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NMU Bands Launch Okanagan Charter Concert Series
February 24 @ 7:30 pm – 8:30 pm
Northern Michigan University’s Symphonic Band and Wind Ensemble will launch a new Okanagan Charter Concert Series, which highlights musical themes that support NMU’s strategic commitment to well-being, at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Feb. 24, in Reynolds Recital Hall. Both groups will perform pieces that advance the dialogue of mental health awareness. New Director of Bands Steven Riley will also mark his first NMU concert by incorporating a multi-movement suite by a Michigan composer that features the melodies of numerous folk tunes to honor the agricultural, maritime and lumbering history of the state.
Riley said the bands will perform music each winter semester that support the university’s mission of prioritizing health and well-being of students, faculty, staff and the community. Assistant Vice President for Sustainability Jes Thompson will serve as guest speaker to introduce the pieces on the program selected for the premier performance in the Okanagan Charter Concert Series.
The first piece will be “Choose Joy” by Randall Standridge. It is part of his unBroken Project, a set of compositions aimed at enhancing mental health awareness among student-musicians of all levels and the communities they serve.
“The piece was written to celebrate a family’s commitment to ‘Choose Joy’ in the face of a child’s fight with terminal brain cancer,” Riley explained. “Our concert will conclude with the Wind Ensemble performing the first piece in the series written in 2021 titled ‘unBroken.’ It specifically highlights the intense mental health struggle of the composer’s mom, witnessed while the composer was growing up, as well as the strength his dad and siblings demonstrated in supporting his mom through this period in their lives. This piece will feature Assistant Professor of Piano Theresa Camilli as a guest artist.”
To honor his first concert with the NMU Bands as their new director, Riley said he wanted to include some type of musical welcome to Michigan. He collaborated with Beaumier U.P. Heritage Center Director Dan Truckey on an innovative performance of “Tuebor Suite,” a 2021 piece by Michigan composer Andrew David Perkins.
The title comes from the Great Seal of the State of Michigan, which has at its center the Latin word ‘Tuebor,’ which means, ‘I will defend.’ Riley said it refers to Michigan’s frontier position surrounded by the Great Lakes on every coast, and bordering Canada to the north and east. The piece was written as a suite for band highlighting the melodies, but not the lyrics of traditional Michigan folk songs.
“There are many liberties taken by the composer to make it a unique composition while still musically representing the traditions of folksong performances,” Riley added. “I thought, ‘How cool would it be to perform each movement similar to a ‘before and after image,’ where we share the music and history of the pieces featured in each movement with an authentic folk performance setting and then perform the movement as set for the band?” This way, we can draw the historical and artistic connections between the folk performance and how these tunes resulted and were crafted into something new for the band medium.”
Truckey will play the guitar and sing the songs as part of the concert. Riley had an opportunity to meet the composer at the Michigan Music Conference in Grand Rapids this past January.
“He was thrilled about the idea and said, ‘I don’t think anyone has ever given a concert that also featured the songs performed in their authentic folksong form by a folk musician.’”
Admission to the concert is free.