VOTD 2/24/2023

American Wind Symphony: Bicentennial Odyssey Vol. 2 (AWS)

Purchased at the Jerry's Records dollar sale

The program: Henry Brant, "An American Requiem"

Ivana Loudova, "Concerto for Percussion, Organ, and Wind Orchestra"

Jerzy Sapieyevski, "Morpheus"

Pittsburgh!

The American Wind Symphony was based out of the Pittsburgh area. They had their own barge, a floating performance stage, and could travel along the Ohio River to the Mississippi, through the Great Lakes, then east along the coast. 

I never saw them play, to my regret. I don't recall when they discontinued. What I do recall is that the barge sat, disused, rusting, moored on the banks of the Monongahela for many years before someone finally scrapped it.

What a pity. Of course I don't have the managerial or technical skills to maintain such a craft, but can you imagine owning a floating, portable performance stage?

The ensemble managed to premiere from works by some pretty notable (then) living composers: Krzysztof Penderecki, Henk Badings, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Toshiro Mayazumi, Lal Schifrin among them. 

This isn't pops concert music at all. Henry Brant's piece (another so-called requiem) is largely in two layers, with louder brass and percussion sitting on top of an underpinning of woodwinds. Was it all directed by a single conductor. It's possible the groups are in different tempi and meters. Several times all of that stops for a solo soprano singing a mournful song. 

I don't know about the other two composers at all, except that one is Polish, on Czech. "Morpheus" is the shortest, a sort of wind ensemble brief tone poem, similar to many wind ensemble pieces I've played before. If I had to draw comparisons, half John Adams and a bit of Stravinsky? But this was before Adams even came on the scene. 

The "Concerto" seems too brief. A work that's a virtuoso feature for two instrumentalists and ensemble should be given some space. There's a lot to explore there, especially given the timbral possibilities. 

If you're a weird record hawk like me, you might want to keep an eye out for a real AWS oddity: the 10" Pickle Suite released in 1969 for Heinz' centennial. It's one sided, has brief pieces for music and poetry, the text read by Sam Hazo. One of the composers was Oliver Nelson. Even discogs.com doesn't have a listing for it.