The University of Wyoming Wind Symphony will celebrate its centennial year with a wide range of musical performances at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 14, in the Buchanan Center for the Performing Arts concert hall.
Tickets cost $10 for the public, $7 for seniors, and $6 for UW students. For tickets and information, call (307) 766-6666 or visit the Wyoming Union or Performing Arts Center box offices.
This year marks the centennial year of the official UW band’s start. Instrumental ensembles existed in the 1890s, but the first organized band came in 1913, which was originally an ROTC unit. UW bands have grown into multiple concert bands -- the Wind Symphony, the Symphonic Band, the Community Concert Band and the Western Thunder Marching Band.
Samuel Barber’s “First Symphony” will begin the concert. The symphony will perform two early ROTC band pieces -- Percy Grainger’s “Shepherd’s Hey” and its bicentennial year performance piece, Giuseppe Verdi’s “Nabucco Overture.”
Senior music education student and band member Evan Bradley will perform a piece based on Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Bradley’s use of expansive winds and percussion meld with Poe’s poem.
The Mexican Folk Symphony, “La Fiesta Mexicana,” will highlight the evening performances with musical influences from the streets of Mexico City and Cuernavaca.
Conductor Robert Belser, director of bands, says he has “proudly seen remarkable growth in the program, both in terms of increased personnel and quality.”
