October 12, 2022
Wind Ensemble
Dr. Frank Tracz, Conductor
Dr. Amy Guffey, Guest Performer
Wind Ensemble
Dr. Frank Tracz, Conductor
Celebration Fanfare (1996)…………………………………………………….…Joan Tower (b. 1938)
Arr. Jack Stamp (b. 1954)
Letters (2021)…………………………………………………………………..Kelijah Dunton (b. 1999)
Viktor’s Tale (2004)……………………………………………………….…….John Williams (b. 1932)
Trans. Paul Lavender (b. unknown)
Dr. Amy Guffey, Solo Clarinet
Lincolnshire Posy (1937) ……………………………………...……….…..Percy Grainger (1882-1961)
Ed. Frederick Fennell (1914-2004)
Wedding Dance (1955/1995)……………………………………………..…...Jacques Press (1903-1985)
Trans. Herbert N. Johnston (d. 2002)
Ed. Frederick Fennell (1914-2004)
Wind Ensemble Program Notes
Celebration Fanfare (1996)…………………………………………………….…Joan Tower (b. 1938)
Arr. Jack Stamp (b. 1954)
“For years I have been pestering Joan Tower to write a work for wind ensemble. While having a composition lesson with her, she eagerly pulled out a tape recording of the last movement of her ballet, Stepping Stones. As she told me about a brass ensemble version that had been created, she started the tape. I listened to this movement, entitled ‘Celebrations,’ and could not help but hear a wind band version of the work. When I told her my idea she said, ‘Great! You do it… and we’ll see how my first band piece is accepted!’ I told her I would be honored to transcribe the work, but had a busy schedule and could probably not get to it for nine to ten months. In mid-May pianist Justin Kolb called me and wanted to feature the work with the US Military Academy Band at his ‘Music and the Mountain Sky’ festival in upstate New York on July 4th weekend. At that time I had not even begun the work! I worked feverishly for the next month to meet the deadline for the premiere. Tower was pleased with the transcription and I subsequently recorded the work on a compact disc entitled Divertimento.”
- Program notes by Jack Stamp
Letters (2021)…………………………………………………………………..Kelijah Dunton (b. 1999)
“A piece representing overcoming a romantic betrayal. My goal was to illustrate the concept as if it was a story. The “story” of the piece is “told” from the lens of the person who was betrayed by their partner The piece goes through several iterations of the same melody but each time it’s different; taking on a different identity entirely. Sometimes, nostalgic and reminiscent, to bitter, menacing, full of malice and regret.
To put is simply… Music Saved My Life.
Growing up in inner NYC, I was the kid who never had much. I lived with my father in a basement with no windows. Everything I wore was either “hand-me-downs” or counterfeit. I was the weird kid that loved anime and read comic books. I was a bit of a loner that always felt misunderstood and detached. The reason why I’m telling you all of this is because I was lucky enough to find a small light in my childhood chapters of darkness & loneliness.
Fast forward to my first day of high school,… my anxiety sky high, my social skills,… nonexistent. So there I am in the cafeteria on my first day. I see this well-dressed man coming up to me. I figured he must be a teacher, so I made eye contact lol. It was the band director of the school I was now attending, and he asked me to join his band program. In my head, I say… “bAnD?! You want me to be in a rock band?”… I don’t think I really look the part LOL. But I couldn’t help but notice the other kids around me were signing up, so I said what the hell, …not thinking anything of it.
I finally get 4th period band on my schedule and I’m nervous because I don’t know what to expect. My palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy. But I go anyway. I feel like my band experience from high school changed my life in so many ways. Like I said, before this, I was a loner. A nerd, a weirdo, or at least that’s what everyone told me, including my own family. So, it goes without saying I was filled with resentment at an early age. What happens when you mix resentment with the raging hormones of puberty? Nothing good lol…NOTHING.
So, I was smart enough to know that I needed a change of pace and band was my way out. I knew that it was one of my only ways to create friendships, find myself, and build my self-esteem.
I met all kinds of people there that I still cherish to this day and I’m especially grateful to that man I met in the cafeteria that day. I know what I could’ve been... who I could’ve been… and where I could’ve been.
My real passion and goal in life is show other young men & women like me that there are so many other ways out of that dark place we were raised into. Through music, I want to help us all rise out of the pain we had to endure as kids. I want to help save young people’s lives by setting an example of what’s possible for an inner-city kid like myself. If I could sum up my appreciation for this community in just a few words, it would, YOU, yes, YOU ALL saved my life. Thank you.
- Program Notes by Kelijah Dunton emailed to Dr. Frank Tracz Aug. 25, 2022
Viktor’s Tale (2004)……………………………………………………….…….John Williams (b. 1932)
Trans. Paul Lavender (b. unknown)
Dr. Guffey, Solo Clarinet
Viktor’s Tale for concert band was premiered by the United States Marine Band on October 4, 2004, in Charleston, West Virginia, the first performance of the Marine Band’s annual fall tour. Master Sergeant Jihoon Chang was featured as clarinet soloist with Colonel Michael Colburn conducting.
It was also conducted by John Williams, again featuring MSgt. Chang, as part of the 210th anniversary concert of the United States Marine Band, July 20, 2008, at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.
The largely fictitious character of Viktor Navorsky was the central player in Steven Spielberg’s entertaining film, The Terminal.
In the story, Viktor left his home in an imaginary Eastern European country, arriving at a U.S. airport where his adventures began. To portray Viktor’s warmth and friendliness, I decided to write a dance-like piece for clarinet and orchestra that would capture something of his colorful ethnic background.
In recording the soundtrack of the film, I was very lucky to have the services of clarinetist Emily Bernstein, who performed the music with great style, technique and taste.
- Program notes by John Williams
Lincolnshire Posy (1937) ……………………………………...……….…..Percy Grainger (1882-1961)
Ed. Frederick Fennell (1914-2004)
Grainger did most of his folk song collecting in rural England during the summer months, dead concert periods prior to the emergence of our now-feverish summer festival activity. He made this available time count in his usual efficient way, helping to rescue the English folk song from extinction. And he pursued the subject with a kind of fanaticism that one grows to know as standard with him on all subjects, once joined.
These folk song collecting journeys began in the summer of 1905 with Grainger seeking out his sources by walking on foot from town to town, music pad in hand. He would hastily write down in his own kind of musical shorthand what he had heard, spending his evening at the local inn transcribing the day’s discoveries. Skillful though he became at this, it bothered him that he could not immediately chart the subtleties of inflection that fascinated him so much in the highly personal interpretation of each singer. He was struck by their individuality, excited at their unfettered flights of creative fancy, and admired their freedom from those shackles sometimes forged in conservatories and opera houses like those he had come to know from his studies in Frankfurt. His “Program Note” in the Posy score contains sensitive character sketches of the folk singers whose tunes he used in the six-movement work. On returning to London each folk song, minutely documented, was pasted in huge accountant’s ledgers, now in the Grainger Museum in Australia.
On his next visit to North Lincolnshire in 1906, he fulfilled his desire to be 100% faithful to those he called “Kings and Queens of Song” by taking along one of Thomas Edison’s new cylinder-disc phonographs. Now he had it all – the words, the dialect, the tune, the pitches, the inflections, the tone, the rhythms – a completely faithful, endlessly-and-exactly-repeatable account of what those fast-disappearing folk singers had inherited and how, in turn, they had added their own particular contributions to the interpretation.
- Program Note from The Conductors Anthology 2, 2nd Edition, pg. 1
Wedding Dance (1955/1995)……………………………………………..…...Jacques Press (1903-1985)
Trans. Herbert N. Johnston (d. 2002)
Ed. Frederick Fennell (1914-2004)
What little is known about Jacques Press was that he spent many of his years in Hollywood, mainly scoring music for the motion picture industry. He was fine pianist and is the composer of Disconcerto for piano.
From beginning to end, this is a fast, exciting, no-holds-barred celebration of life. Frequent key changes, drastic dynamic changes, ensemble passages, and carefully edited articulations add to the excitement and rousing conclusion of the wonderfully joyous piece.
- Program notes from publisher
Kansas State University Wind Ensemble
Dr. Frank Tracz, Director
FLUTE Laura Bogner Sarah Baden Laura Holden Jessica Minnich* Kristen Schrag
CLARINET Angel Amaro Audry Farrell* Taton Bennett Sabrina Gary Betty Withers
Eb/ALTO CLARINET Olivia Bazanos
BASS CLARINET Corrine Bergstrom Bre Ledbetter
OBOE Colby Stevens Lily Linville Briele Vollmuth*
BASSOON Rachel Woodbury Ethan Karnes
CONTRA BASSOON Hannah Sullivan | ALTO SAX Katie Anderson Nosara Vargas Gamboa** Hannah Mancini** Brenden Vining
TENOR SAX Mason Ringer
BARITONE SAX Craig Brinkman
TRUMPET Ann Barker Kiersten Glass Kyle Grimes* Shelton Lauderbaugh Bryce Schreiber Jessica Vanstory Kate Washburn
HORN Josie Anderson** Braedon Jones** Joseph Salas Sharyn Worcester |
| TROMBONES Blake Davis Tyler Lee** Tyler Long Will Osorio (bass) Daniel Smith Travis Turner**
EUPHONIUM Austin Perr Trey Switzer* Michael Walker
TUBA Lloyd Dodson Chris Hovis* Chase Keesling
PERCUSSION Taylor Clark Gaby Fluke Jacob Morgan Jack Johnson* Preston Thomas Nathan Smith Jake Wall Brandon Wells
STRING BASS Stephen Mitchell
PIANO Andrew Wilson |
* Principal/section leader
**Co-principal/co-section leaders
Wind Ensemble Conductor
FRANK TRACZ is Professor of Music and Director of Bands at Kansas State University. He earned his B.M.E. from The Ohio State University, M.M. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and Ph.D. from the Ohio State University. He has public school teaching experience in Wisconsin and Ohio and has also served as Assistant Director of bands at Syracuse University and Director of bands at Morehead State University. Dr. Tracz has served as an adjudicator, clinician, speaker in various schools and conferences and has conducted All-State and Honor bands across the United States as well as in Canada, Singapore, South Africa, Fiji, Australia, and New Zealand.
At Kansas State, he directs the Wind Ensemble and the Marching Band, teaches graduate and undergraduate conducting, acts as an advisor to the Band Ambassadors, and administers and guides all aspects of a large BIG XII comprehensive band program. Ensembles under his direction have been invited to perform at numerous State conferences, MENC, two CBDNA regional conferences, The Larry Sutherland Wind band Festival at Fresno State, Carnegie Hall, and the Kennedy Center. The marching band was awarded the prestigious Sudler Trophy in 2015. The Wind Ensemble also performed at the International Convention of the American Bandmasters Association in 2019 in Loveland, CO.
Dr. Tracz is on the faculty of the Conn-Selmer Institute, on the adjunct faculty of the American Band College, is a past member of the Music Education Journal Editorial Board, is a contributor to the Teaching Music Through performance In Band series, and was appointed Chair of the Sudler Trophy Project of the John Philip Sousa Foundation in 2017. His honors include the Stamey Award for outstanding teaching, Kansas Bandmasters Outstanding Director award, Wildcat Pride Alumni Association award, the Tau Beta Sigma Paula Crider Outstanding Band Director award, being named a Lowell Mason Fellow, and membership in the Phi Kappa Phi Honorary Fraternity. He has also received the Conn- Selmer Institute Hall of Fame award, the Kansas State Professorial Performance award, and was elected to the prestigious American Bandmasters Association. Dr. Tracz was awarded an honorary doctorate from Doane University in May 2021. Dr. Tracz also led a very successful fundraising campaign raising over five million dollars for a new hall for the athletics band program. The “Tracz Family Band Hall” is scheduled to open early spring 2023.
Dr. Tracz is married to Geralyn, and has three daughters, Jessica Tracz Kelly, Kelley Tracz, and Carly Tracz Morris, and one grandson, Caden Tracz Kelly!
Guest Performer
AMY GUFFEY serves as Instructor of Clarinet at Kansas State University. She holds degrees from Shenandoah University, Ball State University, and Florida State University, where her doctoral treatise explored clarinet concerti composed between January 1, 2000 and December 31, 2013. Her career as a clarinetist has taken her to South Korea, Europe, and throughout the United States. Her principal teachers include Deborah Bish, Caroline Hartig, Frank Kowalsky, Kathleen Mulcahy, and Charlene Zimmerman. In addition to her studies with the aforementioned teachers, she has worked with esteemed clarinetists such as Mark Nuccio, Pascual Martinez-Forteza, Lawrie Bloom, Victoria Luperi, and Michael Lowenstern.
Dr. Guffey currently serves on the International Clarinet Association (ICA) Youth Involvement Committee. Prior to receiving her doctorate, she taught elementary instrumental music in the Washington, D.C. area, woodwinds at Yongsan International School (South Korea), blockflöte at Otfried-Preußler-Grundschule (Germany), and early childhood music at Cornerstone Center for the Arts (IN). While working in these various learning environments, she gained experience differentiating learning experiences for non-typical learners, ages pre-K-12.
