The UCLA Wind Ensemble presents its first concert of winter quarter, joined by the community based Los Angeles Winds, Stephen Piazza, conductor. The program is anchored by musical works inspired by visual art.
The UCLA Wind Ensemble opens the concert with Zhou Tian’s Petals of Fire, a response to Cy Twombly’s 1989 painting of the same name. Kelijah Dunton’s Stillwater is an homage to one of the oldest towns in Minnesota and the natural beauty of a frozen lake. The first half of the concert ends with Los Angeles-based composer Adam Schoenberg’s Picture Studies, originally commissioned, premiered, and recorded (earning a Grammy nomination) by the Kansas City Symphony as a “21st-century Pictures at an Exhibition” based on works from the collection of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. The Los Angeles Winds take the stage after a brief intermission to play the venerable Mark Hindsley transcription of Maurice Ravel’s iconic orchestration of Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.