Austin Symphonic Band

“Celebration”
April 13, 2025

 PROGRAM NOTES

Halcyon Hearts (2021, revised 2023)
Katahj Copley (b. 1998)

Program Note by the composer:

love does not 
delight in evil-
but rejoices 
with the truth

it will always
protect
trust
hope
and persevere
for you-

love never fails.

The effect of love on humanity is abundant and I think we forget that from time to time. Regardless of race, gender, religion, or indifference, we are all united by a common thread: passion and love. 

Centered around the warmth that love brings, Halcyon Hearts takes us on an unexpected journey to find love. While this love may result to be romantic for some, to me is about the moment someone finds their passion. Using colors, natural energy, and passion, I created a sound of ambition for the ensemble.

I would like to dedicate this piece to those who love all of mankind — no matter the negativity around you. Let love be love and always choose it — when you do, the halcyon days will come.

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Georgia native Katahj Copley (he/him/his) premiered his first work, Spectra, in 2017 and hasn’t stopped composing since. As of now, Katahj has written over 100 works, including pieces for chamber ensembles, wind ensembles and orchestra. His compositions have been performed and commissioned by universities, organizations, and professional ensembles, including the Cavaliers Brass, California Band Director Association, Admiral Launch Duo, and “The President’s Own” Marine Band. Katahj has also received critical acclaim internationally with pieces being performed in Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan, China, and Australia. 

Katahj received two Bachelor of Music degrees from the University of West Georgia in Music Education and Composition in 2021. In 2023, he received his Masters in Music Composition from the University of Texas at Austin — studying with Omar Thomas and Yevgeniy Sharlat. He is currently studying music composition at Michigan State University. 

Aside from composing, Katahj is an excited educator who teaches young musicians the joy of discovering music and why music is a phenomenal language.

He says: 

“Music for me has always been this impactful thing in my life. It can soothe, it can enrage, it can quiet, and it can evoke emotions that are beyond me and this world we live in. I believe that music is the ultimate source of freedom and imagination. The most freedom I have had as a musician was through composing. Composition is like me opening my heart and showing the world my drive, my passion, and my soul.”

 Listen for:

• A driving pulse underneath a triumphant melody

• Extensive use of major seventh chords

Variations On a Theme of Robert Schumann (Happy Farmer) (1968)
Robert Jager (b. 1939)

Program note by the composer:

The Variations on a Theme of Robert Schumann was written on commission for the North Hills High School Band in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and was premiered by this excellent ensemble and their fine director, Warren Mercer, at the 1969 Eastern Region Music Educators National Conference meeting in Washington, D.C.

The theme is The Happy Farmer, and the variations evolve one from the other throughout the work using rhythmic, melodic and intervallic relationships for the basis of their variance. The basic structure is as follows:

• Theme, The Happy Farmer (also known as the “Red Wing Polka.”)

• Theme -  Moderato Semplice

• Variation I.  L’istesso Tempo

• Variation II.  Allegro Vivace

• Variation III.  Andante Sostenuto

• Variation IV.  Presto

• Variation V.  Andante Sostenuto

• Variation VI.  Allegro con Brio

The Happy Farmer is from Album for the Young composed by Robert Schumann in 1848 for his three daughters. They were written with a young piano student in mind. The song has gained much traction after being featured prominently in the soundtracks of The Wizard of Oz and Shrek.

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Jager was born in Binghamton, New York on August 25, 1939. From 1962 to 1965 he was arranger/composer for the US Navy Armed Forces School of Music. He completed his studies and graduated from the University of Michigan in 1968. He then went on to be the lecturer in composition and directing at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. In 1971, he left Old Dominion University to become a professor at Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville, TN from which he retired in 2001.

In his career, Jager has received numerous honors for his works, including being the only three-time winner of the American Bandmasters Association Ostwald Composition Award (1964, 1968, 1972).

Listen for:

• Theme – Presented in a plaintive fashion by the alto saxophone

• Variation I.  Soloist aided by counterpoint from the trombones and piccolo.  A fugue in a classical style.

• Variation II.  4-part flute writing with brass punctuation and a high register tuba solo

• Variation III.  English horn and oboe solos with 20th Century harmonization

• Variation IV.  An aggressive brass variation with chromatic underpinning

• Variation V.  A jazzy saxophone rhapsody

• Variation VI.  A chaotic full band tour-de-force

Danse Bacchanale (from Samson and Delilah) (1877)
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)
Arranged by Leigh D. Steiger

The opera Samson and Delilah is based on the Old Testament story of Samson, a strongman whose secret lies in his long,  uncut hair, and his love for Delilah, the woman who seduces him, discovers his secret, and then betrays him to the Philistines.  The Bacchanale, named for Bacchus the Greek God of revelry, which begins the third act, is a wild and sensuous dance that Delilah, along with other women, uses to seduce Samson.

In 1949, Cecil B. DeMille produced and directed a movie based on Samson and Delilah.  The film was praised for its Technicolor cinematography, costumes, sets, innovative special effects and performances by Hedy Lamarr, Victor Mature, and Angela Lansbury. A massive commercial success, it became the highest-grossing film of 1950, and the third highest-grossing film ever at the time of its release. Of its five Academy Award nominations, the film won two for Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design.

Saint-Saëns’ prodigious talent was recognized at an early age. He displayed perfect pitch and enjoyed picking out tunes on the piano. His great-aunt taught him the basics of the piano, and when he was seven he became a pupil of Camille-Marie Stamaty. Stamaty required his students to play while resting their forearms on a bar situated in front of the keyboard, so that all the pianist's power came from the hands and fingers rather than the arms, which, Saint-Saëns later wrote, was good training. Clémence Saint-Saëns, well aware of her son's precocious talent, did not wish him to become famous too young. The music critic Harold C. Schonberg wrote of Saint-Saëns in 1969, "It is not generally realized that he was the most remarkable child prodigy in history, and that includes Mozart."

His live was spent mostly in Paris, although he did travel widely to perform and conduct.

Listen for:

• Exotic oboe solos with Middle Eastern scales

• A rhythmic timpani part that drives the band

• A slow motion section that temporarily suspends the driving beat

• A finale with horns to-the-fore

Sinfonietta (for Wind Ensemble) (2024)
Ryan Fillinger (b. 2001)

I. Slowly, reflectively
II. Quickly, with energy

Program Note by the composer:

Initially, the sketches for this work led me to give it the title Symphony No. 2, 'Petite', considering the dramatic nature and symphonic-style development of the music; the "petite" subtitle referred to the work's limited number of movements (only two) and the short duration of only ten minutes. But as the piece became solidified in its structure and pacing, I became more and more unsatisfied with the title I gave it — it simply didn't feel like a true symphonic work. With careful meditation, I eventually settled upon a new title: Sinfonietta, which literally means "short symphony" . . . much more relevant, comprehensive title, I believe.

Sinfonietta, for wind ensemble, is structured into two movements; the first, "Slowly, reflectively," draws inspiration from the serenity of the middle movement of Ravel's Piano Concerto in G Major, featuring a similarly extensive and melancholic run-on melody that repeats only twice over the course of the movement. The second movement, "Quickly, with energy," immediately changes pace with a sudden burst of forward-moving energy, and maintains its momentum throughout its modified rondo form until the final bar.

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Ryan Fillinger is an Oregon-born composer of wind ensemble, orchestral, and chamber music. His works fuse styles of the 18th, 19th, and 20th Centuries with modern techniques and contemporary instrumentation. Ryan currently pursues composition and wind conducting at the University of North Texas (UNT), where he has studied with Dr. Sungji Hong, Dr. Kirsten Soriano, and film composer Bruce Broughton.

Ryan has earned several awards and accolades, showcasing his increasing popularity as an emerging composer. In 2024, Ryan was named the winner of the National Band Association/Merrill Jones Memorial Band Composition Contest, and was given first prize in the Pennsylvania Symphonic Winds Composition Contest. He was also a finalist in the ASCAP 2022 Morton Gould Young Composer Awards. Ryan has received performances from the Wilfrid Laurier University Wind Ensemble, the UConn Saxophone Quartet, the Royal Australian Air Force Band, the Pennsylvania Symphonic Winds, and ensembles at UNT including the Wind Orchestra, the Wind Ensemble, the Concert Band, and the Symphony Orchestra. Ryan also frequently collaborates with student and faculty chamber ensembles at UNT to produce exciting and dynamic new chamber works.

Ryan’s passion and dedication as a composer has garnered recognition from many, who call him “one of the most promising young composers of his generation”, and one “[whose] fresh voice will undoubtedly craft a wonderful new addition to the wind band repertoire.” (Austin Symphonic Band)

Listen for:

• Mvmt. I

  • A colorful palette of open intervals in the opening

  • Solos from the alto saxophone, English horn and flugelhorn

  • Ebb and flow of dynamic contrast

  • Gently blossoming melody

• Mvmt. II

  • A pervasive heartbeat rhythm of dotted quarter and eighth notes

  • A see-saw between a brash motif and a lyric response

  • A triumphant finale

Adoration (1951)
Florence B. Price (1887-1953)
Transcribed by Cheldon R. Williams

Program Note by Michael-Thomas Foumai:

With the re-discovery of Florence Price’s music in 2009, Price’s legacy in the form of manuscripts, letters, and personal items were uncovered in her abandoned summer home on the outskirts of St. Anne, Illinois. Her life, heavily researched by the musicologist Douglas Shadle, revealed a prolific composer of keyboard, chamber, and orchestral works, including two violin concertos, a teacher, mother, and an active participant in the National Association for Negro Musicians (NANM) and the National Federation of Music Clubs.

Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, Price was one of three children in a bi-racial family. Her father was the only African-American dentist in the city and her mother was a local music teacher. By all accounts, the family was well respected within the community. Florence began her music studies with her mother, giving her first piano recital at age four and publishing her first composition by age 11. She graduated as valedictorian from her local Catholic school at age 14. A year later, in 1902, she moved to Boston to enroll at the New England Conservatory of Music, where she pursued a double major in organ and piano teaching. She graduated with honors in 1906, and with an artist diploma as well as a teaching certificate. She was only 19 at the time. She returned to Arkansas in 1910 before moving to Atlanta, where she took a job as head of the music department at Clark Atlanta University, an historically Black college. Two years later, she married attorney Thomas J. Price, gave up her job, and moved back to Little Rock, where her husband practiced law and she raised their two daughters. By this time, however, Jim Crow laws had consumed the region and Little Rock was racially segregated. Any advantages she had enjoyed years before no longer existed; she was not able to find meaningful work of any kind in the area.

Price faced many challenges to carve out a career amongst the mostly white male titans of the day. Writing to the conductor Serge Koussevitzky in 1943, she would introduce herself as: “My dear Dr. Koussevitzky, To begin with I have two handicaps — those of sex and race. I am a woman; and I have some Negro blood in my veins.” Her work, mainly in the romantic style, would be neglected by many, including Koussevitzky, but she persevered. The performance of her Symphony in E-minor with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1933 is the first time any major orchestra had performed music composed by an African American woman.

Composed two years before her death, Price’s Adoration is originally for organ and is arranged for solo violin and strings by Jim Gray. As the title suggests, the brief 3-minute work channels a sacred devotion common with liturgical hymnody.

Listen for:

• A slowly-developing, beautifully-simple lullaby

Showboat (Selections from the 1927 musical)
Lyrics and book by Oscar Hammerstein II (1895-1960)
Music by Jerome Kern (1888-1945)
Arranged by Clifton Jones

Program Note by Dave Kopplin:

Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Edna Ferber, author of the 1926 novel Show Boat, didn't like the idea of a musical adaptation of her book. Indeed, she expressed grave reservations about having it set for the musical stage; post-World War I Broadway musicals had been "suffering from sameness and tameness" according to Stanley Green, author of Broadway Musicals, Show by Show. Ferber was worried that her story would be subjected to the same fluffy and frivolous treatment so popular in the revues and light operas of the day.

It was composer Jerome Kern who convinced her otherwise. He and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II agreed to write a new kind of show, one that would forever change the face of American musicals. Kern assured her that he and Hammerstein would concentrate on bringing Ferber's complex story to life in music, a story line that included dramatic elements hitherto unexplored seriously in musical theater, especially racism and infidelity. Kern and Hammerstein's show wouldn't be just another musical; it would be a drama with music.

Show Boat was everything they hoped to create and more.

First and foremost, Show Boat was filled with great tunes, tunes with lyrics that captured and propelled the special drama of the story, none more powerful than "Ol' Man River."

"I must break down and confess," Edna Ferber was quoted as saying, "to being one of those whose eyes grow dreamy and whose mouth is wreathed in wistful smiles whenever the orchestra — any orchestra — plays 'Ol' Man River' … I never have tired of it … and I consider Oscar Hammerstein's lyric to 'Ol' Man River' to be powerful, native, tragic, and true."

When Kern first played and sang the song for Ferber she was overwhelmed: "I give you my word, my hair stood on end, the tears came to my eyes, I breathed like a heroine in a melodrama. This was great music. This was music that would outlast Jerome Kern's day and mine." The tune is still powerful: even in our day — when the idea of slavery and indentured servitude seems such a relic of the past — the setting, tune, and lyric reminds us that many individuals still struggle with poverty and racism.

Memorable tunes abound in the show. "Can't Help Lovin' That Man," a song that describes a woman's unswerving devotion to her man even in the face of egregious lack of character, was another notable favorite from the show. Other songs include "Make Believe," "Bill," "Cotton Blossom," and "Why Do I Love You?", to mention a few.

Great tunes were not the only thing that made this a classic musical. Before Show Boat, musicals were often just a pastiche of song and dance numbers. Sometimes the tunes would barely relate to each other and shows frequently had flimsy plots or no plots at all.

According to most theater scholars, it marked the arrival of the modern musical. Theater scholar Geoffrey Block, author of Enchanted Evenings: The Broadway Musical from Show Boat to Sondheim, noted the work's "unprecedented integration of music and drama, its three-dimensional characters, and its bold and serious subject matter." Richard Kislan declared that Hammerstein's libretto for Show Boat "brought before the public for the first time the human and moral concerns that would become the heart of the enduring musical."

The treatment of African Americans in musical theater had reflected the prevailing thinking of the day: "Almost without exception, the American theater had treated the black person as a comic character in the genre of fool, clown, or … simpleton," wrote Kislan. This story was different; Show Boat portrayed the plight of black Americans in sympathetic terms, and even dealt openly with the issue of Julie's "mixed-race" marriage, still illegal in many states at the time the musical was written. Miscegenation laws, as they were called, were upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in Pace v. Alabama (1883) and not overturned until Loving v. Virginia (1967), when 16 states still had such laws on the books.

Jerome Kern's music for Show Boat has garnered the most praise through the years. To wit:

"In Show Boat … Kern's music heightens immeasurably the emotional value of the situation… Themes are developed and quoted in almost Wagnerian fashion," wrote Robert Simeon in Modern Music. Other critics agreed. Arthur B. Waters wrote in the Philadelphia Public Ledger:

Just where the highest honors are to be bestowed we are not certain, but, without doubt, Mr. Kern should come in for first mention…. We know of no musical in recent years … which has so uniformly high grade a score.

Others, such as Geoffrey Block, go into great detail demonstrating the composer's deft handling of leitmotifs, a term coined to describe the way opera composers — in particular, "high art" composer Richard Wagner — use and reuse small fragments of music for dramatic effect.

The compositional skill required to craft such an unmistakable musical masterpiece as Show Boat makes distinctions between "high art" and "low art" seem unjustified: It is music of the highest order.

Though praise has been heaped on Show Boat through the years, one aspect of the show has been singled out for criticism: the book. Broadway conductor Lehman Engel (1910-1982) — who some claim knew more about American musical theater than anybody, while others dismiss as an angry old curmudgeon — thought the book didn't live up to the standards of the rest of the work.

"Its plot development [is] predictable and corny, and its ending unbearably sweet," Engel wrote of Show Boat. Even Oscar Hammerstein II himself is said to have had second thoughts about the work's ending. Miles Kreuger, author of Show Boat: The Story of a Classic American Musical, notes that "as a concession to theatrical conventions of the time, Hammerstein kept everyone alive at the end and even arranged a happy reunion for the long-parted lovers, decisions, he revealed to this writer, that he came to regret."

It could be argued, however, that the ending to Show Boat — the original ending envisioned in 1927 — was really quite ambiguous. A reunion between Magnolia and Ravenal certainly seems a reasonable storyline considering they have a daughter together, though after 15 years absence, only the most hopeless romantic among us can imagine a full reconciliation.

Show Boat is noteworthy for something else, something out of the ordinary for Broadway musicals. There are many versions of the play, but no one single "definitive" production that seems to have swept all other productions aside. It has been remade and revived on many occasions, in 1932, 1946, 1966, 1971, 1983, and in 1994, the last being the most financially successful of the lot. The 1946 version, in particular, took a lighter tone than the previous versions. Also, the movie adaptations — a silent version in 1929 (with a prologue sung by the cast), and talkies in 1936 and 1951 — are all different, with the 1951 film taking its cue from the '46 stage production and moving even further away from the original.

The music and story in tonight's Show Boat is closer to the story and music that would have been seen in the 1927 Broadway production, with two important additional tunes: a duet featuring Queenie and Joe, which first appeared in the 1932 revival ("Ah Still Suits Me"); and Kim's number "Nobody Else But Me," the last song Jerome Kern ever wrote in his lifetime, a tune he created for the 1946 revival that he would never live to hear.

Like a timeless epic such as Beowulf or a play by William Shakespeare, Show Boat can be reinterpreted without altering its essence. This flexibility only strengthens it, making it new and relevant for generations to come.

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Clif Jones, long time member of the Austin Symphonic Band clarinet section, is a master artist of windband colors. His fresh approach and imaginative harmonies bring new life to these classic tunes.

Listen for:

The tunes (in this order)

• Cotton Blossom

• Bill

• Make Believe

• Life Upon the Wicked Stage

• Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man

• Ol’ Man River

Dance of the Jesters (1873)
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)
Transcribed by Ray E. Cramer

Program note by Ray Cramer:

Dance of the Jesters is a prime example of Tchaikovsky’s keen sense of musical nationalism. Originally composed as incidental music for the ballet The Snow Maiden, the dance forever captures the color and zest of Russian folk dance music. The ballet about the Snow Maiden, the daughter of Father Frost, tells of her forbidden love with a human, Misgir, who is already betrothed to Coupava. The Snow Maiden follows him southward with plans to interrupt his wedding, but tragically melts under the rays of the southern sun.

Upon meeting Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in 1868, Tchaikovsky renewed his keen sense of musical nationalism. Inspired by the master composer, Tchaikovsky's compositional style would forever capture the color and zest of Russian folk dance and music. The flurry, energetic drive and playful melodies associated with his ballet scores are all heard in this rare and invigorating music. This edition comes from an arrangement from the ballet The Snow Maiden that was originally transcribed for a Russian military band.

Tchaikovsky fun facts:

• He was just four when he began composing.

• Like Beethoven and Mahler, Tchaikovsky liked to take a walk of two hours every day. If he returned even a minute early, he believed great misfortune would befall him.

• He enjoyed mushroom picking.

• A big fan of Shakespeare, he wrote pieces inspired by Hamlet, The Tempest and Romeo & Juliet.

• Whilst composing Eugene Onegin, fangirl and student, Antonina Ivanovna Milioukova, wrote to him of her love for him. At first, he rejected her, but a month later they were married and another six weeks later they separated.

Listen for:

• An extremely fast and light blur of notes interspersed with woodwind filigree and trumpet solos

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