Laurier Wind Orchestra: Program Notes April 2, 2025

March 28, 2025

Fight or Flight

Ryan Fillinger is an emerging composer, recently winning the National Band Association NBA/Merrill Jones Composition Contest with this work, Flight or Flight. Fillinger is currently studying composition and wind conducting at the University of North Texas.

Fillinger describes his inspiration for Fight or Flight being the psychological response triggered when one is faced with a danger or threat that “examines the duality of human survival instincts, showing their sides in 2 main motifs. The first section demonstrates the “fight” response, with a bold theme that grows more urgent as time goes on. The piece takes a turn when the “flight” section begins; unstable intervals leap around the ensemble. The “flight” theme returns before closing with the “fight” theme, representing a triumphant victory. Fillinger incorporates the Dies irae chant from Roman Catholic Mass for the Dead into the second part of the work, increasing the impression of impending doom.

Under the Butterfly's Wing

Lindsay Stetner is a Canadian composer, performer, and educator living and teaching in rural Saskatchewan. She has written in a variety of styles for a variety of instruments, including small ensembles, orchestral, choral, and band, often inspired by the young students that she teaches daily. Played across Canada and the United States, Stetner prioritizes her Canadian First Nations heritage into choral and band works, allowing school-age musicians to see that important representation in the musical culture.

Under the Butterfly’s Wing is a slow, lyrical piece written as a birthday gift for Stetner’s mother-in-law. She describes the work as written “for my mother-in-law as a birthday gift. Her favorite decoration around her house is the butterfly and I was fascinated with the symmetry and colours as the beginnings of a piece for the lady that needs nothing. The blending of the instrument colours and harmonies are what move the piece forward. The harmonies should feel like a musical kaleidoscope.”

On Parade

Amanda Christina Elizabeth Aldridge was born in London in 1866. She was the daughter of African American Shakespearian actor, Ira Aldridge, and Swedish opera singer, Amanda Pauline von Brandt. In her youth, Aldridge was an accomplished pianist and singer (a student of Jenny Lind) and studied composition at the Royal College. In later years, she taught private voice and elocution lessons to British and American singers and actors, including Black performers Paul Robeson, Roland Hayes, and Marian Anderson. Her compositional career included instrumental music, seven piano suites, and at least twenty-six art and parlor songs. While much of her music was published under the male pseudonym, Montague Ring, her true identity was an open secret amongst her supporters, family, and music circles.

On Parade is an English “quick step” march featuring a typical first and second strain, trio, and an unusual secondary trio (a trio-within-a-trio!) that modulates the piece to a third tonal area. This 2020 edition was done by conductor and educator Kaitlin Bove to modernize instrumentation and style inconsistencies for the “And We Were Heard” organization, whose goal is to bring to light historical pieces by underrepresented composers, and to promote exposure and equitable access to recording for living composers’ new compositions.

Riverbend

Dr. Matthew Emery is an Assistant Professor at Wilfrid Laurier University, teaching composition. Prior to joining WLU, he taught at Carleton University, Western University, Concordia University of Edmonton, and the University of Toronto. Studying at the University of British Columbia (B.Mus) and the University of Toronto (M.Mus, DMA), Dr. Emery has received over thirty awards and prizes for his compositions and his work has been included on twenty-four albums, including a Juno nominated disc. His music is “profoundly beautiful and moving”, states CBC Music, and Vancouver Sun describes him as a composer who “writes with an honesty which enchants”.

Riverbend was written for Dr. Leah McGray and the Wilfrid Laurier Wind Orchestra, and this evening is the premiere performance! Dr. Emery describes the work as being “inspired on the notions of noticing, of looking, of listening. Riverbend is rooted in inspirations of the hyperlocal: cartographic, geographic, and site-specific influences that ripple into larger connections and conversations about place, and our collective and shared coexistence with it, and to each other.” Titled for a service road in Kitchener, Ontario, the conflict between natural beauty versus function and technology is most obvious in the main melodic motive, four notes that are a manipulation of the crosswalk auditory signals common to the local pedestrian experience. Placed into the melodic contours, shifting harmonies, and texture of added note sonorities, several different episodes within the work represent the shifting beauty of the natural landscape. We are delighted to have the composer with us tonight to share his creative journey – thank you, Dr. Matthew Emery!

Gloriosa

Yasuhide Ito, a Japanese composer, conductor, and educator, has written over 1000 works throughout his life, almost 100 of which are for wind band. Ito’s musical skill has been in great demand as a clinician, educator, and conductor, notably conducting the Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra and the International Youth Wind Orchestra at the World Association for Symphonic Bands and Ensembles (WASBE) Conference 2005 in Singapore.

Gloriosa is a symphonic poem for wind band, consisting of 3 movements: Oratio, Cantus and Dies Festus. In his notes from the score, Ito describes the scene from the mid-sixteenth century which captured his imagination:

“Christianity was introduced into Japan in mid-sixteenth century. It consequently brought a variety of western music. While Christianity was forbidden by the Tokugawa Shogunate, there were Christians called "Hidden Christians", who tried to advocate sermons and secret songs. Nagasaki district in Kyushu region continued to accept foreign culture even during the seclusion period, as Japan’s only window to the outer world. After the proscription of Christianity, the faith was preserved and handed down in secret in the Nagasaki and Shimabara areas of Kyushu region. My interest was piqued by the way in which the Latin words of Gregorian chants were gradually ‘Japanized’ during the 200 years of hidden practice of the Christian faith. That music forms the basis of Gloriosa.”

The first movement of Gloriosa consists of variations on a Gregorian chant, and the second movement is based on “Nagasaki Bura-bura Bushi”, a folk song of the Nagasaki district, where many hidden Christians lived. The third movement combines the elements of Eastern and Western sources. Gloriosa was commissioned by the Sasebo Band of Japan Maritime Self Defence Force.

Program notes by Dr. Leah McGray and Anne Zhou