The Music of the Masses

By Sarah Liebowitz; A&E Editor

On October 28, 2015

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The Music of the Masses

Sarah Liebowitz

A&E Editor

CLOCK PHOTO: NIKO ZILENSKI

PSU Symphonic Band presents “The Music of the Masses” on Mon., Oct. 26, in the Silver Center. The program includes the pieces La Fiesta Mexicana by H. Owen Reed, Amen by Rolf Rudin, and Cajun Folk Songs by Frank Ticheli. The band is conducted by Dr. Mark Stickney, Director of Bands. For this show, Symphonic Band will be joined by the PSU’s Percussion Ensemble under the direction of Tim Gilmore.

There are 65 students and community members in Symphonic Band. The group is open to students of all majors, although there are auditions for seating. Stickney is impressed with the drive of the group. “They just want to get better and perform well,” said Stickney. They rehearse Monday and Wednesday evenings during the semester.

Starting last year, Symphonic Band has performed two concerts a semester. This means the band has half the time to learn their music. “I like to challenge them,” said Stickney. Their second show, the All New England Band Festival, is on Nov. 23. They will be joined by 200 high school musicians for the festival.

La Fiesta Mexicana is the largest piece in their upcoming concert. The 20-minute symphony tells the story of a Mexican festival, from the fireworks to the church mass. “It’s got dance music, it’s got huge bells chiming like the beginning of a festival,” said Stickney. It also has a Mariachi band section. The piece has a special significance to Stickney because he conducted it for his doctoral audition.

Amen, written by the German composer Rolf Rudin, has the band singing. According to Rudin, this will be one of the first times the piece has been performed in the United States.

“It’s a beautiful piece, it’s a very different piece than anything we’ve done before,” said Stickney.

The piece Cajun Folk Songs is being conducted by senior music education major Maureen McCormack. It was written as a tribute to the Cajuns who settled in Acadia (now Nova Scotia) in 1604. It is presented in two movements: La Belle et le Capitaine and Belle. “La Belle et le Capitaine was written about a young girl who feigns death in order to avoid being seduced by a captain,” said McCormack. “This movement is the slower of the two pieces and employs some complicated textures in the voicing to add a dramatic effect.”

The second movement is livelier. “This movement was written about a man who goes away to Texas, only to find out his love back home has become ill, forcing him to return to Louisiana,” she said. “He finds her unconscious when he returns and pawns his horse to try to save her, but to no avail.”

Symphonic Band is the largest ensemble McCormack has ever conducted. She’s grateful for the opportunity to work with the group. “I'm a Music Education major so this is essentially what I want to do for the rest of my life,” she said. “There's something so powerful about standing in front of an ensemble and creating music together from merely reading notes on a page.”

Stickney encourages students to see the show and support their classmates. “These are performances that, once they [graduate], would cost them a lot of money,” said Stickney. The show is free for all PSU faculty and staff.

“The Music of the Masses” shows in the Hanaway Theatre in Plymouth State’s Silver Center for the Arts on Mon. Oct. 26 at 7 p.m.

Call (603)-535-2787 or visit www. plymouth.edu/silver-center for tickets.