Dana School of Music to offer concerts
Staff report
YOUNGSTOWN
Youngstown State University’s Dana School of Music will present concerts this week and next week at Stambaugh Auditorium.
Tickets are $5 ($4 for senior citizens and students) and are available only at the door. Admission is free for YSU students, faculty and staff with ID.
The Wind Ensemble will host its annual YSU Wind and Percussion Invitational on Friday. Dana woodwind, brass and percussion faculty members will work with the visiting high school musicians in master classes during the afternoon. The daylong event will culminate with a joint concert featuring two guest high school groups — the Champion High School Symphonic Band and the Norwin (Pa.) High School Wind Ensemble — and the YSU Wind Ensemble at 7 p.m. at Stambaugh.
After a brief intermission, the YSU Wind Ensemble will open its portion of the program with a work by Pittsburgh-area composer Sam Hazo titled “Arabesque.” The piece will be guest-conducted by Brandt Payne, assistant professor and director of athletic bands at YSU.
To close the concert, the senior members of the Champion and Norwin bands will join YSU Wind Ensemble section leaders in a John Philip Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever.”
On March 2, the YSU University Band and the YSU Concert Band, conducted by Stephen L. Gage, YSU director of bands, and Payne, will present its first concert of the semester at 8 p.m. at Stambaugh. The concert will feature more than 100 students from the Dana School of Music wind and percussion program.
The University Band will open its concert with a sparkling fanfare titled “Shine” composed by Travis J. Weller, director of bands at Mercer High School in Mercer, Pa. The University Band, one of three YSU concert bands, also will perform Claude Smith’s “Declaration Overture,” and Holsinger’s “On a Hymnsong of Philip Bliss.” Highlighting the group’s repertoire is the classic “An American in Paris” by George Gershwin. The band’s portion of the program will close with one of Sousa’s final marches, “The Gallant Seventh.”
The YSU Concert Band will take to the stage after a brief intermission and will begin its program with Timothy Mahr’s “Fantasia in G” which includes musical quotes from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, “Choral.” The feature piece on this half of the concert is the classic “A Movement for Rosa” by Mark Camphouse. Also featured will be Verdi’s “Overture from La Forza del Destino,” and the program will conclude with “Tribute to Irving Berlin” set by Warren Barker.