Review of May 20, 2008, Concert
Group ends its first year with demanding program
By Peter Jacobi, Bloomington Herald-Times Reviewer
May 22, 2008
Bloomington being like it is, one never knows from whence will come a new musical attraction. The most recent manifestation of this bounty is the Southern Indiana Wind Ensemble, which completed its first season with a demanding and amazingly well played program at Sherwood Oaks Christian Church Tuesday evening.
The band is the brainchild of Eric Isaacson, who has studied conducting but earns his living as a music theorist, heading a department of such scholars in IU’s Jacobs School. When he stands upon the podium, most of the 50 or so musicians who face him and do his bidding are, like him, part-time performers, engaged professionally as teachers (of music and otherwise), students (again, of music and otherwise), business people, journalists, physicians and what have you.
They’ve all auditioned for or been invited to join the ensemble, meaning they know how to play. And play they did on Tuesday, as a mature and assured collection worthy, indeed, to be called the Southern Indiana Wind Ensemble. Isaacson has, in a short period of time, come a long way in making his gathering of individual talents a unit. In a program of works themed on colors, the ensemble showed that challenges are what it exists to conquer, that mastering difficulties is an endeavor to enjoy.
Isaacson’s choice of repertoire could not be faulted, containing as it did an interesting array of soundscapes and styles, from an upbeat “Fanfare for a Golden Sky” by Scott Boerma, which opened the concert, to two evocative movements from Aaron Copland’s “The Red Pony: Film Suite for Band,” which stirringly closed it.
Roger Cichy’s set of six brief tonal descriptions, “Colours,” allowed the musicians to create a sense of mystery for “Dark Jade,” breezy jazz in “Blue Sapphire” and various other moods for “Amber,” “Mauve,” “Dark Ivy” and “Burgundy Red.” The blues took dominance in Frank Ticheli’s “Blue Shades.” Colors abstractly applied as atmosphere suffused Michael Gandolfi’s “Vientos y Tangos” (“Winds and Tangos”), a rhythmically intricate and expressive tribute to Astor Piazzola and other purveyors of the tango, past and present.
Throughout, Isaacson worked for and close-to-always achieved crispness of attacks, flamboyance in flourishes and whip-snap endings. That he did also during a performance of Robert Russell Bennett’s “Rose Variations,” for which the terrific faculty trumpeter from IU, John Rommel, provided the solo element.
What distinguishes Rommel’s playing is an ability to produce tones that, even when sky high in range and super loud, emerge ever so smoothly and unforced.
A second guest, the Jacobs School’s director of bands, Stephen Pratt, took the podium to lead the ensemble in Mark Camphouse’s Fantasia on “Black Is the Color of My True Love’s Hair,” a sumptuously orchestrated exposition of that lovely traditional. The performance emerged as technically admirable and interpretively radiant.
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