Current Concert Season

Thomas C. Duffy, Music Director. Yale’s wind symphony opens its season with music by composers and soloists from Venezuela and Mexico:
● “Fuga con Pajarillo.” Composer Aldemaro Romero combined a pajarillo (a waltz-like Venezuelan dance) with a complex fugue (a form of musical imitation, like a round) to create this exhilarating piece that features a break for traditional Venezuelan instruments (including bass and maracas) and virtuosic cadenzas for harp and cuatro (guitar). Guest artist Hector Molina, cuatro.
● “Onda Tropical” represents a tropical wave rolling from New England (where Rodrigo Martinez Torres wrote it) to his hometown of Mexico City, in an attempt to evoke a nostalgic feeling about home and the new friendships made while away. Guest artist Abi Pak, acordeón.
● Mexican composer Nubia Jaime-Donjuan describes her “Tundra: A Cold that Burns” as the relationship between the warm musical genre of the danzón and the cold climate of the tundra.

Other music:
● Written in 2002, Jennifer Higdon’s lively “Fanfare Ritmico” celebrates the rhythm and speed (tempo) of life and its rapid increase at the approach of the new millenium.
● Charles Ives, Yale class of 1898, wrote “Decoration Day” as part of his Holiday Suite. It is a haunting and melancholy depiction of the sounds Ives heard at the side of his father, the Director of the Danbury (CT) Band, on the occasion of the holiday that is now known as Memorial Day.
● The five movements of “Suite Française” (Darius Milhaud) celebrate the folk tunes of provinces where American and Allied forces fought alongside the French underground during WWII. The incorporation of these melodies reinforces the idea of hope – which is the basis of freedom.