The Other Side

With a tally of more than ninety commissioned works for band, Matthew George and the Minnesota-based University of St. Thomas [UST] Symphonic Wind Ensemble are blazing the trail in spurring new works for the medium.

The Other Side is the seventh installment of their on-going UST Symphonic Wind Ensemble Commissioning Series. This golden volume has something for everyone: symphonic Romanticism, allusions to Surrealism and Abstract Art, and virtuosic solos performance, not to mention the unlikely pairing of a rock group with wind band.

The music of Spanish composer Luis Serrano Alarcón bookends the album, starting with his B-Side Concerto. A rock/jazz fusion band and the symphonic wind ensemble tackle and support each other over the course of three sections in a concerto that Vivaldi could never have imagined.

Nigel Clarke’s Mysteries of the Horizon was inspired by the artwork of René Magritte, and the four movements are named after some of his most popular paintings. The performance features the virtuosic cornet soloist, also from Belgium, Harmen Vanhoorne whom the composer had in mind while writing this dazzling and colorful work. 

Another British composer and another work inspired by art follow; this time Kit Turnbull and Wassily Kandinsky respectively. The title, Everything starts from a dot, is a direct quote from Kandinsky when answering a question about how he goes about starting a painting.

Staying with Russia for the final work on the album, Serrano Alarcón’s Second Symphony for Wind Orchestra pays tribute to the era of Russian Romantic symphonic composers (think Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Rachmaninov, et al). The emotional content of the music matches the powerful forces of the symphonic wind ensemble – heroism, humor, contemplation, and pure athleticism. You won’t miss the strings at all.