Sun Dance was written in 1997 on a commission from the Austin Independent School District to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of their All-City Honor Band Festival, and it was premiered by that group on March 18 of that year. Ticheli writes about the piece:

While composing Sun Dance, I was consciously attempting to evoke a feeling: bright joy. After completing the work, I found that the music began to suggest a more concrete image — a town festival on a warm, sun-washed day. I imagined townspeople gathered in the park, some in small groups, some walking hand in hand, others dancing to the music played by a small band under a red gazebo. Throughout the composition process, I carefully balanced the songlike and dancelike components of “bright joy.” The oboe’s gentle statement of the main melody establishes the work’s song-like characteristics, while in the work’s middle section, a lyrical theme of even greater passion appears. Several recurring themes are indeed more vocal than instrumental in nature.

The work’s dancelike qualities are enhanced by a syncopated rhythmic figure… The figure is used not only in the main melody, but also as a structural building block for virtually everything in the piece, including other melodies, accompaniment figures, and episodes.

– Program Note from Baylor University Concert Band concert program, 18 February 2018

1. Pescante
2. Vivace
3. Allegretto
4. Con brio

These dances were composed early in 1957, and are dedicated to the BBC Light Music Festival. They are all based on original melodies but one, the melody of which is composed by Robert Burns.

The first dance is in the style of a slow strathspey — a slow Scottish dance in 4/4 meter — with many dotted notes, frequently in the inverted arrangement of the “Scottish snap.” The name was derived from the strath valley of Spey. The second, a lively reel, begins in the key of E-flat and rises a semi-tone each time it is played until the bassoon plays it, at a greatly reduced speed, in the key of G. The final statement of the dance is at the original speed in the home key of E-flat.

The third dance is in the style of a Hebridean song and attempts to give an impression of the sea and mountain scenery on a calm summer’s day in the Hebrides. The last dance is a lively fling, which makes a great deal of use of the open string pitches of the violin (saxophones in the band edition).

The arranger of this piece for band, John Paynter (1928-1996,) was appointed as full time faculty at Northwestern University at the age of 23, teaching courses in conducting, arranging and leading the Northwestern Department of Bands, including the famed “Wildcat” Marching Band. Mr. Paytner also championed the Community Band movement internationally, leading the famed Northshore Concert Band to international acclaim.  

– Program Note by composer

There is an inherent dichotomy built into the title of this work. The first word, “forward,” implying motion while the second word, “still,” implies non-motion. Equally dichotomous is the notion that while we move forward in time, there are conflicts, prejudices, tribalist tendencies, and antiquated, non-inclusive ideas that prevent us from truly moving forward — that hold us still.

The first half of this work presents a hymn  —  or a requiem? – that is saturated with weight and burden, reflecting a level of soul weariness that sleep simply cannot fix. Realizing that the only option we have is hope-made-action, the hymn gives way to a soaring effort, seeking to resume the fight towards progress, safety, and collective humanity. The piece eases into an ending with unsettling echoes of the original hymn and a return to the very first chord which should bring comfort and resolution yet leaves us with a feeling of uncertainty. This uncertainty is analogous to our current moment in time –one that humanity has faced at many inflection points throughout our story. If there is any lesson to be gleaned from our cyclical history of struggle and progress, however, it is that regardless how heavy, burdened, and hopeless we feel, we must move forward, still.

It was around my middle school years that I really began to fall in love with rich, complex, jazz-based harmony. This commission seemed like the perfect opportunity to give musicians at a similar point in their lives the opportunity to discover these same harmonies. What ended up manifesting was a meditation of the weight of our current socio political and geopolitical turmoil. Those rich harmonies took the form of a stillness — a sort of requiem or dirge that mourned any sense of collectivity that we may have once enjoyed, no matter how tenuous or fragile. What has provided a bit of comfort is the fact that each generation has contended with events that have tested their humanity and capacity for growth.

One thing that has been made abundantly clear throughout our collective story is that standing still is never an option. We must continue to move forward to create space, safety, and opportunity for those of us with the least. This idea of moving forward is represented in the second section of the piece, with pushes its way upward towards our collective prosperity, in spite of the weight of the initial chorale.

Following that is a brief, unresolved coda that reflects the uncertainty of our future and consequential nature of the decisions we make today. A deliberate sense of breath and heartbeat is created throughout the piece, reflected in the shapes of the phrases and in the spacious-yet-intentional percussion groove; the individual elements combining to create a living, breathing, unified body. May this piece serve as a meditative space, as catharsis, and as motivation to continue to search within ourselves to find what connects us all. Regardless of how hopeless circumstances become, we must move forward, still.

– Program Note by composer

Jacques Press’s Wedding Dance is a spirited horah or traditional Jewish circle dance, from his symphonic suite entitle Hasseneh (The Wedding). Composed in 1955 and arranged for band in 1967 by Herbert Johnston, this lively piece displays an infectious energy and quick tempo. With whirling woodwind lines and memorable melodies, the work exudes a fiery energy and relentless pulse.

– Program Note from Fresno State University Wind Orchestra concert program, 2 October 2014

Fučik composed his march Einzug der Gladiatoren, Opus 68, also known as Entry of the Gladiators and Thunder and Blazes, between 1897 and 1900 while he was a military bandmaster in the Austro-Hungarian city of Sarajevo. The original title has been Grande Marche Chromatique, but Fučik was fascinated by the description of gladiators entering a Roman amphitheater in Henry Sienkiewicz’s book Quo Vadis? – Whither Goest Thou? that he changed to the present title. The book concerns the gladiators during the rule of the infamous and depraved Nero (A.D. 54-68); however, the Emperor Titus, who ruled from A.D. 7-81, presented an even bloodier exhibition of gladiators, wild beasts, and sea fights which involved 10,000 men and lasted 100 days.

In this march the upper brasses announce the entry followed in the second strain by the lower brasses who represent the combat. At the present time, Entry of the Gladiators usually refers to the heroes and heroines under the circus big top, the daring riders in the rodeo, or the muscular athletes on the playing fields. Although it is often played at break-neck speed, the proper original tempo is from 100 to 120 beats per minute, as most European marches are played.

– Program Note from Program Notes for Band

It was early 1942, and George Balanchine had a commission from the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus for a ballet. Balanchine quickly contacted his friend and fellow Russian expatriate, Igor Stravinsky, and told him he needed a polka. “For whom?” Stravinsky asked. “Elephants,” came the answer. “How old?” “Young.” “If they are very young, I will do it,” Stravinsky declared. Perhaps Stravinsky wanted young elephants because he thought the older ones wouldn’t take kindly to the often unpredictable rhythms and surprising harmonies in his music. After all, he’d made his name 30 years earlier as the shockingly modern composer of ballets such as The Firebird (1910) and The Rite of Spring (1913) for the Ballet Russes, where the Rite’s premiere had nearly caused a riot, and he’d hardly slowed down since then. From jazz to serialism, Stravinsky was always in the forefront of musical experimentation. And now, elephants. Why not?

Stravinsky quickly completed a piano version of the polka in February and hired film composer David Raksin to score it for wind band. The Circus Polka premiered at Madison Square Garden in the spring of 1942, performed by the Ringling Circus Band and starring, according to the program, “Fifty Elephants and Fifty Beautiful Girls in an Original Choreographic Tour de Force, Featuring Modoc, premiere ballerina.” Modoc, of course, was an elephant, and the New York Times reported that “Modoc the Elephant danced with amazing grace, and in time to the tune, closing in perfect cadence with the crashing finale.” Although contemporary accounts claim the other elephants were not quite as adept at following Stravinsky’s rhythmic quirks, the act was a success and ran for 425 performances.

‐ Program Note by Barbara Heninger for the San Francisco Wind Ensemble concert program, 26 August 2017

American Guernica was written in remembrance of the September 15, 1963, fire-bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, a racially motivated bombing that killed four young girls attending Sunday school (Carol Robertson, 14, Addie Mae Collins, 14, Cynthia Wesley, 14, and Denise McNair, 11), and injured twenty-two others. The elegy for this tragedy was delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King.

The work’s title refers to the famous mural by painter Pablo Picasso, which depicts the bombing of the Basque village Guernica by Nazi German and Fascist Italian warplanes on April 26, 1937, a tragic slaughter of mainly women and children. Hailstork’s score employs spatial notation and extended techniques to recount the bombing, outrage, and aftermath of the American tragedy.

– Program Note from University of Maryland Wind Orchestra concert program, March 10, 2017

This march was a celebration of sorts for the fact that Fillmore and his father (who managed their publishing business) finally agreed that the young composer could publish his music “at home” even though it did not meet the elder Fillmore’s standard of being religious music. The title came from an imaginary circus newspaper; if John N Klohr could name his famous march after a show business paper called The Billboard, why not name his new march after a circus paper, real or not?

Perhaps, if Henry Fillmore were still living, he would compose The Circus Fanfare March after the bulletin published by the Windjammers Unlimited, Inc. This group of circus music buffs alternates recording sessions at their conventions with discussions concerning music performed at circuses, past, present, and future. Most seem to agree that the Circus Bee March reflects Fillmore’s lifelong interest in circuses and his varied experiences while touring with five different big top shows.

-Program Note from Program Notes for Band

Malcolm Arnold’s A Grand, Grand Overture was written for the first of the celebrated Hoffnung Concerts, held in the Royal Festival Hall, London, on 13 November 1956. Those who were involved in the performance, among them Sam Wanamaker and John Amis, have left unforgettable pictures of the rehearsals, with hard-bitten professionals helpless with laughter as they witnessed the birth of one of music’s most celebrated practical jokes. For the Overture is scored for full symphony orchestra and organ – and three vacuum cleaners, a floor polisher and four rifles, which at the climax of the piece viciously silence their heavy-breathing rivals. The work is also larded with many horrendous juxtapositions of key, and with an insanely prolonged coda – and as if all this were not enough, the main theme of the Overture is one of Arnold’s most inspired tunes ever.

Written in 1916, Rolling Thunder was dedicated to Ed Hicker, presumably a trombonist, since the march is subtitled “a trombone ace.” Since its composition, Rolling Thunder has been used for diverse circus acts, including high sway poles, elephant acts, and Roman rides, at rodeos to generate excitement, and on concert programs as a show-stopper. Rolling Thunder is not only one of Henry Fillmore’s most exciting marches, it is also one of his most difficult.

– Program Note from The Grand Band Companion

Rolling Thunder is a great circus march, as breath-taking in its excitement as the action feats by horsemen riding full tilt around the narrow confines of a sawdust track under canvas. The track is known in the circus as the Hippodrome and the music played by the band to accompany the riding is invariably exciting and driving in its manner, and it is always played at an appropriate breath-taking speed.

– Program Note by Frederick Fennell