Reprinted from the Rutgers Music Education Newsletter, Spring 2001 issue
The British Are Coming
by
William Berz
All band conductors regularly program the great band masterworks by Gustav Holst, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and perhaps less frequently, Gordon Jacob. These works by English composers helped to establish a serious original repertoire for band. They continue to be among the most frequently performed works for bands and wind ensembles.
When James Croft, Director of Bands at Florida State University, conducted the New Jersey All-State Wind Ensemble a few years ago, he programmed a work by Martin Ellerby, Paris Sketches. In working with the students, he made quite a point about a new British school of band composers, of whom Ellerby was but one example. One of the reasons for this interest in composing for winds is the work of noted band conductor and President-Elect of WASBE, Timothy Reynish. As conductor of the Wind Ensemble at the Royal Northern College of Music, he has commissioned many composers to write for band, and he has been a very strong advocate of their music. The list of important British composers writing for wind ensemble is too long to detail fully. Some of the more noted composers include Guy Woolfenden, Edward Gregson, Derek Bourgeois, Michael Ball, Richard Rodney Bennett, Nicholas Maw, David Bedford, and maybe my favorite, Adam Gorb.
Adam Gorb taught at the London College of Music and Media and the Junior Academy of the Royal Academy of Music until 1999, when he was appointed Head of School of Composition and Contemporary Music at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. He received the Mosco Carner and Josiah Parker Prizes for Composition in Great Britain and the Walter Beeler Prize in the United States for his work for winds, Metropolis. Bridgewater Breeze and Yiddish Dances are two of his best works that are playable by school bands.
Bridgewater Breeze is Gorb’s own arrangement of his Suite for Winds, a work for a small ensemble. Reynish, who conducted the first performance with the Royal College of Music Wind Orchestra at the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, England in November of 1996, commissioned it. It is published by Maecenas Music and should be readily available. A recording is available through Mark Music on Volume One of their Distinguished Music for the Developing Band series.
The work is about 10 minutes in length and is probably a grade 3 in terms of difficulty. The main challenge is that it is transparently scored without the doublings found so often in works for band. It is this kind of orchestration that makes Bridgewater Breeze so refreshing. There are also a number of short solos for unusual instruments, such as third clarinet and contrabassoon. A number of these passages are cued; others might need to be re-written to accommodate a given instrumentation. The work will suffer somewhat without a good instrumentation since much of the charm of the arrangement comes from the different wind colors.
It is a collection of five character pieces, which the composer says can be performed separately. Each movement reflects the spirit conveyed by the title: Foxtrot, Samba, Merry-Go-Round, Russian Lament, Hoe Down. None of the movements are particularly heavy or substantive. All are charming little pieces with clear structure. They would serve to be excellent teaching pieces for high school wind ensembles.
Conductors of more advanced bands might consider Gorb’s Yiddish Dances. It was composed in honor of Timothy Reynish’s 60th birthday. Gorb writes that the work is "very much a party piece, bringing together two of my abiding musical passions: the Symphonic Wind Orchestra and Klezmer. The five movements are all based on set Klezmer dances, the folk music of the Yiddish-speaking people: Khosidl (music moving freely between satire, sentimentality and pathos); Terkische (an up-tempo Jewish tango); Doina (a free recitative in which various instruments in the band get a chance to show off); Hora (a slow 3/8 time dance with a characteristic rocking rhythm); and Freylachs (very fast in which themes from the previous movements are recalled, ending in a ‘riotous booze-up’ for all concerned)." As Gorb writes in the score, "Le Chaim!" New Jersey band conductors might remember Eugene Migliaro Corporon performing Yiddish Dances with the All-State Band a few years ago. Conductors could follow his model and omit certain movements if they prove to be too difficult.