Media Gallery

Grainger: Lincolnshire Posy (complete)

Lincolnshire Posy is easily one of the most important works for the wind band world. It never ceases to challenge and frustrate performers trying to solve its many issues, which are relentless. It is also one of the most deeply satisfying musical works I know. This performance represents my current thoughts on how to solve some of the conducting challenges that are part of the work. It's a fairly decent performance, too! Several have suggested that I do a commentary of this to explain some of my decisions; perhaps I'll get to that in the coming days. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this performance.

Hagen: Hymn to St. Teresa

This is the world premiere of Jocelyn Hagen's magnificent Hymn to St. Teresa. I've worked with Jocelyn for a very long time; met her when she was a young composer and we've since collaborated on three pieces, two for band and one for small ensemble and choir. You can also look at some of our preparation for the performance in the rehearsal section.

Maslanka: Symphony No. 8 (1st mvt.)

David Maslanka was on campus for this performance we did of his Symphony No. 8. It remains one of the most profound musical experiences we all had. An extraordinary composer and composition; he asked us to do things none of us had tried before and it was something we will never forget. The three movements together are nearly 45 minutes, but it's worth the time.

Maslanka: Symphony No. 8 (2nd mvt.)

Maslanka: Symphony No. 8 (3rd mvt.)

Nelhýbel: Symphonic Movement

This is a performance in the Slovak Radio Hall in Bratislava of Václav Nelhýbel's Symphonic Movement from the NDSU Wind Symphony's tour to central Europe in 2019. In many ways, it's becoming a forgotten, rarely performed piece that is undeserved, other than the fact that it's difficult to perform. I hope that this performance might cause you to rethink that; this is a composition that deserves to be played, and often.

Piston: Tunbridge Fair

Tunbridge Fair is a piece that deserves to be performed much more than it does at present. It isn't easy and there's a lot of work involved to create a great performance. It's also only about 4-5 minutes long, which means it is fairly time-consuming for a piece that is a tiny part of a program. That said, the dividends and satisfaction this piece provides makes it worth the effort. I hope this performance causes you to reconsider the value of this piece and of Walter Piston. It is exceptionally well-crafted.

Turner: Dancefares

Jess Langston Turner is one of my favorite rising composers in the new guard of young composers (remind me to change that when it no longer applies). I met Jess through his dad, who I've known longer than, well, forever. Jess's music is deeply creative, often tricky to perform, but always satisfying. I hope I can post more of his music in the future. Try to spot the pop culture (aka, old rock tune) near the end.

Wilson: Piece of Mind (Being)

Dana Wilson's Piece of Mind is, for me, one of the truly great pieces of wind band music of the last 30 years or more. His music does not play itself; you must work at getting this music to sound and I find that to be true of his work. The creativity of this music I find to be quite remarkable. This is an older performance of the NDSU Wind Symphony from a few years ago and we accidentally did not turn off the auto-focus (the camera will occasionally freak out). I decided it was worth the technical issues. This is the fourth movement of the work.

Rehearsal of Frank Ticheli’s “Dreams Under a New Moon” from Symphony No. 2

I'm going to apologize up front for the darkness of this video; the lighting was not good at this time in the band room and it was significantly upgraded later. Also, I did some serious editing of this video some time ago and kept the best moments—then lost the original footage, so this is all that's left of a very good day in the band room. Frank Ticheli's Symphony No. 2 remains one of my favorite works of his; I was one of the parties that was in on its commission, so I'll confess that I don't have a completely objective view of this music. But I deeply love it and the band played their collective hearts out during this time we were preparing the entire work.

Rehearsal of Grainger’s Children’s March

This is another rehearsal that comes from the same era of lighting issues that are in some of the other videos. The things you see in this still represent my views on making Children's March work musically. It's difficult for me to say which Grainger piece is my favorite after Lincolnshire Posy; this is probably at the top of the list.

Rehearsal of Jocelyn Hagen’s Hymn to St. Teresa

This is a rehearsal when we were in the midst of our preparation for the premiere of Jocelyn Hagen's Hymn to St. Teresa. We spent a lot of time on the details and the inner voices; hope you enjoy this view of getting ready for a first performance!

Rehearsal of Lincolnshire Posy, First movement (Lisbon)

This is a rehearsal that was part of the preparation for the performance of Lincolnshire Posy that is also on this website. It's one of the earlier rehearsals, so we still had a ways to go before it was ready for performance. I hope that it gives you a little bit of insight into the way we do things in rehearsal. Sorry for the bad lighting in the band room! We did get better lights after this time period.

Rehearsal of Walter Piston’s Tunbridge Fair

Here's a look at preparations for a performance of Walter Piston's Tunbridge Fair (wonderful piece if you don't know it!). You can view our work at the rehearsal, how the excerpt in question sounded at the concert, and you can also view the entire performance in the Conducting section. Sorry about the lighting! We had horrible lighting in the rehearsal room at the time of this video; it has since been fixed.