PLATTSBURGH — The Adirondack Wind Ensemble crisscrosses the Atlantic Ocean with its fall concert, “Latin Music for Winds.”
AWE’s annual Eleanor Marcus Memorial Concert, which will be held at 2 p.m., Sunday, Oct. 5, in E. Glenn Giltz Auditorium on the SUNY Plattsburgh campus, features music from several Latin regions around the world: Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos’ Chôros No. 3 (South America), Joaquín Rodrigo’s Adagio for Wind Orchestra (Spain), an orchestration of Louis Moreau Gottschalk’s Souvenir de Porto Rico, and H. Owen Reed’s La Fiesta Mexicana.
A pre-concert “meet -the-conductor” session will take place with conductor Daniel Gordon at 1 p.m. in Hawkins Hall.
“I think it’s helpful for people to understand how and why a conductor chooses the repertory that they do and how they arrive at a program because normally what people do is show up at a concert, sit there for an hour and half or so, and enjoy the music. But some of them wonder how did the guy choose this music and why this collection of pieces or why this theme or something like this? I don’t know if all conductors think this way, but this is the way this conductor thinks. In order to understand, I think you have to go back to origins of AWE because it has to do with some of the early concerts that we had,” he said.
The professor of music formed the Adirondack Wind Ensemble in 2002 after he had been in Plattsburgh for about six or seven years.
“In the early years that I was here, I came to know many of the music educators in the region and realized they had a distribution of instrumental expertise such that if I managed to get them all in the same room at the same time, we would have a bare-bones wind ensemble. Now for clarification purposes, a wind ensemble, to make things simple, is an orchestra without the strings,” he said. “So, you have flute, oboe, clarinet. There are saxophones in it, which aren’t usually in the orchestra – trumpets, trombones, horns – euphonium, which isn’t usually in the orchestra – tuba, and then percussion. A symphony orchestra will have strings in addition to that and there is a much longer tradition of music history with the full orchestra. The wind ensemble is, for the most part, a contemporary creation for most of our repertory comes from the 20th century.”
Predating AWE was the Plattsburgh Community Orchestra, later the Plattsburgh Symphony Orchestra, which was under the direction of the late Bill Phillips, starting in 1979.
“There was an effort to keep that orchestra alive, but it died kind of a natural death because there were not enough string players in this community to sustain it. An orchestra has to have probably 70 percent of its players being string players, and in this region most of the trained musicians are public school teachers and there are only two programs in this area that has a string program in their high school. That’s Peru and Plattsburgh. So that means they hire two strings specialists, and two string players does not an orchestra make. It was just unsustainable without the critical mass of string players,” he said.
Gordon’s AWE did have a critical mass of players because every school district has a band program.
“They hire a wind specialist whether it be brass or percussion or woodwind player, so there were plenty of these people around and the issue was that there are a lot of talented people that had very few places to showcase their skills. So I put together this group as a way to provide a meaningful high-level musical experience for the trained musicians in the area, who didn’t have a lot of opportunity to perform otherwise. That was reason number one. Reason number two was as a graduate student studying conducting, I studied a number of works, which were quite technically difficult, and which I came to love and I realized that I was never going to be able to perform many of these pieces because they were just beyond the technical capabilities of my students. So, I did it for the players, and I did it for myself. I ran an experiment in 2002, and I said, let’s try this, and we put on a concert. That first concert gave me the opportunity to program one of those pieces that I loved dearly and realized I would never be able to do with my students,” he said.
That work is Joaquín Rodrigo’s Adagio for Wind Orchestra.
“That gives you an idea of how high esteem I hold that piece in because my first chance to perform in this community, a technically difficult wind ensemble piece, I chose that one. The rest of that program was pretty standard stuff, which we play frequently and all the players knew because they conducted it a lot of times,” he said.
Due to time constraints for the players and conductor, AWE has only two rehearsals, a dress rehearsal, and a concert performance. Its debut was after only one rehearsal.
“I still have to be very conscious of the difficulty level of the repertory that I choose. Rodrigo’s Adagio for Wind Orchestra, I was really lucky to be able to program that piece because it has an unusual instrumentation. It calls for three oboes, which is fairly unusual, and it was even more unusual to have three talented oboe players in this community. So recognizing that when I got to know most of the players in the region, I said here’s our chance to do Rodrigo,” he said.
Two of the original oboists, Janice Kyle and Sandy Verity, will be playing in Sunday’s concert. Kyle is a retired music educator of Westport Central School, and Verity from Plattsburgh City Schools. They will be joined by Lija Treibergs, a research associate at Adirondack Watershed Institute in Paul Smiths.
After AWE’s 2002 performance of the work, a number of the players told Gordon they wanted to play it in concert again.
“But, Sandy Verity stopped playing. She got busy with life, family, kids, career and those things, and every year I would call her up and I’ll say, Sandy do you want to play this year? She said, ‘No. I’m taking a hiatus from playing.” I call her back the next year. Nope. Still on hiatus. Nope. Nope. Nope. She did that for 18 years, until she retired recently and in her retirement she decided to take up the oboe again. I said, here’s our chance. For the first time in over 20 years, we do have three talented oboists who can handle this,” he said.
In the intervening years, Gordon had time to think differently about programming and repertory and started building concerts around themes such as last year’s ‘Home in the Adirondacks.’
“I found that theme concerts work better because it makes people think more about what the music is trying to say and how the different pieces on the program relate to each other and to the theme. So when I realized we can do Rodrigo again, I thought what kind of program can I build around Rodrigo. Rodrigo was Spanish. I’ve always loved Latin music. That has something to do with the fact that I lived in Spain for two years in the mid-’80s. I talked English in Barcelona for two years. Let’s just say Latin music got into my blood. That particular piece really speaks to me, but Latin music in general with its rhythmic energy and vitality has always been very attractive to me. So I thought, we haven’t done a concert with Latin music for winds with AWE,” he said.
If You Go WHAT: “Latin Music for Winds” Adirondack Wind Ensemble concert WHEN & WHERE: Sunday, Oct. 5, 2 .p. m, E. Glenn Giltz Auditorium, Hawkins Hall, Plattsburgh ADMISSION: $15 general admission (cash or check only), at the door, all students free NOTE: Pre-concert “Meet-the-Conductor” session with Daniel Gordon at 1 p.m. in Hawkins Room 131.
More Information Adirondack Wind Ensemble Personnel Flute Robin Cameron-Phillips, Retired Music Faculty, SUNY Plattsburgh Trevor White (piccolo), Music Graduate, SUNY Plattsburgh Sue Grimm Hanley, Sue’s Studio, Saranac Lake Nell Porter, Syracuse University Alum, BS Music with Performance Honors Jenni Foutch, Freelance Musician/Studio Teacher, Elizabethtown Oboe Janice Kyle, Retired Music Faculty, Westport Central Schools Sandra Verity, Retired Music Faculty, Plattsburgh City Schools Lija Treibergs, Research Associate, Adirondack Watershed Institute, Paul Smiths, NY Clarinet Diane Bargiel, Retired Music Faculty, SUNY Adirondack Nelson Bosworth, Retired Music Faculty, Northeastern Clinton Central Schools Ryan Nerp, Music Education Graduate, SUNY Fredonia Amy Mountcastle, Anthropology Faculty, SUNY Plattsburgh Noah Siskavich, Senior, Saranac High School Gregory Quenell (bass), Retired Mathematics Faculty, SUNY Plattsburgh Margali Grenier (contrabass), Director, Plattsburgh Community Clarinet Choir Saxophone Todd Pray (alto), Music Faculty, Peru Central Schools Rachel Murphy (alto), Music Faculty, Keene Central Schools Kevin Alexandrou (tenor), Care Coordinator, Caregiver Support Initiative, SUNY Plattsburgh Linda Sullivan (baritone), Retired Music Faculty, Plattsburgh City Schools Bassoon Molly Finkel, Music Faculty, University of Vermont Alex Malin (contrabassoon), Conductor, Community String Orch. of the Adirondacks, Lake Placid Trumpet Keith Kogut, Music Faculty, Saranac Lake High School Jeanette Woodruff, Retired Music Faculty, Saranac Central Schools Drew Benware, Music Faculty, Saranac Lake High School Bill Long, Retired Campus Machinist, SUNY Plattsburgh Matt Kuhn, Band Instrument Repair Technician & Electrician, Plattsburgh French Horn Bruce McRae, Retired Director of Instrumental Music, Fairfax, VT Tom Whitney, Chief Engineer, Vermont Mechanical Inc., Williston, VT Nancy Liotta, Retired Music Faculty, Saranac Central Schools Eric Neilsen, Photographer, Castleton, VT Macks Hollis, Sophomore, Lisbon Central High School, NY Trombone Mike Nystoriak, Music Faculty, Beekmantown Central Schools Tricia Jackson, Graduate, Crane School of Music, SUNY Potsdam Bob Garrow (bass), Music Faculty, Northern Adirondack Middle/High School Euphonium Matthew Snyder (doubles tuba), Music Faculty, AuSable Valley Central Schools Tuba Benjamin Cepulo, Music & Music Arts Management Graduate, SUNY Plattsburgh String Bass Matt Dunne, Retired Music Professor, University of Texas at San Antonio Percussion Alison Grovine, Music Faculty, Northeastern Clinton Central Schools Mike Lewandowski, Music Faculty, SUNY Plattsburgh & Chazy Central Rural School Jesse Roth, Freshman Music Education Major, Crane School of Music, SUNY Potsdam Dana Atwood, History Faculty, Peru Central Schools Andrew Stortz, Artist, Portsmouth, NH Harp (Keyboards) Rose Chancler, Professional Musician and Concert Presenter, Westport, NY Conductor Daniel Gordon, Professor of Music, SUNY Plattsburgh {related_content_uuid}4e58690a-e1d6-4866-a658-ad789325e41f{/related_content_uuid}