The NMMU Music Department will present a Wind and Big Band Concert on 1 October 2014 at 19:30, NMMU South Campus Auditorium.
This combined concert is a new addition to the Music Department’s annual calendar of events and will showcase the Department’s premier brass and reeds student ensembles: the NMMU Wind Band and the NMMU Big Band. The ensembles will be performing a broad selection of works from the western art music and jazz genres.
The first half of the concert will feature the Wind Band which is conducted by Professor Erik Albertyn and Michael Tobias. This thirty piece brass and reeds ensemble includes flutes, saxophones, clarinets, trumpets, trombones, french horns and bassoons. This outstanding combination of wind instruments will perform, amongst other notable works from the western art music canon, Shostakovich’s Festive Overture and Toccata for Band by Ericsson. Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Phantom of the Opera will also make an appearance; a rendition of Jimmy Van Heusen’s jazzy evergreen Ain’t that a Kick in the Head will close the first half, thereby setting the scene for the NMMU Big Band who will perform in the second half of the show.
Under the directorship of Jazz Studies Lecturer John Edwards, the NMMU Big Band has become a popular semi-professional ensemble and public concerts in recent years include Isisusa at the Opera House and a main stage performance at the Richmond Hill Street Music Festival.
In typical big band style, the rhythm section will power the brass and reed sections in upbeat renditions of popular American and South African jazz standards which will include Herbie Hancock’s Chameleon and Abdullah Ibrahim’s Chisa. The musical divide between the classical and jazz genres will be straddled by performances of Liebertango by Astor Piazzola and a big band orchestration by Edwards of a Minuet by Bach.
Don’t miss this premier event which will undoubtedly become a much anticipated regular concert in the future.
Entrance to the concert is R40 adults, R20 pensioners and R10 students.
Alan Straton
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