Pete Nowlen, director and UC Davis lecturer in music

Dr. Garrett Rigsby, director of the Campus Band and Director of the UC Davis Marching Band

Program

Campus Band

Leonard Bernstein: Slava! A Political Overture

Presented as an arrangement of Bernstein’s short orchestral work, the piece was originally written for the inaugural concert of cellist (and conductor) Mistislav Rostropovich—who was known to his friends as Slava—with the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, DC, in 1977.

Dmitri Shostakovich: Folk Dances

Katahj Copley: Unspoken

This short piece was written in 2020 in the wake of the killing of George Floyd. Katahj writes, “I wanted to show the five stages of grief, they are not in the order of the stages but better yet the stages of the black community’s grief.”

Cait Nishimura: Wilderness

This piece was commissioned by the Midwest Band & Orchestra Clinic in celebration of their 75th anniversary. “Wilderness” celebrates and honours Earth’s remaining wild spaces and the people who fight to protect them. Through this music, I explore the range of emotions I experience as an environmentalist, and I express my gratitude for all that nature has given me. This piece is a call-to-action for all of us to do our part in spreading awareness about climate change, to reflect on our relationship with nature, and to deepen our respect for the stewards of this land.

—Cait Nishimura

UC Davis Concert Band

Li Chan: Folk Song of Midu

Li Chan’s “Folks Song of Midu” was a finalist for the WASBE Composition Competition in 2017. 

Samuel Barber: Sure on this Shining Night

Among Samuel Barber’s most popular pieces of music, Sure on this Shining Night has been arranged for chorus, solo voice, orchestra only (without voice) and concert band, and no doubt others. It was originally (in 1910) an art song, with text by James Agee, which evokes a calm within on a starlit night—

Sure on this shining night
Of starmade shadows round,
Kindness must watch for me
This side the ground.

The late year lies down the north.
All is healed, all is health.
High summer holds the earth.
Hearts all whole.

Sure on this shining night
I weep for wonder
Wandering far alone
Of shadows on the stars.

Parisa Sabet: Nawruz

“Nawruz” is written in celebration of Persian New Year. Nawruz won the 2011 Chicago College of Performing Art’s Wind Ensemble Composition Competition.

Percy Grainger: Gum-Sucker’s March

A “Gum-Sucker” is an Australian nickname for Australians born in Victoria, the home state of the composer. The eucalyptus trees that abound in Victoria are called “gums,” and the young shoots at the bottom of the trunk are called “suckers”; so “gum-sucker” came to mean a young native son of Victoria, just as Ohioans are nicknamed “Buck-eyes.” In the march, Grainger used his own Australian Up-Country Tune melody, written by him to typify Australia, which melody he also employed in his Colonial Song for two voices and orchestra, or military band.

—Percy Grainger

$12 Students and Children / $24 Adults (General Admission)

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