HWS Spotlights Local Composers
On Wednesday night February 15, the Hanover Wind Symphony (HWS) will spotlight three local composers in our concert “New Sounds, New Names”.
The first of these on our program is no stranger to our audience, Patrick Burns, adjunct professor of music at Montclair State University. He has well over 50 compositions for wind band under his pen and is sought after to write commissioned works. His works for symphonic band are performed by bands of every level throughout the country, including The United States Army Band ( “Pershing’s Own”), as well as, conservatory and military bands in Sweden, Russia, Japan, and China. In 2003, HWS commissioned one of his earlier works, Enchanted Night, in celebration of our 19th season. You can hear a recording of it here. We will feature his latest piece, Fawn Grove Fanfare, commissioned in 2022 by the Bel Air Community Band.
Next on the program is Andrew William Kadar, a sophomore music composition major at Ithaca College. He started dabbling in middle school, writing his first complete piece in high school. He was “dissatisfied with the methods of expressing my musicianship and I had this fascination through high school and late middle school of developing my musicality rather than simply technique or working on harmonic understanding. It all came to a point around [my] sophomore year, where I decided I want to be a composer and I wish to do this seriously.” The HWS will premiere his work The Sun Rises, which was commissioned by an anonymous benefactor.
We will round out the concert with Joe Marta, a junior music composition major at Rutgers University. He also got the bug for writing at an early age. “In 5th or 6th grade, there was a piece of music we were playing and I didn’t like the way it sounded. So, I went home and I was like, I think this would sound cooler if it went like this. I wrote it down on a little scrap of paper and eventually that turned into me writing my own things.” He became serious about composing in his freshman or sophomore year of high school, thinking he could go to school for this and do it for a living. He wrote his first piece for concert band in high school, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was never performed. The HWS is pleased to premiere his latest work for concert band entitled, North.
Mark your calendar for
Wednesday, February 15, 2023 at 7:00 pm
at Memorial Junior School in Whippany!
Please join us at a post-concert reception in the lobby.
Light refreshments will be served.
