Jefferson County, 2025 All County Honor Band Festival - High School Wind Ensemble

Описание: High School Wind Ensemble

Mr. James A. Crumb, Clinician and Conductor

Program Notes:

THUNDERCREST MARCH, Eric Osterling
Thundercrest, with its stirring rhythm, rich harmony, and distinctive melody, is another of
Osterling's marches which has become popular outside of the United States, especially in the
United Kingdom. The march was composed in 1964 and by 1970 had been voted into the
prestigious "The 100 Most Popular Marches" list, sponsored by The Instrumentalist.


SONGS OF EARTH, WATER, FIRE, AND SKY, Robert W. Smith
For centuries, music has played an integral part in the daily lives of Native Americans. From
the ancient burial mounds of the Southeast to the cliff dwellings of the Southwest,
pictographs of ceremonial singing and dancing dating as early as 600 A.D. have been
uncovered by archaeologists. Utilizing Indian musical instruments, dances, and chants as
inspiration, this talented American composer creates a rich musical tapestry.


FANTASY ON A JAPANESE FOLK SONG, Samuel R. Hazo
Fantasy on a Japanese Folk Song tells the story of a Japanese girl who is given a music box by her
mother and father when she is just a child. This music box played the Japanese doyo (child’s song)
“Sunayama.” As a young girl, this music box always provided a sense of comfort and solace during
her trying times. When she becomes an adult, she falls in love with an American and faces the
choice of staying in her Japanese village, or marrying and going back to America with him. She is
so very much in love with him, that she chooses to leave. However, she later realizes the need to
feel close to her culture, and part of her always wonders if there was a life for her in her native
Japan. As time goes by, this sense of conflict, which was more easily suppressed in the beginnin
surfaces with more intensity; proving that only in a woman’s heart can there exist an inner-love
and an inner-war simultaneously. Balancing her love for her husband with her love for the culture she left behind gives way to painful episodes. During these moments, her only method of coping
with her circumstances is to lock herself away, open the music box given to her as a child, and at
the sound of the very first note, to cry.


THE LIGHT ETERNAL, James Swearingen
On February 3, 1943, The S.S. Dorchester, an American troop transport vessel, sank in the icy
waters off the coast of Greenland, the victim of a German U-boat. Of the 904 men aboard, 605
were lost. Among those who perished were four Army chaplains, each of a different faith, each
called to the same duty. The testimony of the survivors tells the story best; “As overcrowded lifeboats capsized, as rafts drifted away empty and men milled around on deck on the ragged edge of panic, the only fragment of hope came from these four men…and when the life jackets were gone, they gave away their own.” As the survivors swam away, they remember the chaplains standing-their arms linked-braced against the slanting deck. They were praying; words of prayer in Latin, Hebrew, and English, addressed to the same God. The Light Eternal, based on the well-known hymn “God of Our Fathers,” is a reflective work that musically recounts the magnificent story.