Music Concert Paper

Emily Scott Music Appreciation 28 Feburary 2013 West Michigan Concert Winds Concert On February 24th, I attended the West Michigan Concert Winds “Winner and Winds” concert. West Michigan Concert Winds is a volunteer group that performs instrumental music to the community. This ensemble contains a wide range of musical talents from all different backgrounds. Some members are college students, some teachers. There was also many current or retired band directors apart of the ensemble. They performed all different genres of music from a Sousa march to an Irish wake by A.
J. Potter. There was also a scholarship acceptance performance by a local high school junior who was amazing at the clarinet. The first song was titled “Fanfare for Saint Cecilia. ” This piece was composed for Saint Cecilia on a special occasion called “Three Countries Day. ” This is an example like we talked about in class where a composer had a job of composing music for a certain event because prerecorded music wasn’t available at that time. The song had a magnificent and triumphant feel to it with many brass heavy parts specifically trumpet.
Woodwinds played the accompaniment underneath but were not heard exclusively. Some parts I liked about this piece was the overall excitement that it had and the energy that the ensemble put into it. It was very easy to tell that the instrumentalists enjoyed playing the song. Polka and Fugue from the Opera “Schwanda, The Bag Piper” was another piece I found fascinating. It was a Chek Folk tale which told the story about the lonely bag piper and his adventures. It started out with the woodwinds playing the theme of a cheery thrill note and triplet.

The feel of the music was cheery and you were almost able to hear the story being told. I also enjoyed hearing the Fugue part of the song because that was also something we discussed in class. The fugue was characterized by imitation and variation on the imitation by different sections throughout the band. The band also played a Sousa but surprisingly this piece was not a march but a waltz. Although this song was characterized as a waltz, I felt like it had the elements of a march in it like clearly defined beats and ascending and descending full ensemble runs.
The music was very bouncy and you could almost picture the dancers waltzing on stage. I was very impressed with the brass section because of their strong tone and intensity. I throughly enjoyed my experience of listening to The West Michigan Concert winds. I was impressed with the talent of the ensemble and the professional way they looked on stage. They provided a wide variety of music compositions and kept me entertained throughout the concert.