Austin Symphonic Band
A John Williams Celebration!
May 17, 2025
Program Notes
Halcyon Hearts (2021, revised 2023)
Katahj Copley (b. 1998)
Katahj Copley
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
Midway March (1976)
John Williams (b. 1932)
Transcribed by Paul Lavender
Program note from the Marine Band:
The 1976 feature film Midway chronicles the incredible Battle of Midway, which was a turning point in the Pacific during World War II. Until this critical stand and victory led by the U.S. Marines, the Imperial Japanese Navy had been undefeated in battle for nearly eighty years. The film highlighted the remarkable American strategy and success against all odds with an all-star cast including Charlton Heston, James Coburn and Henry Fonda, who played the part of legendary Admiral Chester Nimitz. Several scenes in the film were shot using the USS Lexington, the last Essex-class aircraft carrier from World War II in service at the time of production.
The movie also employed a special sound mix called “Sensurround.” This early technique of enveloping the audience in the sonic action of the movie was used in only four films of the era and required special speakers to be installed in theaters where they were shown. John Williams provided the dramatic and visceral musical score for the movie. Williams had recently won his first Academy Award for his score to Jaws in 1974 and was quickly becoming one of the most sought after composers in Hollywood at the time of Midway’s release. Right after his work on this film, he composed the now iconic music to the first installment of Star Wars.
Listen for:
A dignified clarinet statement of the main theme
A contrapuntal woodwind / percussion reel
Heroic horn writing
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 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
“Raiders March” from Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
John Williams (b. 1932)
Transcribed by Paul Lavender
Shortly after scoring the music for Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, John Williams collaborated with director Steven Spielberg on a different type of adventure film, this one also starring actor Harrison Ford. After his swaggering portrayal of Han Solo in the Star Wars films, Ford was tapped to play a bespectacled archeology professor who moonlit as a globe-trotting treasure hunter in the wildly successful debut film of the Indiana Jones series, Raiders of the Lost Ark. The film took theaters by storm in 1981, with Williams’s soundtrack featuring a rousing march that eventually served as the main theme for all four Indiana Jones movies. This march theme and the film’s love theme, both included in this arrangement, have become instantly recognizable as unforgettable musical images of the iconic adventurer.
Listen for:
“Take no prisoners” panache from the trumpet section
A throbbing undercurrent from the low brass
A beautiful horn setting of the film’s love theme
Florence B. Price
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, 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
March from “1941” (1979)
John Williams (b. 1932)
Transcribed by Paul Lavender
In 1979, Williams found another chance in his film commitments to write a new march for Steven Spielberg’s WWII comedy extravaganza “1941.” The film features a dazzling score full of bombast and panache, accompanying the zany, rambunctious and even absurd events happening on-screen.
The result is a march full of pomp and swagger, with a dash of jazzy accents that gives the piece an off-kilter character. As in many Sousa marches, Williams calls for virtuosic technique and elaborate contrapuntal writing, when he juxtaposes the three thematic subjects at the same time in the final section of the piece as heard in the film’s end credits and concert arrangement.
Listen for:
A piquant piccolo introduction with snare drum backing
An incessant low brass obligato
A brilliant set-up to an impressive low brass run
A combination of all themes before the finale