The Brigham Young University Wind Symphony, conducted by Donald Peterson with guest conductor Ray Cramer, will perform in concert Saturday, Nov. 9, at 7:30 p.m. in the de Jong Concert Hall.
Tickets are $10 for the general public, $9 for alumni and seniors and $6 for students and BYU employees. You can purchase tickets at byuarts.com/tickets or by calling the Fine Arts Ticket Office at (801) 422-2981.
The performance will include “Festive Overture” by Dmitri Shostakovich, “Down a Country Lane” by Aaron Copland and “The National Game - March” by John Philip Sousa.
Guest conductor Cramer is an emeritus professorfrom Indiana University, where he conducted the Wind Ensemble and Chamber Winds and taught graduate conducting, band history, and wind literature classes.
He has served as president of the Midwest Clinic, an international band and orchestra convention with more than 14,000 attendees representing 28 countries. He is also past-president of the American Bandmasters Association and the College Band Directors National Association and the Indiana Bandmasters Association.
Cramer is in demand internationally as guest conductor, clinician and adjudicator. He is a regular guest conductor of the Musashino Academy of Music Wind Ensemble in Tokyo.
Two of the major works that he will conduct are "Lincolnshire Posy" by Percy Grainger and “from Glory to Glory,” a piece commissioned by the Midwest International Band Clinic as a memorial to the Cramer family after his daughter was killed in a tragic bicycle accident. The title is derived from II Corinthians 3:18.
The work is based upon motifs from her name — Heather — as well as melodies from children’s folk songs of China and Vietnam. (She and her husband adopted four children from those two countries.)
The evening will conclude with Cramer’s arrangement of “Dance of the Jesters,” a piece used as an encore by the Wind Symphony during its Asian tour in 2009 and European tour in 2012
The BYU Wind Symphony is comprised of the finest woodwind, brass and percussion players at the university and has an extremely active concert season. In recent years, the Wind Symphony has performed in the British Isles, Taiwan, Thailand, Hong Kong, the Philippines, China, New Zealand, Australia, Finland, the Baltic States and Russia, as well as the Northwest United States and Canada.
For more information, contact Ken Crossley at (801) 422-9348 or ken_crossley@byu.edu.
Writer: Brett Lee
