Laurier Wind Orchestra: Program Notes

March 24, 2026

Pawn to E4

Owen Maughan, born 2004, grew up in Muskoka Parry Sound, Ontario. He was encouraged to take piano lessons starting at 6 years old but dropped piano after 5 years to pursue his interests in sports and athletics. During high school, his love for music was rekindled, and he taught himself to play the saxophone for the high school bands, playing both classical and jazz styles of music. When the pandemic caused by Covid-19 hit and performance opportunities were reduced, he started teaching himself the piano again. Owen is currently a student in his final year at Wilfrid Laurier University, and discovered his passion for composition, writing for chamber groups, orchestra and wind band. We are thrilled to perform this world premiere of Own’s work, Pawn to E4, and grateful to have him as part of the ensemble as it happens!

Owen wrote Pawn to E4 for the Laurier Wind Orchestra, and shares his inspiration in his program notes:

“When I was young, my dad taught me how to play chess. I would lose over and over, but every now and then, from either luck or mercy, I would win a game. That excitement from strategizing and having every game be so different has stuck with me, so when I started thinking of how I wanted my first wind ensemble piece to sound, I knew I wanted it to be exciting as the chaotic, thrilling game where you always must think 5 moves ahead while trying to anticipate and adapt to what your opponent does next. Just two people in a battle of wits, with endless possibilities. Pawn to E4 captures the wide range of emotions and different situations a chess player finds themselves in during a game and the title comes from my go to starter move since I was a kid.”

Don Ricardo

Gabriel Musella (Gabe) is an American composer and educator, and graduate of Texas Tech University, holding a Bachelor of Music in composition and Master of Music in conducting. He has taught for over twenty years in the Texas public school system and is currently the director of bands at Spring High School in Spring, Texas. Mr. Musella is also an active composer with works for band, orchestra, percussion ensemble, and chamber groups. His compositions have been performed at major music conferences in the United States and abroad. He is the recipient of an ASCAP Plus Award and a Reviewer’s Choice Award from The Instrumentalist for his composition McKamy Variations.

Don Ricardo is a paso doble written in the Spanish tradition. It is dedicated to Richard Crain, Musella’s predecessor as former director of music of the Spring Independent School District in Texas, long-time Texas high school band director, and Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinics Board former president. The explosive and powerful introduction of this piece seamlessly drops off to reveal its genuine Latin spirit. The enchanting melodies and driving rhythms transport the listener to a distant time and place, where Latin-inspired harmonies, rhythmic patterns and instrumentation bring to life a vibrant musical story line.

Memories of Agatha

Lindsay Stetner (b. 1976) is a composer, performer and public-school educator in Regina, Saskatchewan. Her works have reflected the need for quality and accessible Canadian compositions in not only professional concert halls but also elementary school gyms. She received her Bachelor of Music Composition and Bachelor of Education degrees from the University of Regina, Master of Education from University of Saskatchewan, and Master of Music Composition from the University of Calgary, where she studied with Dr. William Jordan, Dr. David Eagle and Allan Gordon Bell.

Stetner has a wide variety of works in a wide variety of genres including small ensembles, orchestral, choral, band and on-site theatre productions. Over the years, her works have been played by the Regina Symphony Orchestra, Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, and university, high school and junior high school bands. The blending of composer and educator has allowed Stetner ensure that students are aware that composers are not just a name on the top of a piece of music. Recently, she has begun to think more pedagogically about her writing for young bands by bringing in Canadian First Nations content into choral and band works.

Memories of Agatha was written about a favourite foster cat from the Regina Cat Rescue, in Regina Saskatchewan, where Stetner volunteers. One spring, the little black-furred “house panther” went missing, and despite extensive searches, met her untimely end in the dangers of the wild. This piece is both memory and mourning, and you can see Agatha’s twisting around for pats in the winding suspensions and harmonies of the opening, with long lyrical lines creating beautiful musical vistas to explore. Lindsay is donating a portion of every sale of this work to the Regina Cat Rescue and encourages her audience to consider helping out your own local rescue organizations.

Symphony in B-flat

German composer Paul Hindemith immigrated to the United States in 1940 to protect his Jewish wife from the increasing threat of the Nazis, and they became citizens in 1946. He taught at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut and was a major influence on many important composers of the latter half of the twentieth century. He developed his own system of tonality, ranking intervals in importance by their degree of dissonance, which could result in an academic, unappealing mass of notes, but with his careful care is used to charm and confound his audience. Believing firmly in the need for accessible music education, Hindemith is a staple in the solo repertory of every instrument, as he created sonatas and educational music for each instrument to learn how they best work and their technical challenges.

The Symphony in B-flat is a cornerstone of the wind band repertoire. Hindemith wrote it in 1951 on a commission from “Pershing’s Own” United States Army Band. Its three movements use well-established Classical and Baroque approaches to form and thematic development in Hindemith’s unique harmonic idiom. The first movement is an intense energy opening, simultaneously introducing the two themes that form the entire work, one presented in the trumpets that is lyrical and spins out over an energetic woodwind energy “screen”, and the other a short insistent burst from the low brass. The second movement features a duet between saxophone and trumpet performing lines similar to the songs of a tired cabaret singer, harkening back to Hindemith’s roots. Interrupted by an insistent dance, the two contrasting sections are brought together to work as partners at the end of the movement. Paying homage to Bach in the third and final movement, the Fugue is actually two separate fugues, very different in style and content, they are also brought together in juxtaposition, along with the reappearance of the very first trumpet melody, tying up the long harmonic development of the journey with a cacophonous closing.