Concert will feature music of alumnus

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

The final concert of the year for Youngstown State University bands will be a joint event with the Dana Chorale, University Chorus and the YSU Wind Ensemble at 8 p.m. Monday at Stambaugh Auditorium.

The Dana Chorale and University Chorus are led by Hae-Jong Lee, while the YSU Wind Ensemble is led by Stephen L. Gage.

The concert will feature the music of Jerry Ascione, who will serve as a guest composer, guest conductor and pianist.

Ascione, a 1975 graduate of Youngstown State University’s Dana School of Music, is an increasingly sought-after composer and clinician.

A 31-year veteran of the U.S. Navy, Master Chief Musician (Ret.) Ascione was selected as pianist with the Navy’s premiere jazz ensemble, the Commodores, in 1980. He became the leader of the ensemble in 1989 and wrote for and performed with jazz greats such as Milt Hinton, Snooky Young, Marvin Stamm, Eddie Daniels and Grover Washington Jr.

After a 17-year tour with the Commodores, Ascione became the founding leader and pianist with the Navy Band’s con- temporary music group, the Cruisers.

His music continues to be performed by the premiere Navy, Army, Marine Corps and Air Force bands of Washington, D.C., as well as colleges around the country.

Ascione lives in Arnold, Md., with his wife, Gail, also a retired Master Chief Musician.

The Wind Ensemble will open the evening with Bernstein’s Candide Overture. The Dana Chorale and University Chorus will then be showcased and will perform a new work by Dana graduate student Jonny Prianno and the legendary spiritual “Wade in de Water.”

The combined choirs will be accompanied by the Wind Ensemble on Wagner’s “Sleepers Awake” from “Die Meistersinger,” Eric Whitacre’s poignant “Sleep,” and on Ascione’s new work for choir, winds and percussion, “Blood of Gettysburg.”

Ascione and several students from the Dana School of Music will close the first half performing as a small group with Jeff Bush on trombone.

The Wind Ensemble will open the program’s second half with Ascione on the podium, guest-conducting his “Foundation,” a commissioned work for Warren’s W.D. Packard Concert Band that premiered in 2009.

Four distinguished Dana alumni will serve as the guest trombone soloists: Jeffrey Bush, Jonathan Willis, Michael Crist and John Olsson.

The concert will close with Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever.” This performance will include a clever tag on the march that Ascione wrote for the U.S. Navy Band for its performance at the Midwest Band and Orchestra Convention in 1997.