Raging Machines – Brian Balmages

Finding a Way – Chris N. Bernotas

Metroplex – Three Postcards from Manhattan – Robert Sheldon

Starship – Yukiko Nishimura

Extraordinary Machines of Clockwork And Steam – Dr. Scott Watson

Wayfaring Stranger – Christopher Nelson

Ride – Samuel R. Hazo

Ellington! – Arr. Stephen Bull

Conductor Ted M. Hope has served as the conductor of the Fanfare Winds and Hillsborough Community College for the past 10 year.  He was affiliated with the Hillsborough County School District for 39 years and retired as the Supervisor of Middle and Secondary Music after 19 years of service in March of 2023.  He received his Associates Degree from Hillsborough Community College, Bachelor of Music Education from Florida State University, and his Master of Music Education and Education Specialist from the University of Southern Mississippi.   He subsequently taught in the public schools for twenty years as band director at Hillsborough High School (1984-1987) and Bloomingdale High School (1987-2004).  He is a member of the Florida Bandmasters Association where he served as chairman and secretary. Mr. Hope’s professional affiliations include Music Educators National Conference, Hillsborough County Secondary Music Council, Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, the Bay Area Saxophone Quartet and the Hillsborough Association of School Administrators . Mr. Hope is an active clinician and adjudicator in concert band, jazz ensemble, and marching band.

Raging Machines  – Brian Balmages

Raging Machines was commissioned by Glenbard West High School, IL, to honor its music director and his thirty years of dedication to music education. While written without a specific programmatic intent, Raging Machines is an aggressive work with a mechanical element to it (as portrayed in the opening ostinato figures in the woodwinds and percussion). Raging Machines was intended to evoke a thrilling musical roller coaster that seeks to portray its title, with the opening theme recurrences throughout in various accompanying textures, modulating through several tonal centers. After coming to rest in a short, lyrical section, the section builds momentum with more complex harmonies and increasing musical intensity, before aggression takes over one more time in a fury of sound.

Finding a Way  – Chris Bernotas

Finding a Way was created by widely published composer, arranger and author Chris Bernotas, who draws upon decades of instrumental teaching experience and brings an energetic and enthusiastic approach.

Described by its composer as a “musical depiction of the resiliency of the human spirit,” Finding a Way travels through many emotions looking for a way to find resolution and comfort, conveying an uplifting and hopeful spirit that ultimately finds peace. “When healing has had a chance to occur, sadness and sorrow can become replaced with delight and excitement of our memories. The piece concludes with a restatement of the opening, questioning motive, but this time with the question answered.”

Metroplex: Three Postcards from Manhattan  – Robert Sheldon

Metroplex was commissioned by Normal Community West High School Band (Normal, IL) for its spring 2005 performance at Carnegie Hall in New York City. Composer Robert Sheldon is an American composer primarily of works for wind band, as well as a conductor and educator.

Reviewer Andy Pease observes that Sheldon uses existing cultural references that we all understand in a new way to create an experience that we will all share and recognize, including strong references to other famous city music, such as William Schuman’s George Washington Bridge, Earl Hagen’s Harlem Nocturne and ending with something like the fast bits of Gershwin’s An American in Paris. (Pease also comments that Metroplex “shares a name with one of the Autobots” from Transformers)

Starship  – Yukiko Mishimura

Written in 2003 by award-winning Japanese-born composer, Yukiko Nishimura, Starship was inspired by a Japanese story of two star-crossed lovers. According to the legend, two ancient deities fell deeply in love but were forbade to see each other save one day of the year, the seventh day of the seventh month. In Japan, Tanabata, the star festival, is annually celebrated on July seventh to celebrate the lovers who can at last be together. People hope for good weather on the day of the festival, for it is said that the deities can only find one another in clear skies. Starship musically expresses the longing that the lovers feel when apart, as well as the joy experienced when they meet. The piece’s flowing melody and lush lyricism beautifully illustrate this age-old and universally appreciated tale of love lost and found.

Extraordinary Machines of Clockwork and Steam – Dr. Scott Watson

This imaginative work by Dr. Scott Watson brings the magical sounds of steampunk, transporting listeners to musically visit the fascinating world of Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and others whose imaginative and limitless view of the future included all sorts of fanciful contraptions including forward-looking modes of transportation, time travel, weaponry, and more!
 

Wayfaring Stranger  – Christopher Nelson

Educator, conductor, composer, and arranger Christopher M. Nelson created this setting of the American folk spiritual known as Poor Wayfaring Stranger, observing: “While many versions of the lyrics to this tune exist, they all tell the story of a Traveler who makes their way on a journey despite a rough road, difficult circumstances, and gathering darkness. The Traveler does this, the lyrics say, for the promise of green pastures and a reunion with their Father and Mother at journey’s end. This setting is intended to convey not only the difficulty experienced by the Traveler, but also the resolve which is displayed as they move forward despite hardship, and disappointment. Wayfaring Stranger is offered as a sort of resolute battle-hymn for anyone who must endure a long journey of hardship before the promised green pastures can be enjoyed.”

Ride – Samuel Hazo

Composed by music educator and composer Samuel Hazo, Ride is described as “a high-velocity piece inspired by a landscape-blurring car ride down a country road in Pennsylvania. Beginning and ending in the same key to symbolize going from one ‘home’ to another, Ride zooms through harmonic and metric changes in between to take listeners and musicians for a ‘ride’ before building to a furious climax.” Hazo wrote this piece as a “gesture of appreciation” to Jack Stamp for his “unwavering friendship” and “heartfelt advice on composition and subjects beyond.”

Ride was inspired by Stamp’s invitation to Hazo to participate in a composer’s forum alongside such notables as “Joseph Willcox Jenkins, Mark Camphouse, Bruce Yurko and Aldo Forte,” or in Hazo family shorthand: “‘four famous guys and you’.” Invited to Stamp’s house for dinner during the forum, Hazo followed Stamp for a 15-minute drive to Stamp’s house: “The combination of such an invigorating day as well as my trying to follow Jack at the top speed a country road can be driven, is what wrote this piece in my head in the time it took to get from the IUP campus to the Stamp residence. Ride was written and titled for that exact moment in my life when Jack Stamp’s generosity and lead foot were as equal in their inspiration as the beautiful Indiana, PA country side blurring past my car window.”

Ellington! – Arr. Stephen Bulla

This collection of jazz standards is a tribute to Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington, an American jazz pianist, composer, and leader of his eponymous jazz orchestra from 1923 to the end of his life. Considered one of the greatest jazz composers of all time, Duke Ellington had an enormous impact on the popular music of the late 20th century. For almost fifty years he toured the world as a band leader and piano player. Today his recordings remain among the most popular jazz of the big-band era.

Fanfare Concert Winds is a “Not for Profit” Organization. That means that all donations to our organization are 100% tax deductible.

Please consider a donation to Fanfare Concert Winds to help defray the cost of music.

Our tax number is 47-49031478.

You can give a check tonight (see Dana or Ted) OR:

You can mail a check to:
Fanfare Concert Winds
9465 Forest Hills Place
Tampa, FL 33612

Thank you for attending tonight’s concert!

VISION
The Fanfare Concert Winds will contribute to the musical culture and community throughout Hillsborough County by providing quality music performance and educational experiences for the young and the young at heart.

MISSION
• To facilitate a venue for music educators, professional and community musicians and Hillsborough Community College students to come together in a professional-level ensemble.
• To supplement the music education of the Hillsborough County Public Schools and Hillsborough Community College through clinics, side-by-side concerts, festivals and scholarships.
• To expose our members and audiences to quality musical literature.