NEC Symphonic Winds + William Drury: Huling, Nielsen, Nieske

Timothy Huling | Into the Forest of Strange Beasts (2023)

World Premiere

Beasts in the Forest at Sundown
Snakes in the Night
Morning Dance and Meditation

Program note

Originally composed during the COVID-19 lockdown, and expanded at the request of William Drury, Into the Forest of Strange Beasts is inspired by scenes from Gaelic and Norse mythology.

Tim Huling is a composer, orchestrator, producer and educator who works in music for film, TV, video games, the concert hall, and more. His credits include films such as Georgia Rule and Mad Money; TV shows such as Little People, Big World and Inside Passage; video games such as Planetary Annihilation and Skyrealm; and installations such as Hunger Games at the Motiongate Theme Park and Great Seattle Fire at MOHAI. Tim has enjoyed concert premieres, including works for symphony orchestra, chamber ensemble, various jazz works, and two ballets. In 2014, Tim was proud to return to his alma mater, the Film Scoring Department at Berklee College of Music. There he teaches film music composition, orchestration, and technology.

Carl Nielsen (trans. Philip Snedecor) | from Symphony for Brass and Organ (Symphony No. 3), "Sinfonia Espanza"

II. Andante pastorale
IV. Allegro

BRIEF INTERMISSION

Robert Nieske | Like Dancing (2023)

World Premiere

Program note

Like Dancing was a summer project. Most of my summer projects are some sort of home repair, but Bill Drury invited me to write something for the band and I took the challenge. The first real piece I wrote was for my high school wind ensemble back in 1971 or so. The band read it and it was better than I thought it would be. It was fun to return to high school for a minute (no more though!). I’m mostly a “jazz” musician because Jazz is the door that opened for me and I went through. Jazz is not different from other music really. Music is about before, now, and then and foreground, middle ground and background and how you balance all of that to make something that either expresses something or solves a puzzle or sounds cool for whatever reason.
       Like Dancing was originally called “three songs and dances” but that was too confusing and got me thinking what is the difference between a song and a dance. and I didn’t want to have to answer that question so I called it Like Dancing. It’s a simple piece. Three sections that are songs or song-ish and should be approached like dances.
        I had a small piece called Goodbye Song that I began while watching TV at night playing my bass guitar. It was a finger picking exercise that turned into an ostinato that I added a couple of melodies to. In Like Dancing I start with an introduction that uses the cycle of 4ths and eventually gets to the ostinato played by marimba. The melodies (from Goodbye Song) are presented separately then together with some decorative fast woodwind lines influenced by Percy Grainger’s Lincolnshire Posy. A banging transition leads to a folk song like section. This section basically has two chords (I and IV) and some bass drum writing that is influenced by the drumming on Mercedes Sosa’s Corazon Libre recording. “Chacarera” is the Argentinian term, and it’s played on the rim and head of a Bombo drum. Nothing in my piece is a chacarera, just the influence.
        The third section came from trying to get from B minor back to E flat major. I did this with a little half note line that turned into an ostinato for the horns. I didn’t know what to present as foreground to the ostinato background so I wrote a saxophone solo over the progression and then a trumpet solo (doubled in part by marimba). It seemed like a good idea to end with a breathing type of feeling so I extended a little phrase that came about naturally by singing something over the ending chords. It ends in D flat because it seemed like the right thing to do at the time.
        I am not a “theory” guy per se, but I enjoy puzzles, and theory can help create and solve puzzles and get you out of a jam when you are stuck. In this piece when I wanted to present a big tonal chord or arrival point I usually approach it with something ambiguous: a symmetrical scale or combination of symmetrical scales. There is one part where I use a whole tone and diminished (octatonic for you classical folks) working in opposite directions. It’s really just an effect but seems to do the job.        Thanks to Bill Drury and the band for playing the piece. Thank you all for coming out to hear live music, without batteries, played by living people.
– Bob Nieske

NEC Symphonic Winds

Flute
Isabel Evernham
Honor Hickman
Amelia Kazazian
Subee Kim
Anna Ridenour
JouYing Ting

Oboe
Yuhsi Chang
Corinne Foley
Rebecca Mack
Victoria Solis Alvarado

Clarinet
Sarah Cho
Evan Chu
Xianyi Ji
Adlemi A. Zambrano

Bassoon
Daniel Arakaki
Wilson Lu
Carson Meritt
Erik Paul

Saxophone
Vladyslav Dovhan
Yingjie Hong
Margaret Nalen
Ethan Shen

French horn
Elijah Barclift
Mattias Bengtsson
Mauricio Martinez
Xiaoran Xu

Trumpet
Maxwell DeForest
Sebastián Haros
Matthew Mihalko
Alexandra Richmond
Cody York

Trombone
Becca Bertekap
Devin Drinin
Jaehan Kim
Allie Klaire Ledbetter

Bass Trombone
Jason Sato

Tuba
Hayden Silvester

Timpani
Mark Larrivee

Percussion
Isabella Butler
Ngaieng Lai
Eli Reisz
Rohan Zakharia
Mingcheng Zhou

Double Bass
Brian Choy

Keyboard
Doyeon Kim

Wind Ensemble Graduate Assistants
Weizhe Bai
Rachel Brake