Wind Symphony: "Almost a Night at the Movies"

Name: Wind Symphony: "Almost a Night at the Movies"
Start: 2025-11-19T20:00:00-06:00
Location: Center for the Performing Arts at Illinois State University

Schedule

Wed, 19 Nov, 2025 at 08:00 pm

UTC-06:00

Location

Center for the Performing Arts at Illinois State University | Normal, IL

Illinois State University Wind Symphony
Anthony C. Marinello, conductor
Colby Powers, graduate conductor
Tommy Shermulis, bass clarinet
Wednesday, November 19, 2025, 8:00 P.M.
Illinois State University Center for Performing Arts
“Almost a Night at the Movies”
Björk Guðmundsdóttir – Overture from “Dancer in the Dark”
Christopher M. Nelson – Wayfaring Stranger
Colby Powers, graduate conductor
Ferrar Ferran (b. 1966) – The Castle of Dr Bassclar
Tommy Shermulis, bass clarinet
Winner of the 2021 Wind Symphony Concerto Competition
Paul Hindemith, tr. Wilson – Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes of Carl Maria von Weber
You can also view this concert via our livestream. Information can be found at https://finearts.illinoisstate.edu/live/
Titled Almost a Night at the Movies, the Wind Symphony presents music with direct and indirect connections to the music of the stage and screen. The concert opens with Icelandic musician Björk’s Overture from the movie Dancer in the Dark. Björk starred in the lead role as an immigrant factory worker who suffers from a degenerative eye condition and is saving for an operation to prevent her young son from suffering the same fate.
Graduate conducting student Colby Powers will then conduct Christopher Nelson’s exceptional setting of the American folk song classic Wayfaring Stranger. Recorded by countless artists, the song was also featured in numerous films including the epic Civil War drama Cold Mountain and the dynamic World War I film 1917.
The Wind Symphony proudly welcomes back School of Music and Wind Symphony alumnus Tommy Shermulis to perform Ferrar Ferran’s entertaining The Castle of Dr Bassclar. The composition is a showpiece for the bass clarinet (an instrument that does not often take center stage) that depicts through music and acting the storyline of Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella “Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” that has been adapted for stage productions and films.
Tommy Shermulis was the 2021 winner of the Wind Symphony Concerto Competition but was unable to perform the piece with the Wind Symphony due to the restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic. We are overjoyed to welcome him back to perform the piece!
The concert will close with Keith Wilson’s transcription of Paul Hindemith’s Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes of Carl Maria von Weber. Hindemith’s use of Weber’s themes are what modern audiences might describe as “upcycling” or a creative reuse process of transforming lesser-known products into new materials of greater value. None of the themes have any direct connection to films, but Hindemith’s masterful orchestration and distinctive harmonic language lend an accessibility and to his music for audiences to have an imaginative experience.
In his 1952 collection of lectures A Composer’s World, Hindemith proclaimed, “The reactions music evokes are not feelings, but they are the images, memories of feelings.” When the listener considers Hindemith’s viewpoint, one can understand how his work shares a similar aim as film music.