This selection is also available on Walking Frog (distribution) 549.

This new recording by the Messiah College Wind Ensemble includes many of the most exciting writers for winds active today. As the album title expresses, a great deal of the music has a decidedly optimistic and hopeful character. Bradley Genevro is Director of Bands and Professor of Music at Messiah College. Genevro is actively involved with all aspects of the Music Education program and is also Director of the college's Graduate Program in Conducting.

The Return is the tenth and newest addition to Klavier's Univeristy of Nevada, Las Vegas Wind Orchestra series. This recording features newly commissioned compositions from UNLV faculty members, Anthony LaBounty and Dr. Jennifer Bellor. Bellor's new piece was commissioned by Thomas Leslie for the UNLV Wind Orchestra and features a jazz combo comprised of Eric Marlenthal, Colin Gordon, Mitchel Forman, Kevin Axt and Bernie Dresel. Bordello Nights received its American premiere on March 10, 2016 and its international premiere on June 26th at the La Croix Valmer International Music Festival in La Croix Valmer, France. The UNLV Wind Orchestra has received International acclaim for its fresha nd creative approach to music making. Performing contemporary repertoire and classical masterworks, the Wind Orchestra has been responsible for commissioning and premiering numerous significant new works by America's finest young contemporary composers.

Classical Music

All tracks have been digitally mastered using 24-bit technology.

Transcribed: Tom Hazleton

Julie Giroux has been composing since the age of 8, and has been hard at work ever since. Her first composition for band was published when she was only 13 years old. With over 100 film, television and video game credits, Giroux has collaborated with dozens of film composers, producers, and celebrities. She won an individual Emmy Award in the field of "Outstanding Individual Achievement in Music Direction." When she won her first Emmy, she was the first female and the youngest person ever to win that award. On this release, Shine, the University of North Texas Symphonic Band presents some of her most fantastic concert band pieces. The Symphonic Band at UNT has developed an exemplary national reputation for both their performances and recordings. Membership is drawn from the finest musicians attending the College of Music. The highest quality traditional, mixed with contemporary literature make up the foundation of musical repertoire performed by the group.

Classical Music

This most recent of Klavier’s Wind Band releases is a collection of music by composer Ron Nelson whose wind band compositions span six decades of the 20th and 21st centuries. Included are some of Nelson’s earliest works such as the Mayflower Overture composed in 1958, and his most recent works like Pastorale: Autumn Rune written in 2006. Other pieces included that show the breadth and depth of Nelson’s music are Fanfare for the Kennedy Center (commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra and Sir Neville Marriner) and a pyrotechinally brilliant work representing the optimism the world felt at the dawn of the 21st century, Fanfare for the New Millenium.

Lawrence Johnson of the Chicago Tribune has said that “Nelson’s music is ingeniously and beautifully crafted…that rarest of animals, contemporary music that is intelligently woven, fresh, audience-friendly and life-enhancing.” Ron Nelson was awarded the Medal of Honor of the John Philip Sousa Foundation in Washington, DC and an honorary doctorate from Oklahoma City University.

The album concludes with a fascinating interview with Ron Nelson.This extensive survey of Nelson’s composing career is brought to life by The Keystone Wind Ensemble under the leadership of Jack Stamp. The Keystone Wind Ensemble is comprised of approximately 50 woodwind, brass, and percussion players. All members are alumni, students, faculty or administrators from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Fanfare magazine has praised the ensemble by stating that “the group plays with precise intonation and ensemble, able to tackle tricky rhythms and keep dense textures clear.

These performances are also available on cassette: Klavier 7043.

If only the standard symphonic recordings of this music could boast sound this good! Actually, in "Pines" I still have a slight preference for the version recorded by the "President's Own" Marine Corps Band, but if you're looking for all three "Roman" tone poems, this stunningly recorded disc will be pretty hard to beat. The transcriptions, by Lawrence Odom, are amazingly faithful to Respighi's original concept, and you'll be surprised at how little you miss the presence of the strings. The soft, delicate passages ("The Pines of the Janiculum", or the outer sections of "Fountains") sound just fine here, though the very opening of "Festivals" lacks the slashing attack of the violins. Never mind.

The brass and winds of the U.S. Air Force Band play with a boldness and confidence that's breathtaking. Just listen to the trombones and other low brass in the "Trevi Fountain" (and to the way conductor Graham builds the section's climax). "The Pines Near a Catacomb" sounds even darker and more menacing than in the original, while the concluding sections of "Pines" and "Festivals" will blow you away, if your speakers can stand it.

It's also worth pointing out that Col. Lowell E. Graham's conducting is not just strong and forthright, but it's remarkably sensitive to balance and color, even in heavily scored passages. The very opening of "Pines" gives the harps a welcome prominence that they haven't enjoyed since Reiner's classic RCA recording. In short, even if you're not normally a collector of band music recordings, you might want to give this disc serious consideration. Great music-making, after all, speaks for itself.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Classical Music

Classical Music

The Indiana University of Pennsylvania Wind Ensemble presents a varied program of well-written and appealing new and older music specifically for winds by a variety of contrasting composers.

The album takes its title from "Radiant Joy" by Steven Bryant which was commissioned by the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Jack Stamp, conductor, and premiered on October 15th, 2006. The composer has stated: "the piece is intended to emanate joy and 'good vibes' literally - (the vibraphone is critical to the piece!), for the performers, the audience, and the composer!"

Radiant Joy won the 2007 National Band Association "William D. Revelli Contest".

PROCLAMATIONS • Col. Lowell Graham, cond; USAF Heritage of America Band • KLAVIER 11175 (66:39)


C. WILLIAMS The Patriots. C. T. SMITH Danse folâtre. DELLO JOIO Fantasies on a Theme by Haydn. J. BARNES Fantasy Variations on a Theme by Nicolò Paganini. NIXON Fiesta del Pacifico. HOLSINGER To Tame the Perilous Skies


The performances on this disc have been culled from recordings that were originally available only through official Department of the Air Force channels. Recorded in 1989 and 1990, these (mostly) excellent recordings are now available to the general public for the first time.


Clifton Williams emerged in the late 1950s as perhaps the first composer of any significance to build his reputation almost entirely by writing for wind band. Though he has composed in other genres, he is known first and foremost as a “band composer” and, as such, has been instrumental in establishing the wind ensemble as a viable medium for serious musical expression. In doing so, he blazed a trail for many other composers to follow. Fanfare readers who are not familiar with the work of this composer are encouraged to sample his rousing Fanfare and Allegro in a stunning performance by the Eastman Wind Ensemble conducted by Frederick Fennell on Mercury 432 009. Williams’s The Patriots is a splendid processional march characterized by thrilling fanfares and a lovely, cantabile main theme. Indeed, it could easily replace the overly familiar Pomp and Circumstance and Crown Imperial at graduations and other ceremonial occasions. I cannot imagine a finer performance than the one on this disc.


Three composers who have benefited from Williams’s pioneering efforts are Claude T. Smith, James Barnes, and David Holsinger—all represented on this recording. Like Williams, they are best known for their band music. Smith’s Danse folâtre was written as a virtuoso showpiece for the United States Air Force Band. Though many will consider it to be musically vacuous, the piece is energetic and appealing in a garish sort of way, and is most often played as a “programmed encore” by bands wanting to show off their technical prowess. The USAF Heritage of America Band dispatches the work with virtuosity to burn.


At over 16 minutes in length, James Barnes’s set of variations on the theme from Paganini’s famous 24th Caprice is obviously meant to be a “major work,” yet comes off as rather clumsy and rudimentary, especially when compared to the sophisticated treatment this same material has received from the likes of Schumann, Liszt, Brahms, Rachmaninoff, and others. David Holsinger’s To Tame the Perilous Skies was written to portray “two opposing forces colliding in [presumably aerial] battle.” It opens with shimmering wind colors, which gradually accumulate and unfold until they develop into a driving allegro with blaring fanfares and pounding rhythms. The work is undeniably exciting on a superficial level, which, I suspect, was the composer’s intent. The performances of these two potboilers could hardly be improved upon.


The two remaining works were penned by composers who have made significant contributions to the wind repertoire, but who have also found considerable success well beyond the band world. Pulitzer Prize-winner Norman Dello Joio composed a number of distinguished works for wind ensemble. His Fantasies on a Theme by Haydn is certainly one of his best. This inspired set of variations, or “fantasies,” is characterized by exuberance and clever humor in its outer movements and intense lyrical beauty in the central slow section. The work receives its finest recorded performance on this disc.


Like Dello Joio, Roger Nixon has composed widely in all genres. His most frequently performed band work, Fiesta del Pacifico , is one of the finest in the repertoire. Depicting the high spirits of a festival held each year in San Diego celebrating the area’s Spanish heritage, the overall tone of this masterful concert overture is one of revelry and merriment, but beneath its surface, there also lurks a dark and slightly sinister undercurrent. Unfortunately, this reading is a bit lackluster, especially when compared to the truly spectacular recording by the Dallas Wind Symphony conducted by Howard Dunn on Reference 38.


The Heritage of America Band may not be the Air Force’s premier ensemble, but you would never know it by the performances on this disc. The playing is never less than first-rate and, aside from the Nixon, the interpretations are right on the mark. The recorded sound, by the great Bruce Leek, is absolutely breathtaking: rich, vividly detailed, with a huge dynamic range, and plenty of width and depth. As there are many other excellent recordings by this band still in the vault, we can only hope that this release is the first of many to come.


FANFARE: Merlin Patterson