The flute section of the Southeastern Wind Symphony plays a piece during the second half of the performance on March 1. Jennifer Dettwiller/The Lion’s Roar
The Southeastern Wind Symphony presented a theme of “Music for All Generations” in the Pottle Music Building Auditorium.
The symphony performed on Thursday, March 1 starting at 7:30 p.m. Director of Bands and Athletic Bands Derek Stoughton discussed the importance of the performance.
“It spans over two hundred years of compositional technique,” said Stoughton. “The earliest piece we are performing was composed in 1782, and the most recent piece was composed in 2010.”
The opening piece was a piece of harmony music called “Serenade in C Minor” written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, which included only eight players.
“The fact that we are doing a piece with only eight players on a concert is very different,” said Stoughton. “Almost all the other concerts that I’ve done with this group have been for full ensembles.”
The fourth and final piece was “Pictures at an Exhibtion” by Modest Mussorgsky. Stoughton explained that “Pictures at an Exhibition” was originally a forehand piano piece, which was then arranged for full orchestra then finally transcribed for the band.
Junior music major Carmen Vessel explained why she decided to come to the performance.
“I came today to support friends,” said Vessel. “I’m actually a music major, and most of my friends are playing in the show. I just wanted to come out and listen to what they’ve been working on all semester.”
Industrial technology major Matthew Gunter shared his thoughts on the performance as a whole.
“I thought it was very professional,” said Gunter. “My favorite part was the march. I think it was the second performance.”
Graduate student in music Kiersten Jonkman explained how she felt about the pieces they performed and some of the aspects in the music.
“It was challenging,” said Jonkman. “It was a challenging repertoire that some of like, ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ is a really big piece in the orchestral literature. It’s really challenging for professional orchestras. So, for us to put it together was quite difficult, but I think it’s really rewarding to play something that might be, you know, at your limit or above what you can do because you can grow from that.”
Although students have been preparing for this performance since the beginning of the semester, snow days shortened preparation by a few weeks. Senior music major Abigail Lambert described how she felt about the performance in its entirety, and the challenges that came with being a part of the eight in the first piece performed.
“Tonight was really awesome because we played a lot of hard music, and we managed to put it together, so it was a really great experience to be able to play such high-caliber pieces with all of our friends here in the band,” said Lambert. “It definitely was a challenge because we didn’t really have that many rehearsals for the group. We had to just kind of wait after the big band rehearsal to have it, and we really only had like four rehearsals. It was a really great feeling to get together with seven other players.”
