Wild Nights! Music for Wind Band = FRANK TICHELI: Wild Nights!; DAVID DZUBAY: Shadow Dance; STEVEN BRYANT: Dusk; ROSHANNE ETEZADY: Anahita; JOHN MACKEY: Concerto for Soprano Saxophone and Wind Ensemble – Vince Gnojek, Soprano Saxophone/ University of Kansas Wind Ensemble/ Scott Weiss, conductor – Naxos 8.572129, 60:23 ****:
Yet another fine entry in Naxos’s Wind Band Classics series. The University of Kansas Wind Ensemble under director Scott Weiss gives us a nice program of very colorful and enchanting music that is guaranteed to brighten any dark day. Wild Nights! is a piece by Frank Ticheli based on Emily Dickinson’s poem of the same name, though I dare say that Ms. Dickinson would find her flaps a-flutter hearing this delightful roller-coaster of a piece. Likewise another great band writer, David Dzubay, whose topsy-turvy emotive piece Shadow Dance cleverly disguises the organum that the work is based on.
From the shadows Steven Bryant takes us to Dusk, a short and effective chorale-like piece of shifting colors and couched intensity. Roshanne Etezady’s Anahita was inspired by photographs of a large mural in the Assembly Chamber of the State Capitol Building in Albany New York by painter William Morris Hunt depicting the Zoroastrian goddess of the night Anahita in “The Flight of Night”. The original mural was destroyed, but we can have an effective substitute in Etezady’s pictorial and highly provocative music in this three-movement work.
The longest and best piece on this disc is John Mackey’s Concerto for Soprano Saxophone and Wind Ensemble. This is a major work by a composer whose star is definitely on the ascent, recently winning the prestigious Ostwald Award from the American Bandmaster’s Association for his Redline Tango (on Naxos 8.570074 with this same ensemble). The three inner movements of this five-movement work are titled “Felt”, “Metal”, and “Wood” based on the physical elements that make up a modern saxophone, and scored according to the composer’s sense of the keys of the instrument (virtuosity), its sound, and lyricism. The outside movements are scored for the full ensemble. This work is a devil to negotiate, and Mr. Gnojek—Professor of the instrument at the U of K—does a great job. I can’t think of a better work for the saxophone—and the soprano at that—that I have heard in the last few years, tonal, brilliant, beautiful, and engaging. Thanks to all for bringing this one to light.
The sound is very good and exceptionally clear, the Kansas-kids on top of the multiplicity of challenges. There’s no reason not to buy this one, and about a hundred to get it. Enjoy.
— Steven Ritter
