG Auditorium, 408 Tate Street, Greensboro, NC, 27412, United States
https://youtube.com/live/ttzUdStEcfI?feature=share

Jungho Kim, conductorCori Trenczer, cello

Program

NIKOLAI RIMSKY-KORSAKOVCapriccio espagnol, op. 34 (1887)

FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDNCello Concerto No. 2 in D Major, Hob. VIIb/2 (c. 1783)III. Rondo: Allegro

OTTORINO RESPIGHIPines of Rome, P 141 (1924)

I pini di Villa Borghese (The Pines of the Villa Borghese)Pini presso una catacomba (Pines Near a Catacomb)I pini del Gianicolo (The Pines of the Janiculum)I pini della via Appia (The Pines of the Appian Way)

About the Program
Capriccio espagnol, op. 34

Considering the great interest in Spanish music demonstrated by the father of Russian art music, Mikhail Glinka (Glinka traveled extensively in Spain, collected folk materials, and composed pieces based on them), it is not surprising that a Glinka disciple such as Rimsky-Korsakov would look for similar geographic sources of inspiration. So it is that the Russian Rimsky-Korsakov conceived a fantasy on Spanish themes; he originally intended it to be for violin and orchestra. As it developed, however, the Capriccio espagnol came to be not only a virtuoso work for violin, but also a work that could rightly be subtitled “Fantasy for violin, clarinet, oboe, flute, horn, trumpet (etc., etc.).” Which is to say that while the composition’s accent is Spanish, its emphasis is on solo instrumental virtuosity as well as on the orchestral effulgence that is so typical of Rimsky-Korsakov.

The composer himself commented on the dazzling merits of the piece, saying, “It is intended as a brilliant composition for the orchestra. The change of timbres, the felicitous choice of melodic designs and figuration patterns, exactly suiting each kind of instrument, brief virtuoso cadenzas for solo instruments, etc., constitute here the very essence of the composition and not its garb or orchestration. The Spanish themes of dance character furnished me with rich material for putting in use multiform orchestral effects. All in all, the capriccio is undoubtedly a purely external piece, but vividly brilliant for all that.”

The piece is in five sections, played without pause.

1. Alborada. This “morning song” begins with eye-opening, full orchestral thrust, out of which emerge clarinet and violin solos, the latter ending the section quietly.

2. Variations. A simple Spanish folk melody is given by horns. Five variations—really just elaborations on the theme—exploit various solo voices, the last ending with languorous flute chromatics.

3. Alborada. The first section returns; here, violin and clarinet reverse their first-movement solo passages.

4. Scene and Gypsy Song. A side drum initiates a fanfare for horns and trumpets alone; solo trumpet blazes out the theme. Next, solo violin takes it up; then flute and clarinet, with percussion and strings accumulating. A flute plays a cadenza over a timpani roll, then clarinet over cymbals, after which there is a harp and triangle duet. Finally, the strings interject a ferocious idea; this is the gypsy song, which then alternates with the opening fanfare motif in orchestral splendor.

5. Asturian Fandango. Trombones present the first part of the theme, winds the second. After varying timbral treatment, the Alborada returns to bring the capriccio to a fiery close.

— Orrin Howard

Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat Major for Violin and Viola, K. 364

By 1779—a few years before Haydn wrote his Symphony No. 76—the 23-year-old Mozart was chomping at the bit to break free from the restrictions imposed by his employer in Salzburg, the Archbishop Colloredo. His recent tour westward to Mannheim and Paris had proved of decisive importance; it apparently stirred a desire to experiment with some of the instrumental forms and styles Mozart had been encountering.

One result was the Sinfonia Concertante, a work that bursts with the joy of exploring new instrumental sound combinations and possibilities. It also marks a sort of turning point, in essence summing up much of what Mozart had achieved to date as an artist. Not long afterward—and in part on account of indulging in such purely pleasurable creative endeavors, at the expense of his duties as court organist—he was summarily dismissed by his boss (as he sardonically puts it in a letter, “with a kick on my arse”) and left Salzburg for good to live in Vienna.

The genre here, as the name indicates, is basically a hybrid between the symphony and the concerto – what, later in the 19th century, would be labeled a double concerto for violin and viola. Yet the Sinfonia Concertante wondrously unifies these several dimensions. Like Haydn, Mozart exploits his rather modest orchestral ensemble to the maximum; there’s no percussion, nor even flutes or Mozart’s beloved clarinets, but he divides the violas into two for a richer string blend. The proportions of the opening movement (marked with the epic-sounding tempo “Allegro maestoso”) are generous and expansive, further contributing to the work’s symphonic aspect.

For many, this piece represents the grandest of Mozart’s violin concertos, surpassing the five official ones. At the same time, the viola is no second fiddle here. Mozart’s choice of instrument for the second soloist is telling: although an excellent violinist, he himself loved to play viola in string quartet ensembles, enjoying the perspective of being “in the middle.” One unforgettable characteristic of the Sinfonia Concertante is the remarkable partnership and equality shared by both soloists and the searingly beautiful sound blend they create. Mozart’s original score even inscribes the viola part in D major, thus requiring the violist to tune the strings up a half-step. The intention is to give the usually more-reserved viola a certain resonance to offset the violin’s usual limelight-hogging sonority.

The Sinfonia Concertante is in part about an extraordinary abundance of ideas and sonorities which – thanks to Mozart’s art – pour out with a seeming effortlessness, like ripened fruit simply there to be plucked. The opening orchestral exposition makes this clear, as one idea is laid out on top of another until, with a half dozen in the air, one loses track. And more are yet to come as the curtain opens and the soloists enter in one of the most sublime passages of all Mozart, soaring out from the background on a sustained high E-flat. It’s perhaps no surprise that George Balanchine choreographed a famous ballet to this music, for the role of the duo soloists entails a conversation not just with the orchestra at large but with each other (it’s intriguing, as well, to imagine Mozart’s own voice represented by the viola). This is clear in the many echoing passages he unfolds and in his construction of the cadenzas, expressly written out.

Beyond these instrumental dimensions, there’s yet another. This is the world of opera, of lamenting song, with a hint of archaic baroque sentiment, which comes to the fore in the sensitive and lengthy Andante, one of Mozart’s relatively rare minor-mode slow movements. Here we find an emotional depth that, as Maynard Solomon speculates in his notable biography, may reflect the composer’s experience of loss in coping with the recent death of his mother. Specifically, the duality of the violin-viola sound contributes to another aspect of the piece’s stunning beauty: listen as the solo violin takes up its plaintive aria of grief and the response from the viola, now providing a sudden but believable consolation. The two continue to form a complementary pair as Mozart unfolds his song seamlessly, virtually prefiguring what Wagner would later coin as “infinite melody.”

With the presto rondo finale, an irrepressibly joyful spirit returns. As Alfred Einstein observes, its “gaiety results principally from the fact that in the chain of musical events the unexpected always occurs first, being followed by the expected.” Or, to return to Hesse’s ethereal Immortals, the Sinfonia Concertante ends with their characteristic laughter, which is “laughter without an object…simply light and lucidity.”

— Thomas May

Pines of Rome

Respighi managed to get a couple of operas staged in his native Bologna by the time he was 31 years old, but work as an orchestral musician (violin and viola), teacher, piano accompanist, and arranger of Baroque music sustained his peripatetic career in its early years. A move to Rome in 1913 as professor of composition at the Liceo Musicale of Santa Cecilia proved decisive, since Rome was then the center of orchestral life in Italy. In 1916, he completed Fountains of Rome, a four-part symphonic tone poem that gradually became a huge success, making Respighi famous and wealthy.

In 1919 the Liceo became the Conservatory of Santa Cecilia, and in 1923 Respighi was appointed its director. He held that administrative post only three years, during which he composed Pines of Rome, a sequel to Fountains and even more lucrative for Respighi. Its success, following its premiere in December 1924, enabled Respighi to quit as director of the Conservatory in 1926, although he continued the teaching he loved, as an advanced composition professor there until 1935.

The great popularity of this music is not hard to understand. It is brilliantly evocative, well-crafted, and emotionally sincere musical pageantry. The first section of Pines – all four are played without a break – is a short prelude depicting children at play in the pine grove of the Villa Borghese, their dances and games raucously projected through quick brass and woodwind exchanges.

“Pines Near a Catacomb” presents a serene, even somber scene, with muted strings supporting an orchestral chant which “re-echoes solemnly, sonorously, like a hymn” rising from the catacomb, in the composer’s words.

“The Pines of the Janiculum” is night music in which a solo clarinet sings plaintively, introducing the actual song of a nightingale (Respighi even specified the recording to be used) over tremolo strings. “The Pines of the Appian Way” suggests morning dawning over the march of imperial Roman glory in trumpet-driven triumph. Mussolini adored Respighi’s orchestral music, but the sound of a fascist parade here is probably the result of purely musical muscle flexing rather than any consciously propagandistic intentions on the part of the rather non-political composer.

— John Henken

About the Artists
Cori Trenczer (Third Prize, Student Artist Competition)

Cori Trenczer is a cellist, chamber musician, and teacher from the Hudson Valley region of New York. Coming from a musical family and a family of educators, Cori is both an avid performer and a teacher to a robust studio of cello students. Cori has her bachelors degree in cello performance from the Eastman School of Music and she is a graduate assistant in the graduate string quartet at UNCG.

Cori enjoys playing in the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra as a section cellist, and teaching her studio of roughly 18 cello students, ranging from age 8 to adult. She is interested in contemporary music and playing music by underrepresented composers. Cori is a virtual cello teacher on the faculty of Cornerstone Music Studios and on wyzant.com, and teaches in-person at Moore Music Company and through UNCG’S Community Music Lessons Program.

UNCG Orchestras
The vibrant UNCG Orchestra program has long been recognized for performance excellence, adventurous programming, and high artistic standards. A diversity of offerings allow students the opportunity to perform repertoire for ensembles ranging from the largest cornerstone and contemporary works for full orchestra, to intimate pieces for chamber orchestra, to string orchestra.

Students in the UNCG Orchestra program are dedicated to the performance, study and cultivation of orchestral music of the highest quality. The UNCG Orchestras offer outstanding performances throughout the year and enhance the institutional spirit and community of UNCG. We seek to promote music education in the state of North Carolina and in our region by supporting secondary school orchestra programs and other organizations through our outreach activities and other annual events on campus.

UNCG Orchestras

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Wind Ensemble
2025-10-09 19:30 - 21:00 | UNCG Auditorium, 408 Tate Street, Greensboro, NC, 27412, United States
Hub New Music

https://youtube.com/live/JESfALSDeL4?feature=share

Jonathan Caldwell, conductorHub New MusicGala Flagello, composerPatty Saunders, graduate conductor

Program

ANNA CLYNEMasquerade (2013/2018)transcribed by Dennis Llinás

SHUYING LIIn This Breath (2025)

GALA FLAGELLOThe Bird-While (2022)

Avian GodsFragile, Vanishing GiftsSurvive

SILVESTRE REVUELTASSensemayá (1938/1990)transcribed by Frank Bencriscutto

PAUL HINDEMITH Symphony in B-flat (1951)

Moderately fast, with vigor Andante grazioso Fugue (rather broad)

About the Program
Masquerade

Masquerade draws inspiration from the original mid-18th century promenade concerts held in London’s pleasure gardens. As is true today, these concerts were a place where people from all walks of life mingled to enjoy a wide array of music. Other forms of entertainment ranged from the sedate to the salacious with acrobatics, exotic street entertainers, dancers, fireworks and masquerades. I am fascinated by the historic and sociological courtship between music and dance. Combined with costumes, masked guises and elaborate settings, masquerades created an exciting, yet controlled, sense of occasion and celebration. It is this that I wish to evoke in Masquerade.

The work derives its material from two melodies. For the main theme, I imagined a chorus welcoming the audience and inviting them into their imaginary world. The second theme, Juice of Barley, is an old English country dance melody and drinking song, which first appeared in John Playford’s 1695 edition of The English Dancing Master.

— Anna Clyne

In This Breath

In This Breath was premiered by the Baylor University Wind Ensemble at the March 2025 CBDNA National Conference in Fort Worth, Texas. It was composed in memory of Glen Adsit. Li offers the following regarding the piece:

“My nature is the nature of the cloud—the nature of no birth and no death. Just as it is impossible for a cloud to die, it’s impossible for me to die. I enjoy contemplating my continuation body, just as the cloud enjoys watching the rain fall and become the river far below. If you look closely at yourself, you will see how you too are continuing me in some way. If you breathe in and out, and you find peace, happiness, and fulfillment, you know I am always with you, whether my physical body is still alive or not. I am continued in my many friends, students, and monastic disciples.” Thich Nhat Hanh – The Art of Living

This quotation comes from Thich Nhat Hanh’s The Art of Living. This book is a collection of the Vietnamese monk’s ruminations on life and death that guided my partner Glen Adsit through his personal struggles when confronted with his own mortality. As well as being my beloved life partner and musical collaborator, Glen was a beloved figure in the music community who touched the lives of countless collaborators and students. In the wake of Glen’s sudden passing in January 2024 we have all become the rain to Glen’s cloud. His inextinguishable spirit and profound influence continue to resonate deeply within all of us. Although his physical body is no longer with us, we now constitute his continuation body and are charged with continuing his legacy of support and love for one another.

This piece is a tribute to Glen, the physical life we shared together, and the new life we share as I continue his legacy in my own way. It reflects the profound love and connection we share, both personally and through our collaborative musical endeavors. The piece is lyrical and tender, inviting listeners into the intimate emotional spaces Glen and I navigated together. It captures the essence of Glen’s loving spirit—missed by many, cherished by those who experienced his warmth and guidance, and still apparent in the life and work of his family, colleagues, and students. It is both a celebration of Glen’s life and the enduring bond he and I share and a tribute to the legacy of love and artistic collaboration that he left behind for all of us to continue together. Glen Adsit was a conductor and trombonist. He served as the director of bands at The Hartt School and the national president of the College Band Directors National Association.

As the piece concludes, the ensemble decrescendos to silence making space for a solo trombone crescendo as a tribute to Glen Adsit, a trombonist, and his enduring legacy.

— Shuying Li and Patty Saunders

The Bird-While

The Bird-While (2022) is a concerto for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and symphonic winds commissioned by Hub New Music. The piece is titled after and based on Keith Taylor’s poem Acolytes in the Bird-While, which explores the flora and fauna of Michigan and the struggle to persist in the face of climate change. I aimed to write a concerto for an unconventional group of instruments that demonstrates their virtuosity while providing a platform for awareness of and education around environmental and climate justice. Each movement derives its title from Taylor’s poem, drawing attention to pivotal lines in the poem’s narrative.

The first movement, Avian Gods, is inspired by the calls of the pileated woodpecker and redstart warbler, two Michigan bird species central to Taylor’s poem. This movement’s 5/8 motif follows the woodpecker’s five-note call, often separated into three- and two-note groupings that can be heard in both the soloists’ and ensemble’s parts. Snap pizzicato in the solo violin and cello evoke the woodpecker’s pecking, and the ensemble’s driving 5/8 ostinato conjures the warbler’s high, repetitive five-note shriek.

The second movement, Fragile, Vanishing Gifts, highlights the individual natural elements that surround us every day. The flute, clarinet, violin, and cello articulate the future loss of these elements due to climate change as they introduce the movement’s theme separately, then come together in canon; our environment is a delicate balance between the individual and the collective. This theme originates from my Moon Dream (2020) for solo soprano saxophone, an early pandemic-era lullaby commissioned by Latitude 49 for their Bagatelles Project in support of the Coalition for African Americans in the Performing Arts.

The third movement, Survive, is both a question and a call to action: can the performers — and our environment — withstand disruption and damage? As I was writing this movement, my best friend and horn player, Marina Krol Hodge, suddenly passed, leaving me pondering my own ability to weather life’s storms. Dedicated to Marina, Survive features horn solos and a brass chorale throughout to commemorate her bright, resilient spirit and her support of new music. The movement’s title also references the way in which music itself might survive through history, which I illustrate by quoting the prelude of J.S. Bach’s Violin Partita No. 3. Two more nods to Bach appear later in this movement in the solo violin and cello. Piping plover calls are referenced in the fleeting, staccato woodwind parts, and the movement’s focus on quintal harmony and recurring fifths harken to the woodpecker’s opening five-note call.

5% of proceeds from The Bird-While sales and rentals will be donated to the Bird Center of Michigan.

— Gala Flagello

Sensemayá

Revueltas wrote little explanation about his composition Sensemayá, and the meaning/relationship of the music to the poem has been the basis for much scholarly debate for the past eighty years. Revueltas heard Afro-Cuban poet Nicholas Guillén recite his poem Sensemayá in 1937 and was taken by the text and rhythm of the poem. The word sensemayá is a combination of sensa (Providence) and Yemaya (Afro-Cuban Goddess of the Seas and Mother of Earth), one of the godSensemayá was the work that brought Silvestre Revueltas to international attention. It was through a recording of the work made by Leopold Stokowski in New York in December 1947 that widespread audiences outside of Mexico began to get an idea of Revueltas’ music.

Revueltas had died in 1940 from complications of chronic alcoholism, his music virtually unknown outside of Mexico, some performances given during a trip to Spain in 1937 notwithstanding. The last decade of his life had been devoted to music, with Revueltas active as a composer, teacher, and conductor in Mexico City. Between 1928 and his death, Revueltas had composed roughly 60 works, including orchestral, chamber, vocal, and theater pieces, as well as a handful of film scores, such as Redes (released in English as The Wave, 1936) and La noche de los mayas (The Night of the Mayans, 1939).

Revueltas had a varied and useful musical education, comprised of a fair amount of practical experience. After three years in Mexico City (1913-1916), Revueltas traveled to the United States, where he studied violin and composition in Austin and Chicago. In the late 1920s, he played violin in a theater orchestra in San Antonio and conducted an orchestra in Mobile, Alabama. He returned to Mexico in 1929, when Carlos Chávez, one of the country’s foremost composers and musicians, invited him to become assistant conductor of the Mexico Symphony Orchestra, a post he held until 1935.

These experiences combined to make Revueltas a sensitive and insightful writer for orchestra and a composer with an intrinsic ability to express Latin-American culture musically. Sensemayá first materialized in a (still unpublished) version for chamber ensemble in 1937. Revueltas based the work on a poem that describes the ritual killing of a snake from Cuban writer Nicolás Guillén’s collection West Indies Ltd., published in 1934. The atmosphere of the poem, which pits life against death, the snake against its ritual executioners, is ideally captured by Revueltas in his brief, vibrant musical work, even more so in the version for full orchestra premiered by the composer with a pick-up orchestra at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City on December 15, 1938. The obsessive rhythms (the work is in 7/8 – and occasionally 7/16 – time), the slithering, pictorial wind writing, and the threatening brass all combine to create a raw evocation of the ceremony, comparable to what Stravinsky did for pagan Russia in The Rite of Spring.

— John Mangum

Symphony in B-flat

The Symphony for Concert Band was composed at the request of Lt. Col. Hugh Curry, leader of the United States Army Band, and was premiered in Washington, D.C., on April 5, 1951, with the composer conducting. This three-movement work is the only symphony that Hindemith wrote expressly for the wind band. The suite shows Hindemith’s great contrapunctal skill, and the organized logic of his thematic material. His melodies develop ever-expanding lines, and his skill in the organization and utilization of complex rhythmic variation adds spice and zest to the strength of his melodies.

Although Symphony in B-Flat features unique uses of dissonant chords and nonharmonic tones, it preserves neo-classical tonality, forms, and rhythmic and melodic patterns. Short figures are apt to form themselves into ostinatos to provide the background to broad and declamatory melodies; these melodies will often repeat characteristic phrases of awkward lengths so as to disturb the even flow of the basic rhythm. A slow section will alternate with a scherzando section, and the two will combine to form the third portion of a movement.

The first movement is in sonata allegro form in three sections, with the recapitulation economically utilizing both themes together in strong counterpoint. The second and third movements develop and expand their thematic material in some of the most memorable contrapunctal writing for winds. The second movement opens with an imitative duet between alto saxophone and cornet, accompanied by a repeated chord figure. The duet theme, along with thematic material from the opening movement, provides the basic material for the remainder of the movement. The closing section of the third movement utilizes the combined themes while the woodwinds amplify the incessant chattering of the first movement. The brass and percussion adamantly demand a halt with a powerful final cadence.

The Symphony in B-Flat rivals any orchestra composition in length, breadth, and content, and served to convince other first-rank composers — including Vittorio Giannini, Vincent Persichetti, Paul Creston, and Alan Hovhaness — that the band is a legitimate medium for serious music.

— Andrew Grenci and Joel Baroody

About the Artists
Hub New Music

Called “contemporary chamber trailblazers” by the Boston Globe, Hub New Music is a “prime mover of piping hot 21st century repertoire” (The Washington Post). Founded in 2013, the “nimble quartet of winds and strings” (NPR) has commissioned dozens of new works for its distinctive ensemble of flute, clarinet, violin, and cello. Hub actively collaborates with today’s most celebrated composers on projects that traverse a rich musical landscape.

Recent and upcoming performances include concerts presented by the Kennedy Center, Seattle Symphony, Kaufman Music Center, Suntory Hall (Tokyo), the Williams Center for the Arts, Yale Schwarzman Center, Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center, King’s Place (London), Soka Performing Arts Center, Arizona Friends of Chamber Music, and the Celebrity Series of Boston.

To celebrate its recent 10th anniversary, Hub co-commissioned and premiered new works by Angélica Negrón, Nico Muhly, Tyshawn Sorey, Andrew Norman, Jessica Meyer, and Donnacha Dennehy. Upcoming commissioning projects include substantial electroacoustic works by Christopher Cerrone and Daniel Wohl (2025); a work by Yaz Lancaster co-created with Black Mountain College Museum & Art Center (2025); and a collaborative project with composer, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist Bora Yoon (2026).

Hub New Music’s recordings have garnered consistent acclaim. The group’s most recent record with Silkroad’s Kojiro Umezaki, a distance, intertwined , features five works for Hub and shakuhachi which I Care if You Listen called “beautiful, haunting music that presents a clear and authentic dialog between varied cultural paradigms and traditions.” Hub’s debut album, Soul House, released on New Amsterdam Records, was called “ingenious and unequivocally gorgeous” (Boston Globe) and “intensely poignant” (Textura). In 2022, Hub’s album with Carlos Simon, Requiem for the Enslaved , was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Classical Composition.

Hub is also dedicated to educating, inspiring and guiding future generations of artists. The ensemble has been a guest at leading institutions including Princeton University, University of Michigan, University of Southern California, and Indiana University. In 2021, Hub was a resident ensemble for the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Nancy and Barry Sanders Composer Fellowship program for high school aged composers. As part of its 10th anniversary celebration, Hub designed a fellowship program with the Luna Lab in NYC that was awarded to Luna Lab alumna Sage Shurman.

Hub New Music is Michael Avitabile (flutes), Gleb Kanasevich (clarinets), Magnolia Rohrer (violin/viola), and Jesse Christeson (cello). Currently based in Detroit, the ensemble’s name is inspired by its founding city of Boston’s reputation as a hub of innovation. Hub New Music is exclusively represented by Unfinished Side.

Gala Flagello

Gala Flagello (b. 1994) is a composer, educator, and nonprofit director whose work is inspired by a passion for lyricism, rhythmic vitality, and fostering meaningful collaboration. Her music, described as “at times endearingly whimsical, at times ominous, but always moving” (Cleveland Classical), resonates with audiences through its emotional depth and dynamic expression. Flagello’s collaborations with leading ensembles, artists, and institutions on national and international stages build impactful projects for audiences and performers alike.

Flagello’s 2024/25 season features the European premiere of Vitality with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, including an international performance broadcast, along with orchestral performances of Bravado by Detroit Symphony, Chautauqua Festival, Lansing Symphony, Wichita Falls Symphony, Central Ohio Symphony, and Dearborn Symphony. She is a recipient of the 2024 Barlow General Commission, which will support a new work for the Thalea String Quartet. This season also includes consortium premieres of Flagello’s Love & Nature, a wind band work commissioned by 55 ensembles across the United States.

Upcoming projects include a new piano concerto for soloist Henry Kramer and commissions from the Contemporary Youth Orchestra, the University of Nebraska–Omaha School of Music, and the University of Florida Bands. Album releases this season include Tallā Rouge’s Shapes in Collective Space featuring Burn as Brightly and a commercial recording of The Bird-While with Hub New Music and the University of Illinois Wind Symphony.

UNCG Bands
The renowned UNCG Bands are dedicated to the performance, study, and cultivation of wind band music of the highest quality, and are a serious and distinctive medium of musical expression. The UNCG Bands are considered to be among the very finest collegiate band programs in America based upon our active profile of excellence in our performances, recordings, tours and convention performances.

Through exemplary practices in organization, training, and presentation, the UNCG Bands provide exceptional experiences for our members, sharing outstanding performances throughout the year and enhancing the institutional spirit and character of UNCG.

The UNCG Bands seek to support music education in the state of North Carolina and in our region by providing leadership and sponsorship to secondary school band programs and other organizations.

UNCG Bands

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Calypsus Brass
2025-10-10 17:30 - 19:00 | Tew Recital Hall, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, 27412, United States
https://youtube.com/live/4R0uVnQIvUk?feature=share

Carrie Blosser and Jennifer Oliverio, trumpetsEmily Schaefer, hornLauren Rudzinskas, tromboneStephanie Ycaza, tuba

Founded in 2021, Calypsus Brass is a professional chamber ensemble performing new works recitals, creating high-level professional recordings for composers, and working with chamber musicians at all levels. The members are avid performers and educators who give recitals and masterclasses worldwide.

A 501(c)3 Nonprofit, Calypsus Brass is a groundbreaking musical group founded by women who earned doctoral degrees in music, the first of its kind. Between them, the members hold multiple doctorates, a total of 14 degrees, 3 minors, and 4 advanced certificates in cognates such as pedagogy and jazz improvisation. Calypsus Brass serves as a recording ensemble for composers whose works have never been recorded.

Calypsus Brass is committed to prioritizing recording and performing works of historically marginalized composers to uplift the highest quality of music. To further this mission, Calypsus Brass is proud to be the Ensemble in Residence for Rising Tide Music Press. This organization publishes and promotes BBIA (Black, Brown, Indigenous, and Asian) musicians in their first 10 years of professional-level work as composers and arrangers.

Because professional recordings can be cost-prohibitive for composers and many composition competitions and calls for scores require recording with real instruments for consideration, Calypsus Brass is committed to recording works by emerging artists. We encourage all musicians to program music by a diverse array of composers so that the music we perform is inclusive of the community we serve as artists. Calypsus is proud to lead by example in this mission with recording and commissioning projects. When premiering and recording works, Calypsus Brass creates a relationship with composers, helping to build their portfolios with recordings that the composers are proud to showcase while providing expert advice and coaching regarding idiomatic writing for brass instruments.

As devoted educators, Calypsus members bring a robust pedagogical background to each masterclass and outreach event. Combining 80 years of educational experience, Calypsus Brass presents specialized masterclasses and clinics on topics including: chamber music, classical, orchestra, and jazz performance, wellness, audition preparation, military and orchestral careers, performance anxiety and psychology, music career development, marketing and branding, arts administration and nonprofit management, commissioning, audio engineering, and intersectionality in the music community. Calypsus Brass is a registered nonprofit.

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Jackson Hopper, double bass
2025-10-10 17:30 - 19:00 | Organ Hall, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, 27412, United States
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Concert Band
2025-10-10 19:30 - 21:00 | UNCG Auditorium, 408 Tate Street, Greensboro, NC, 27412, United States
https://youtube.com/live/nqLlBEl5GwY?feature=share

Patty Saunders, conductorLuke Ellard, clarinetMolly Allman, conductorJaden Brown, conductor

Program

VÁCLAV NELHÝBELCorsican Litany (1796)

ELENA SPECHTTo Old and New Places (2024)

JODIE BLACKSHAWInto the Sun (2017)

JOHN WILLIAMSViktor’s Tale from The Terminal (2009)

KEVIN DAYSummit (2021)

JOHN BARNES CHANCEVariations on a Korean Folk Song (1967)

About the Program
Corsican Litany

Václav Nelhýbel was a prolific Czech composer and conductor who studied composition and conducting at the Prague Conservatory of Music and musicology at Charles University and the University of Fribourg (Switzerland). He was the assistant conductor of the Czech Philharmonic and a composer and conductor of the Swiss National Radio. He co-founded and directed the Radio Free Europe in Munich and conducted the Vienna Philharmonic and Bavarian Symphony. He emigrated from the Czech Republic to the United States in 1957.

Fascinated with the American concert band, Nelhýbel wrote Corsican Litany to explore the possibilities of the ensemble. Corsican laments were split into two categories: laments for deaths from natural causes and voceru, songs of grief and vengeance for victims of murder. The voceru that inspired Nelhýbel’s Corsican Litany was first sung in 1775 at the funeral of a country doctor named Matju who had been murdered by his patient. This piece begins with the sound of tolling chimes to announce the beginning of mourning, weaves sonically through pain and loss, and ends with the chilling reminder that, despite the voceru belief that vengeance can heal, the tolling chime remains.

Note by Patty Saunders

To Old and New Places

Elena Specht is a composer whose work often grows out of compelling stories and a strong sense of place. Her music has been performed by groups such as the U.S. Coast Guard Band and university wind ensembles. She currently works as a librarian with “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band.

To New and Old Places is written in three movements; each tied to a scene in a different young adult novel. In the first, based on Jeanne DuPrau’s The City of Ember, two young characters witness the sun rising for the very first time. The second, based on Caroline B. Cooney’s The Face on the Milk Carton, captures the bittersweet longing of a teenager imagining the life she might have had with her lost family. The final movement, from C.S. Lewis’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, carries the thrill of a voyage into uncharted seas.

Note by Elena Specht and Molly Allman

Into the Sun

Jodie Blackshaw is an Australian composer and conductor who studied composition with Larry Sitsky at the Australian National University. Blackshaw founded the Female Band Composer database in 2017 and the ColourFULL Music website in 2018. She is a composer that takes a student-centered approach in her works, often including storylines, options for student decision-making, and program narratives that connect the piece with a larger story.

Into the Sun is a compilation of stories told about the passage to Australia from the points of view of free settlers in the 1800s, post-World War II immigrants, and refugees seeking asylum. Blackshaw includes real-life stories that correspond to each of the piece’s six sections in her program notes that describe the emotional highs and lows of leaving home to find a new one. The sections include the Arrival; A New Land, a New Life; Camps and Confusion; Acculturation: A Yearning for Home and All That is Familiar; Opportunity: With New-Found Enthusiasm; and Reflection: With a Feeling of Inner Peace of Calmness. Written to raise awareness of the plight of refugees, Blackshaw broadens her programmatic message communicating a desire for all people to love one another. Blackshaw’s Into the Sun emphasizes this importance and the responsibility to help refugees in times of need.

Note by Jodie Blackshaw and Patty Saunders

Viktor’s Tale from The Terminal

John Williams is one of the most celebrated and influential film composers of the modern era. An American composer from New York, Williams was the son of a jazz drummer and studied at UCLA, the Juilliard School, and Eastman. His career has included collaborations with director Steven Spielberg and George Lucas that has produced some of the most recognized music in cinematic history including Schindler’s List, Indiana Jones, and Star Wars. He has won numerous awards including five Academy Awards and twenty-five GRAMMY® awards. Williams remains active as a composer and conductor and continues to broaden his impact on modern film.

Viktor’s Tale is a composition for solo clarinet and orchestra that was developed from Williams’ score for the Steven Spielberg film The Terminal. Part drama and part comedy, the film follows the protagonist, Viktor Navorski, as he finds himself a man without a country, stuck in an airport terminal for days on end. Williams’ score brings to life this unfortunate circumstance and includes a musical portrait of Navorski’s warmth and friendliness through a dance-like piece for clarinet and ensemble.

Note by the United States Marine Band and Patty Saunders

Summit

Kevin Day is a composer, jazz pianist, producer, and conductor who is known to juxtapose diverse musical traditions including contemporary classical, jazz, R&B, and soul with classical composition. His father was a prominent hip-hop producer, and his mother was a popular gospel singer. Day is one of eight founding members of the Nu Black Vanguard, a collective dedicated to the advancement of Black composers, and a graduate of Texas Christian University, the University of Georgia, and the University of Miami Frost School of Music. In 2024, Day joined the faculty at the University of California San Diego as a lecturer in theory and musicianship.

Day composed Summit in 2020 after being commissioned by the Indiana Bandmasters Association. The piece depicts a group of climbers as they journey up the face of a mountain. Along the way, they encounter many obstacles, including cliffs and chilling winds, but the team perseveres and makes their way to the top.

Note by Kevin Day and Jaden Brown

Variations on a Korean Folk Song

A native of Texas, John Barnes Chance was an American composer and arranger who received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Texas, where he studied with Clifton Williams, Kent Kennan, and Paul Pisk. He performed as a percussionist with the Austin Symphony Orchestra and served as an arranger for the 4th Army Band in San Antonio and the 8th Army Band in Seoul, Korea. After leaving the Army, the Ford Foundation selected Chance to participate in the Young Composers Project. From 1960 through 1962, he was composer-in-residence for the Greensboro Ford Foundation Young Composers Project writing for the Greensboro, North Carolina public school system and Greensboro Senior High School, now Grimsley High School. Chance was a prolific composer for wind band with works including Incantation and Dance and Blue Lake Overture.

While stationed overseas in Seoul, Chance heard the popular Korean folk song “Arirang” which inspired Variations on a Korean Folk Song. A song of love and heartbreak, the theme is based on the ujo mode pentatonic scale and can be traced back to the 18th century. The tune was also used as a resistance anthem during the Japanese occupation of Korea when the singing of patriotic songs was criminalized. About the melody, Chance said, “The tune is not as simple as it sounds, and my fascination with it during the intervening years led to its eventual use as the theme for this set of variations.” The theme is followed by five variations that alternate between fast and slow tempos and use multiple time signatures and rhythmic patterns to alter the theme. Variations on A Korean Folk Song is a cornerstone work for band and received the Sousa/Ostwald Award from the American Bandmasters Association in 1966.

Note by Patty Saunders

About the Artists

Clarinetist, composer, educator, and new music collaborator Luke Ellard strives for art that continually reaches out, valuing a relational spirit, informed engagement, and unapologetic authenticity.

For Luke, collaboration is what gives music life. As a clarinetist, they have performed with members of Bang On a Can All Stars, Eighth Blackbird, International Contemporary Ensemble, Fifth House Ensemble, Arkansas Symphony, Winston-Salem Symphony, and Mallarmé Chamber Music. As a composer, their music has been performed and commissioned by ensembles such as North Texas Wind Symphony, HOCKET, New Trombone Collective, Barkada Quartet, among others. Their current performance projects center around their self-produced solo cross-genre/electronic band LE, performing with their new music quartet Sounding Board, and commissioning new exciting works for the clarinet.

Dr. Ellard serves on the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro as Assistant Professor of Clarinet, having previously served on faculty at the University of Oklahoma and Midwestern State University while teaching privately and performing in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Luke earned their Doctor of Musical Arts in Clarinet Performance with related studies in Contemporary Music and Music Entrepreneurship at the University of North Texas, studying under Kimberly Cole Luevano. Additionally, Luke has earned degrees from Indiana University Jacobs School of Music (James Campbell & Eric Hoeprich), the University of Texas at Austin (Yevgeniy Sharlat, Dan Welcher, & Donald Grantham), and Louisiana Tech University (Lawrence Gibbs, Joe L. Alexander).

UNCG Bands
The renowned UNCG Bands are dedicated to the performance, study, and cultivation of wind band music of the highest quality, and are a serious and distinctive medium of musical expression. The UNCG Bands are considered to be among the very finest collegiate band programs in America based upon our active profile of excellence in our performances, recordings, tours and convention performances.

Through exemplary practices in organization, training, and presentation, the UNCG Bands provide exceptional experiences for our members, sharing outstanding performances throughout the year and enhancing the institutional spirit and character of UNCG.

The UNCG Bands seek to support music education in the state of North Carolina and in our region by providing leadership and sponsorship to secondary school band programs and other organizations.

UNCG Bands

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Owen Kellam, horn
2025-10-15 17:30 - 19:00 | Tew Recital Hall, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, 27412, United States
https://youtube.com/live/l0QiFTHPmnc?feature=share

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Count Basie Orchestra
2025-10-17 20:00 | UNCG Auditorium, 408 Tate Street, Greensboro, NC, 27412, United States
In the history of Jazz, there is only one bandleader that has the distinction of having his orchestra still performing sold-out concerts all over the world, with members personally chosen by him, for nearly 40 years after his passing. Pianist and bandleader William James “Count” Basie was and still is an American institution that personifies the grandeur and excellence of Jazz. The Count Basie Orchestra, today directed by Scotty Barnhart, has won every respected jazz poll in the world at least once; won 18 Grammy Awards; performed for Kings, Queens, and other world Royalty; appeared in several movies and television shows; and at every major jazz festival and major concert hall in the world.

The most recent honor is a 2024 Grammy Win of Best Large Jazz Ensemble for Basie Swings the Blues! Other honors include their 2022 Grammy Nomination for Live at Birdland, a 2018 Grammy Nomination for All About That Basie, which features special guests Stevie Wonder, Jon Faddis, and Take 6 among others, and the 2018 Downbeat Readers Poll Award as the #1 Jazz Orchestra in the world. Their critically acclaimed release in 2015 of A Very Swingin’ Basie Christmas! is the very first holiday album in the 80-year history of the orchestra. Released on Concord Music, it went to #1 on the Jazz charts and sold out on Amazon! Special guests include vocalists Johnny Mathis, Ledisi, our own Carmen Bradford, and pianist Ellis Marsalis.

A BBC TV-produced documentary on Mr. Basie and the orchestra titled Count Basie: Through His Own Eyes premiered on PBS in the US and UK in 2019 coinciding with the orchestra’s 85th Anniversary. It features interviews by Quincy Jones, Scotty Barnhart, Dee Askew, John Williams, and several other important members and associates of Mr. Basie and the orchestra.

Orchestra/MezzBalconyUNCG Students$7.50$7.50UNCG Faculty/Staff$25.00$25.00Adults$65.00$50.00Seniors/Military$55.00$40.00Children (K-12)$30.00$15.00

PURCHASE TICKETS

* Tickets to CVPA and UCLS events are sold exclusively through our box office locations and ETix website, and nowhere else. Tickets purchased through third-party vendors cannot be honored.

Some of the greatest soloists, composers, arrangers, and vocalists in jazz history such as Lester Young, Billie Holiday, Frank Foster, Thad Jones, Sonny Payne, Freddie Green, Snooky Young, Frank Wess, and Joe Williams, became international stars once they began working with the legendary Count Basie Orchestra. This great 18-member orchestra is continuing the excellent history started by Basie of stomping and shouting the blues, as well as refining those musical particulars that allow for the deepest and most moving of swing.

Current members include one musician hired by Basie himself: trombonist Clarence Banks (1984). Long-time members include Doug Miller (1989, formerly w/Lionel Hampton), guitarist Will Matthews from Kansas City (1996), and members who have 15-25 years of service; trombonist Mark Williams, trumpeters Shawn Edmonds and Endre Rice, saxophonists Doug Lawrence (formerly w/Benny Goodman) and returning on lead alto, David Glasser. Newer members include bassist Trevor Ware, lead trumpeter Frank Greene III, trumpeter Brandon Lee, pianist Reginald Thomas, lead trombonist Isrea Butler, bass trombonist Ronald Wilkins, alto sax and flute Stantawn Kendrick, and the youngest members, drummer Robert Boone and baritone saxophonist Josh Lee.

In addition to public presentations, artists in the UCLS series have important interactions with UNCG students, such as holding masterclasses, talkback sessions, and seminars, often just hours before performing on stage. Thanks to a grant from The Cemala Foundation, some of these artists also work with K-12 students in the Guilford County Schools.

Open House For Prospective Music Students
2025-10-20 08:30 - 16:00 | UNCG School of Music, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, NC, 27412, United States

George Fu, piano
2025-10-20 19:30 - 21:00 | Tew Recital Hall, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, 27412, United States
American pianist George Xiaoyuan Fu is “one of the most exciting pianists of our time… a deep thinker, thoroughly in command” (The Arts Desk). The winner of BBC Music Magazine’s 2024 Newcomer Award, he is garnering international acclaim as a fearless and probing interpreter of a wide array of music, combining “phenomenal technique with a profound sense of interpretative clarity” (Apple Music).

Highlights for Fu’s 2025-26 season include his solo debut at the Frick Collection in New York City, playing the entire cycle of Oliver Messiaen’ Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus; as well as a new solo piano commission he is writing for his recital at Wigmore Hall in London. He also appears at the Concertgebuow and with the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia with his ensemble, Trio Zimbalist, comprised of violinist Josef Špaček and cellist Timotheos Gavriilidis-Petrin.

Fu has appeared throughout major venues around the world such as the Wigmore Hall, Carnegie Hall, 92nd Street Y, Konzerthaus Berlin, Kennedy Center, St Martin In the Fields, the Southbank Centre, and Kings Place. As concerto soloist he has performed with National Symphony Orchestra (USA), Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, North Carolina Symphony, Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, and the Curtis Symphony Orchestra, amongst others. He appears regularly at festivals worldwide such as the Aldeburgh, Ryedale, Presteigne, Tanglewood, Smetanova Litomyšl, and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festivals. His performances and interviews have been featured on broadcasts around the world, ranging from BBC Radio 3 and National Public Radio, to appearances on PBS/American Public Television and On Stage At Curtis in Philadelphia. In addition to Trio Zimbalist, Fu enjoys fruitful collaborations with a wide variety of artists such as Roberto Díaz (viola), Dmitri Sitkovetsky (violin), Tamsin Waley-Cohen (violin), Mika Sasaki (piano), Liv Redpath (soprano), and Lotte Betts-Dean (mezzo-soprano).

As an emerging composer, Fu’s growing catalogue of original works and arrangements exhibits fresh imagination and virtuosity, all the while drawing from a lifetime of studying a vast repertoire spanning several centuries. His Passacaglia on a Theme by Radiohead was recently featured on NPR’s All Songs Considered and hailed as “kind of mind-blowing” by Robin Hilton; while his arrangements of Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé Suite No. 2 and Smetana’s Dance of the Comedians have seen successful debuts internationally. This year Trio Zimbalist will debut his first Piano Trio throughout concerts in the US.

Fu’s second studio album, Colouring Book, was released with Platoon Classical in March 2025 to international acclaim, with Gramophone Magazine hailing it as one of the best classical releases of the year: “Fu plays his own music with tremendous authority and colouristic resources, as he also does with the Cruttwell-Reade and Aucoin selections… As for the Debussy Études, Fu’s recordings contain some of the most enchantingly characterised interpretations I’ve heard since those of Ju-Ying Song, Florent Boffard, Mitsuko Uchida and Jean-Efflam Bavouzet. Yes, they’re that good!” (Jed Distler) His first solo album, MIRRORS (Platoon), won BBC Music Magazine’s 2024 Newcomer Award for best debut release.

Fu made his concerto debut with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center at the age of 17. After earning a bachelor’s degree in economics from Harvard University, Fu studied with Jonathan Biss and Meng-Chieh Liu at the Curtis Institute of Music, and then with Christopher Elton and the Dame Myra Hess Chair of Piano Joanna MacGregor at the Royal Academy of Music. Additional mentors have included David Ludwig and Pierre-Laurent Aimard. He resides in London.

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An Evening with Demeanor
2025-10-21 19:30 - 21:00 | Tew Recital Hall, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, 27412, United States
https://youtube.com/live/RXUncMlekYo?feature=share

“Folk music is the music we need to make…”

This performance is made possible by generous support from The Robinson Family Fund.

Justin Harrington (aka Demeanor) is an MC, banjo and bones player from Greensboro, North Carolina. Justin studied at the College Conservatory of Music at University of Cincinnati before leaving school to join his aunt, Rhiannon Giddens, as part of her Freedom Highway Tour. He has been playing the banjo for several years, crafting an unconventional fusion of hip-hop and American roots music in an effort to break down the wall separating black Americans with their own ancestral tradition, while celebrating American folk music as an African American art form. Justin is dedicated to developing an impactful body of work, and curating empowering environments, striving to follow in the footsteps of his predecessors while establishing a new musical legacy. He received a 2020 OneBeat Accelerator Grant to fund his non-profit initiative, Haus of Lacks, which aims to connect socially-engaged artists to develop + share strategies for using art and music creation to affect direct and actionable social change in their communities.

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The Juliet Letters
2025-10-22 19:30 - 21:00 | Organ Hall, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, 27412, United States
Lindsay Kesselman, sopranoMarjorie Bagley, violinSiana Wong, violinScott Rawls, violaCori Trenczer, violoncello

Program

ELVIS COSTELLO and THE BRODSKY QUARTETThe Juliet Letters (1992)

Deliver UsFor Other EyesSwineExpert RitesDead LetterI Almost Had a WeaknessWhy?Who Do You Think You Are?Taking My Life in Your HandsThis Offer Is UnrepeatableDear Sweet Filthy WorldThe Letter HomeJacksons, Monk and RoweThis Sad BurlesqueRomeo’s SeanceI Thought I’d Write to JulietLast PostThe First to LeaveDamnation’s CellarThe Birds Will Still Be Singing

About the Program
Elvis Costello writes, “…so there was this professor in Verona who answered letters to Juliet…

Well, if that sounds like the start of a tall story I suppose it is. There was a tiny newspaper item about a Veronese academic who had taken on the task of replying to letters addressed to ‘Juliet Capulet.’

This apparently continued for a number of years, until some gentlemen of the press exposed this secret correspondence. Quite how he came by these letters in the first place remains unclear. We can only make a guess as to their content. After all, these people were writing to an Imaginary woman, and a dead imaginary woman at that. Perhaps they were simply scholarly enquiries, or letters of sympathy from others disappointed in love, or even a plea from somebody forced into an unhappy arranged marriage. Whatever was contained in these letters and their replies, the idea of this correspondence provided the initial inspiration” for The Juliet Letters, a song sequence for string quartet and voice—a collaboration between Elvis Costello and The Brodsky Quartet.

Lyrics
Deliver Us

Instrumental

For Other Eyes

I don’t know what I would doIf this letter should fall intoOther hands than it should pass throughFor other eyes

He said, “It was nothing… it’s over and done”But the rotten worm was burrowing stillIts spirit invades me bleeding me whiteFor other repliesI searched his pocketsI searched his eyesI searched his wallet for clues and liesAnd I found a number that I somehow dialledA woman answered, a woman smiledThen she hung up on the silence unperplexedInnocently spun her rolodexI dialled again I could not resistRevealing just the dentist receptionist

One day we’lI laugh about it or maybe we’lI curseBut there is one thing that is making it worseAnd it’s the lack of forgiveness that I can’t disguiseNo matter how well he liesNow we don’t know each other anymoreAnd when we touch our lips feel soreI question the longing left in his sighsFor other eyes

Swine

You’re a swine and I’m saying that’s an insult to the pigIn the foul furrow that you digWhy don’t you lay your head downIn that unconsecrated groundWAS she your MOTHER?Or WAS she your brldeTo defile and to blisterTo gnaw at her sideIs this the end of the world?Now that you’ve finished your lifeThis RIDDLE is the work of my little pen-knife

Expert Rites

I marvel at the wonder of it in our souless ageFast flow the tears upon the pageDon’t be alarmed I am her friendWill I be excused if I presumeIt’s more than disappointment that we shareYou share the same sorry life, the families fight,that unhappy blade you both inviteThis romantic ideal has a lonely appealI once loved someone the way that you doBut I had to let her goI live with my regretDon’t despair my would-be Juliet

Dead Letter

Instrumental

I Almost Had a Weakness

Thank you for the flowersI threw them on the fireAnd I burned the photographs that you had enclosedGOD they were ugly childrenSo you’re the little bastard of that brother of mineTrying to trick a poor old woman‘Til I almost had a weaknessLast week Cousin FlorenceBit your Uncle JoeHit him on the forehead with a knife and a fork(She) said that he looked like the devilThen she said… “pass the vinegar,” I’m beginning to think(That) I’m the only one who hasn’t taken to the drinking of itThough I almost had a weakness

It pains me to mentionThese delicate concernsWhile I have to tolerate you family jewelsI really mustn’t grumble(‘Cause) when I die the cats and dogs will jump up and downAnd you little swines will get nothingThough I almost had a weakness

Why?

Why is Daddy not here?Are you crying?Why?Does he still love me?Will you take care of me?If you both love me soWhy don’t you love each otherMummy’s gone missingDaddy’s on fireDaddy’s on fireDaddy’s on fire

Who Do You Think You Are?

The hunted look, the haunted graceThe empty laugh that you cultivateYou fall into that false embraceAnd kiss the air about her faceWho do you think you are?The tres bon mots you almost quote from yourQUIVER of literary dartsA thousand or so tuneless violins thrilling your cheaplittle heartWho do you think you are?

My cigarette burns right down to the ash, my coffeecup is unstainedThe waiter hovers close at handHis courtesy strained

Who do you think you are?I close with my regardsWell I’m the red-face gentlemanCaught in this picture postcardWho do you think you are?

Trying my best to make the best of your absenceThough the joke gets tired and sordidSea-shell hearts get trampled under footPunchlines unrewarded

But even at this distance it’s not easy to acceptThe vision that I chase returns when I least expect itI’ve fallen from your tired embraceI kiss the air around the place that should be your face.

Taking My Life in Your Hands

My dear impulsive darling, I suspect my letter got to you too lateAnd it’s really just a silly fragment of paperBut it means so much to those who wait

All the suffering days and nights ’til I dare dream againThere you suddenly stand and I’ll be damnedIf you didn’t disappear with the dawn

Hours pass and darkness comesSoon I will close my eyesWill you return if you don’t reply?

You’ll be taking my life in your handsYou’ll be taking my life in your handsTaking my life in your hands

I don’t know why my dearest darlingI can’t tell you how I feel when you are nearWhen I see you have returned my letters unopenedI will tear them up, your voice ringing in my ears

But you’re kidding yourselfIf you think this correspondence will endI can always pretend wordsI don’t have the courage to send, reaching you

Hours pass and darkness comesSoon I will close my eyesWill you return if you don’t reply?

You’ll be taking my life in your handsYou’ll be taking my life in your handsTaking my life in your hands

This Offer Is Unrepeatable

Don’t send any money!Your fate has no priceIgnore at your peril this splendid adviceAn invaluable link in an infinite chainAn offer like this will just not come againYou wish you had women to charm and bewitchPower of life and death over the richYoung girls will be swooningbecause you’re exciting themNot only fall at your feet but be biting themGuaranteed, guaranteed to capture your breathOr just possibly scare you to deathSign it and seal it and send it to friendsDon’t mention my nameDon’t make any long term plansIn thirty-six hours your fortunes will changeYour best friends won’t know youAnd neither will strangersDo not keep this letterIt must leave your handYou have been selected from over five thousandA twister and dupe will bamboozle or hoodwink youI can’t say more it would only confuse youThe wine they will offer will go to your headYou’ll start to see double in fishes and breadGuaranteed, guaranteed for a lifetime or moreGuaranteed for this world and the nextGuaranteed, guaranteed for the world and its motherCherish this life as you won’t get another oneUnless you should take up this fabulous offerDon’t leave it too late or you’ll be bound to sufferWoebetide anyone so woebegoneYou won’t know you’re born or about to pass onYou’ll never get tiredYou’ll never get boredBy the way I just hope you’re insuredAnd if you’re not satisfiedIf you want moreWe can always provide an improved overtureGuaranteed at a price that is almost unbeatableThis offer is unrepeatableYour troubles will vanishYour tears will dryYour blessing will just multiplyGuaranteed at a price that is almost unbeatableThis offer is unrepeatableGuaranteed, guaranteed to bring fortune and favorA riot of colours and flavoursGuaranteed at a price that is almost unbeatableThis offer is unrepeatableWould I lie to you? Would I sell you a dud?Just sign on the line. Could you possibly write it inblood?

Dear Sweet Filthy World

Dear sweet, filthy world, my wifeOr whoever reads thisI think that I’ve lived too longWith all of my promise unfulfilledBut there is a veil drawn over all of that

I know you’ll probably say“Spare us the melodrama”I don’t know how he choseThe pills or the stupid revolver”

I’m out of luckI’m not that strongMy hands, your neckI might have wrung

Don’t try to find meI’m not worth anything anymore

I am not leaving youWith all of your problems‘Cause the biggest one is meLife is dark and cold as the sea

Embrace me in my anguishPut seaweed in my hairAnd vow that you won’t cryBecause I’ve gone, I can’t go onI can’t go on, I can’t go onI must close now

The Letter Home

Care of St. Ignatius House, Willoughby DriveParramatta, New South Wales, this fifth day of JulyIn the year of Our LordNineteen hundred and thirty five

Why must I always apologizeEvery time that I sit down to writeThrough my own fault I may findYou’re no longer living at this address

Please excuse the lack of newsThe feeling of strange privilegeFor the hour of trial in these times of distressMean more than years imprisoned by etiquette

I can remember when we were childrenThough I could never imagine this dayYour brother told me we’d live forever“I’ll go on better”, I heard myself say

And it seems so strange, now that he’s goneTo recall all these gamesThough the years have divided usFriendships have strained and broken

Oh, by the way, how’s that girl that you wedI hated you then but I’m over the worst of itI can’t come home, I might as well sayLife is short, I shall not write again

Jacksons, Monk and Rowe

Sister 4 and Brothers 3Hanging off the family treePractising for getting oldDo you want your fortune toldThey’re looking for you high and lowNow there’s nowhere for you to goSo you’ll just have to come out and face the musicJacksons, Monk and Rowe

Long ago when we were kids and we cut your hair to bitsAs we carried off like spoils the heads we’d smash right offyour dollsBut the wind is changing you knowAre you sure of your friends and your foeHave you got what it takes to carry it offJacksons, Monk and Rowe

As the sun beats down and life begins to complicateWill we both incinerateIf we touch that brass name-plate

Messrs. All, noble SirsHighly paid solicitorsFind enclosed my signed divorceSad proceedings you endorseThe burden of pity will showIn the people we used to knowHave you got enough strength to carry it offJacksons, Monk and Rowe

This Sad Burlesque

I write in hopeBy the time you get this letterWe may liveTo see a change for the better

Or are we so devotedTo these wretched selfish motivesWhen the cold facts and figures all add upThey cannot contradict this sad burlesque

This sad burlesque with miserable failuresMaking entertainment of our fateLaughter cannot dignify of elevateThis sad burlesque

Now can they recall being young and idealistic?Before wading knee-deep in hogwash and arithmeticThe pitying smirk, the argument that runs like clockworkWill run down eventually and splutter to a stop

P.S. Well, by now you know the worst of itAnd we’ve heard all the alibis that they’ve rehearsedThe smug predictionsIf it’s not a contradiction

Please have faith in human natureAnd have mercy on the creaturesIn this sad burlesque

This sad burlesque with miserable failuresMaking entertainment of our fateLaughter cannot dignify of elevateThis sad burlesque

Romeo’s Seance

Is anyone there I can talk to?Give us a sign if you’re with meCan’t you see that I’m dying to hear you

Everyone else has lost interestAnd I’m all alone in this dream houseThough you’re gone, I don’t feel like crying

Romeo is calling you

Knock once or twice if you’re out thereSend me a message, my sweetheartWhen I’m out and about, I’ll be coming to see you

It isn’t easy to live with this matronly faceAt the window, try to contact meIf you can see how I’m suffering

Romeo is calling you

Scatter the paper and thimblesYou can take care of the candlesAn unplugged radio plays, she is close now

Me and my hand holdingBaby, you’re walking the floor and the ceilingAnd this is the song she dictated this evening

Romeo is callingRomeo is calling you

I Thought I’d Write to Juliet

I thought I’d write to JulietFor she would understandAnd when someone is already deadThey can no longer let you down

Instead I find myself talking to youAs my oldest friendTell me how I can advise someoneThat I don’t even know to welcome death

For I received a letter that is worth reportingAnd though it may raise a cynical smileIt leaves a sinking feeling

Like when a soldier in a story says to the sergeant“Have you seen my pride and joy?”

You know the restAnd it’s no jokeForgive me pleaseAs I quote

“This is a letter of thanksAs I’m so bored herein I can’t say whereSo I’m writing to people that I may never meetAnd I was thinking if something you said”

I’m a female soldier, my name is ConstanceI enlisted in the military needing funds for collegeI’m twenty-three years old and if I do get home aliveI imagine I may think again

I’m sleeping with my eyes open for fear of attackYour words are a comfort, they’re the best thing that I haveApart from family pictures and of course, my gas maskI don’t know why I am writing to you

Last Post

Instrumental

The First to Leave

I should open with a kissFor if you’re reading thisYou must have opened up your caseAnd found this letter where I placed itIn between the silk and laceThere were other clues, like your walking shoesBut I still refused to believeThat you were meant to be the first to leaveEverybody here sends you their loveHow can I forget you still walk aboveOrbelowPerhaps you’ll never know this purgatoryWe never could agreeThere’s a thought, there’s a pauseNo time to repentEternally yoursIn a permanent lent

But if I should give you upIf you’re right and life just stopsAnd I never see your face againThen from unearthly pleasures, proud and plainI shall abstain

Until you realise, my loss is your surpriseUnless you know otherwiseThen don’t grieveYou see I had to be the first to leave

Damnation’s Cellar

Did anybody notice, over marmalade and eggsIn between the princess’ legsWhat with wars and floods and beggarsNot to mention stocks and sharesIf you have a moment to spare

Can you write and reassure me that I have seenThey’re constructing a time machineAnd there will be no need for the obituary pagesWe can have any hero from the bygone ages‘Til the truth emerges, the argument rages

The major and the minorTurn from tallow into tarShould we leave them in their place?Down in damnation’s cellar

When any form of deity that you might enjoyCan be conjured with a test-tube and a flameIf it’s out there then science can explain itOr at least remove the blameAnd if there’s anyone, you’d like to see again and speak up quickly

Send us back Da Vinci then we don’t have to ponderThe maddening smile of La GiacondaThe critics say Nijinsky, the dancer, of courseWhile the punters would probably prefer the horseYou’ll find it’s quicker than history, cheaper than divorce

The major and the minorTurn from tallow into tarShould we leave them in their place?Down in damnation’s cellar

Bring back Liberace or Ollie and StanShakespeare will have to wait his turnElvis Presley and Puccini shall return, I suppose we live and learnThough it’s hard to believe as we cheerfully burnIt’s curious, some will call for justiceThere are murders to solve

What about Hitler? Or at least Lee Harvey OswaldGive us this day and everything we squanderAnyone beautiful, somebody blonderThey’ll never please mankind, so lie back and enjoy itStop press, they’ve just decided to destroy it

The major and the minorTurn from tallow into tarShould we leave them in their place?Down in damnation’s cellar

The Birds Will Still Be Singing

Summertime withers as the sun descendsHe wants to kiss you. Will you condescend?Before you wake and find a chill within your bonesUnder a fine canopy of lover’s dust and humourous bones

Banish all dismayExtinguish every sorrow

Eternity stinks, my darling. That’s no jokeDon’t waste your precious timepretending you’re heartbroken

There will be tears and candlesPretty words to saySpare me lily-white lilliesWith the awful perfume of decay

Banish all dismayExtinguish every sorrowIf I’m lost or I’m forgivenThe birds will still be singing

It’s so hard to tear myself awayEven when you know it’s overIt’s too much to say.

Banish all dismayExtinguish every sorrowIf I’m lost or I’m forgivenThe birds will still be singing

About the Artists
Lindsay Kesselman

Lindsay Kesselman is a twice GRAMMY®-nominated soprano known for her warm, collaborative spirit and investment in personal, intimate communication with audiences. She regularly collaborates with orchestras, wind symphonies, chamber ensembles, opera/theater companies, and new music ensembles across the United States, often premiering, touring and recording new works written for her by living composers. She is a passionate advocate for contemporary music, and has commissioned/premiered over 100 works to date.

Recent and upcoming highlights include performances of Darkening, then Brightening by Christopher Cerrone across the country, National CBDNA with the UNC Greensboro Wind Ensemble, premieres of wind transcriptions of Caroline Shaw’s Is a Rose and Maria Schneider’s Winter Morning Walks, Pierrot Lunairewith Ensemble ATL, Energy in All Directions by Kenneth Frazelle with Sandbox Percussion at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, the role of Anna in Kurt Weill’s The Seven Deadly Sins with the Charlotte Symphony, Astronautica: Voices of Women in Space with Voices of Ascension, the John Corigliano 80th birthday celebration at National Sawdust (2018), a leading role in Louis Andriessen’s opera Theatre of the World with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Dutch National Opera and an international tour of Einstein on the Beach with the Philip Glass Ensemble (2012-2015).

She is featured on several recent recordings, including: David Biedenbender’s all we are given we cannot hold (2023, Blue Griffin), Chris Cerrone’s opera In a Grove (2023, In a Circle Records), Caroline Shaw’s Is a Rose (2023, Blue Griffin), Chris Cerrone’s The Arching Path (2021, In a Circle Records), and Louis Andriessen’s Theatre of the World with the Los Angeles Philharmonic (2017, Nonesuch).

Kesselman is Assistant Professor of Voice and Choral Music at UNC Greensboro and co-directs the Heretic’s Guide to Musicianship with Kevin Noe. She holds degrees in voice performance and music education from Rice University and Michigan State University. She is represented by Trudy Chan at Black Tea Music and lives in Charlotte, NC with her husband Kevin Noe and son Rowan.

Marjorie Bagley

Violinist Marjorie Bagley joined the faculty at UNCG in the Fall of 2009 after teaching violin and chamber music at Ohio University in Athens, OH. She began her professional career as first violinist and founding member of the Arcata String Quartet upon graduating from the Manhattan School of Music as a student of Pinchas Zukerman. The Arcata Quartet enjoyed nearly a decade of performances around the US and Europe, including concerts in London’s Wigmore Hall, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie, and their NYC debut in Town Hall. They can be heard in recordings on the VOX label, alongside members of the Tokyo and American Quartets. Her love of chamber music continues to this day as she performs with colleagues in NC and around the country, exploring classic and contemporary repertoire.

Bagley is Concertmaster of the Greensboro Symphony under the direction of Christopher Dragon. This season, she performed as soloist alongside mandolin player Chris Thile, and next season brings a solo appearance in Vaughn-Williams’ classic Lark Ascending. Bagley performed as both Associate Concertmaster and Principal Second Violin in the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra in Columbus, OH, under the direction of Music Director David Danzmayr and Principal Guest Artist Vadim Gluzman. For two decades, Bagley performed as member of the Berkshire Bach Society with keyboardist Kenneth Cooper.

Summers have taken Bagley to many festivals as both teacher and performer. The Arcata Quartet performed across Europe over several summers, including a concert at the Rheingau Music Festival. Her path as a teacher began at the Meadowmount Music School where she was an assistant teacher, and continued at a variety of summer chamber music festivals for high school students across the country. For six summers, Bagley was an assistant teacher at the Perlman Music Program. She has been on faculty at the Kinhaven Music School and the Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival, and the International Music Academy Plzen in the Czech Republic. Bagley was an artist teacher at the Brevard Music Festival for eleven summers where she frequently served as concertmaster.

Professor Bagley continues to give masterclasses and performances at universities around the US. She remains fascinated by the unique qualities of each student she interacts with, looking to combine an understanding of violin technique and learning strategies to help each student move towards their potential. She also loves to perform and teach works by living composers and works that draw from a variety of musical styles.

After growing up in Wingate, NC, she received her BM summa cum laude in Violin Performance from the University of Michigan and an MM from the Manhattan School of Music. Teachers and coaches have included Pinchas Zukerman, Josef Gingold, Patinka Kopec, Isidore Cohen, and members of the Tokyo and American String Quartets. Three decades of performances have taken her to five continents and led to many inspiring musical collaborations. She can be heard in recordings on the Equilibrium, Centaur, Albany, Summit, and VOX labels. Bagley’s time away from the violin is filled with family adventures alongside her husband, physics professor Ian Beatty, and their three children.

Siana Wong

Siana Wong is a native of Greensboro, North Carolina, with Malaysian heritage. Before attending college, she was a member of the Greensboro and Winston-Salem Symphony Youth Orchestras, winning their concerto competition and performing as a soloist with them. She pursued her Bachelor of Music degree at UNC Chapel Hill under the tutelage of Nicholas DiEugenio, as well as a BA in biology. During her time at Chapel Hill Siana was also a winner of the concerto competition. Siana is an avid chamber music performer in and out of her home state of NC, including performances with EMF and UNCG faculty. Siana spent many summers at the Luby Violin Symposium at Chapel Hill, having the opportunity to learn from first-class violinists from around the globe. She has also attended the Instrumental Program of Chautauqua Institution and participated in master classes with Ana Luque, Shannon Thomas, and others.

Siana is a member of Fayetteville Symphony Orchestra, Western Piedmont Symphony, and she has recently been appointed Associate Concertmaster of Greensboro Symphony Orchestra. In addition to her performing career, she enjoys teaching in her private studio.

Currently, Siana is extending her studies at UNCG, pursuing a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in violin performance with Dr. Fabián López.

She plays on a Wojciech Topa violin from 2017.

Scott Rawls

Violist Scott Rawls has appeared as soloist and chamber musician throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, Japan, and Europe. Recent chamber music endeavors include performances with Dmitry Sitkovetsky, Branford Marsalis, Sergey Antonov, Michelle Cann and the Reynolda Quartet. With the Nikkanen/Rawls/Bailey string trio, he has played tours in Alaska, Washington, Arizona and Texas. His solo and chamber music recordings can be heard on the Centaur, CRI, Nonesuch, Capstone, and Philips labels.

A strong proponent of new music, Rawls has premiered dozens of new works by prominentcomposers. Most notable, he has toured extensively as a member of Steve Reich and Musicians. As the violist in this ensemble, he performed the numerous premieres of Daniel Variations, The Cave and Three Tales by Steve Reich and Beryl Korot, videographer. And under the auspices of presenting organizations such as the Wiener Festwochen, Festival d’Automne a Paris, Holland Festival, Berlin Festival, Spoleto Festival USA and the Lincoln Center Festival, he has performed in major music centers around the world including London, Vienna, Rome, Milan, Tokyo, Prague, Amsterdam, Brussels, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York.

Under the baton of maestro Christopher Dragon, he plays principal viola in the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra. During the summer season, Rawls plays principal in the festival orchestra at Brevard Music Center where he also coordinates the viola program. He was also appointed principal viola of the Palm Beach Opera orchestra, David Stern artistic director.

Dr. Rawls currently serves as Marion Stedman Covington Distinguished Professor of Viola and Chamber Music and String Area Chair at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He holds a BM degree from Indiana University and a MM and DMA from State University of New York at Stony Brook. His major mentors include Abraham Skernick, Georges Janzer, John Graham and Julius Levine.

Cori Trenczer

Cori Trenczer is a cellist, chamber musician, and teacher from the Hudson Valley region of New York. Coming from a musical family and a family of educators, Cori is both an avid performer and a teacher to a robust studio of cello students. Cori has their Bachelor’s Degree in Cello Performance from the Eastman School of Music and they are pursuing a Masters Degree in Cello Performance with Professor Ezerman at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Cori is also a section cellist with the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra, as well as a substitute cellist with the Winston-Salem Symphony and the South Carolina Philharmonic. A devoted chamber musician, Cori has furthered their experience with their classmates in the Juniper Quartet, along with colleagues at summer programs such as the Castleman Quartet Program, Green Lake Chamber Music Institute, and Emerald Coast Festival of Music.

Also passionate about contemporary music, Cori has played in various new music ensembles including but not limited to: OSSIA New Music, Musica Nova, and Switch~Ensemble. They have worked with several composer colleagues during their undergraduate degree and their masters so far, and would absolutely love to explore more newly created work. Cori currently has a studio of 11 online cello students, ranging from age 10 to mid 20s. Cori is on the faculty at Moore Music Company where they teach an additional 5 students in person. Cori also teaches 2 students in person through the UNCG Community Lessons Program.

Cori is in the process of creating and editing a method book called “Smorgasbord for your Fingerboard: Volume One Songs for the Beginning Cellist”. This is a method book full of works by living young composers from many underrepresented groups.

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Horn Choir
2025-10-22 19:30 - 21:00 | Tew Recital Hall, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, 27412, United States
https://www.youtube.com/live/nlPuH9vHtis?si=AO_p0L7COLJMHj0U

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