Wind Orchestra Fall 2026 Program Notes

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Nicole Piunno holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in composition and a Master of Music degree in theory pedagogy from Michigan State University, studying with Ricardo Lorenz. She earned a Master of Music degree in composition at Central Michigan University, studying with David Gillingham.  A frequent guest at universities and festivals in the United States, her works for wind ensemble have been performed by ensembles around the world, including “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band, and her music has also been featured at prestigious music education conference performances and all-state honours bands. Her chamber music has been performed around the world and showcased at conferences such as the Percussive Arts Society International Convention, the International Trumpet Guild Conference, the International Trombone Festival, and the International Tuba and Euphonium Conference.

Be Still and Still Moving uses a chorale tune from Jean Sibelius’ programmatic work, Finlandia, which became a national hymn of Finland in defiance of Russian occupation in the early 1900s, entreating for sovereignty and peaceful existence:

     This is my song, O God of all the nations,/ A song of peace for lands afar and mine./ This is my home, the country where my heart is;/ Here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine.

Sibelius’ melody was adopted with new words as a Christian hymn, and Piunno felt inspired by the lyrics speaking of trust and steadfastness in the second verse:

     Be still, my soul! your God does undertake/ To guide the future as he has the past;/ Your hope, your confidence, let nothing shake;/ all now mysterious shall be bright at last.

Be Still and Still Moving revels in the paradox of finding rest in the midst of chaos and being still while continuing to move forward.

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Grammy-winning composer and conductor Eric Whitacre is one of the most popular musicians of our time. His concert music has been performed throughout the world, while his ground-breaking Virtual Choirs have united singers from over 120 different countries. A graduate of the prestigious Juilliard School of Music, Eric currently holds the position of Artist in Residence with the Los Angeles Master Chorale.

Whitacre writes in the score “October is my favorite month. Something about the crisp autumn air and the subtle change in light always make me a little sentimental, and as I started to sketch I felt that same quiet beauty in the writing. The simple, pastoral melodies and subsequent harmonies are inspired by the great English romantics (Vaughan Williams and Elgar) as I felt that this style was also perfectly suited to capture the natural and pastoral soul of the season. I'm quite happy with the end result, especially because I feel there just isn't enough lush, beautiful music written for winds.”

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Born in Liverpool and now based in Manchester, Emily Howard graduated in mathematics and computer science from Oxford University, before going on to study composition at the Royal Northern College of Music and the University of Manchester. Howard is Professor in Composition and Head of Artistic Research at the Royal Northern College of Music, and is a founder-director of PRiSM, the Royal Northern College of Music’s Centre for Practice & Research in Science & Music, dedicated to understanding what it means to be human and creative today.   

Howard’s works often take their inspiration from the shapes, structures, and phenomena of the natural world, as well as from literature, politics, and the visual arts. Her breakthrough came with her orchestral work Magnetite, an ode to the ancient magnetic mineral that features melodies that trace and ultimately escape from a crystalline lattice shape. Her following works for choir and orchestra are centered largely around concepts of social justice, and three different albums of her music have been recorded. In addition to her work at the Royal Northern College of Music, Howard was elected Honorary Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford in 2019. She has received two BASCA British Composer Awards, recognition from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, and in 2023, was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Arts. 

Deep Soul Diving was written as part of a series of commissions of by conductor Timothy Reynish in memory of his son. Howard responded to her former teacher’s request with this layered and intense piece that builds repeating motives to create waves of textural intensity, and contrasts in the middle of the work with a gently jazz-style waltz. 

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Elizabeth Raum is a Canadian oboist and composer who earned her Bachelor of Music degree in oboe performance from the Eastman School of Music in 1966 and her Master of Music degree in composition from the University of Regina in 1985. She played principal oboe in the Atlantic Symphony Orchestra in Halifax, Nova Scotia, for seven years before moving to Regina in 1975. She played principal oboe in the Regina Symphony Orchestra until her retirement in 2010. She continues to live and compose in Toronto, Ontario. Raum has established herself as one of Canada’s most eminent composers with commissions and performances taking place world-wide. 

The term, "Sodbuster" refers to one who breaks the sod. Written for the 1999 Saskatchewan Band Association, the inspiration comes as homage from the name given to the settlers who went to Saskatchewan over 100 years ago to settle and farm. They cut squares out of the sod, the grassy top layer of soil, and stacked them to make the walls of their tiny one room houses.

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Darius Milhaud was born to a Jewish family living in Paris, and he established himself there through his studies at the Paris Conservatoire. He met and formed a group of like-minded composers that called themselves Les Six, and dedicated theselves to creating works that were inspired by the French impressionist painters, using polytonality and bringing in influences from jazz and folk dances from the Americas. He and his family fled France in 1939 at the onset of WWII, and he secured a teaching position at a university in California.  

Suite Française was composed in 1944 as part of a series of original commissioned works for band. Milhaud’s first extended work for winds was premiered by the esteemed Goldman Band of New York City in 1945. The composer provided the following notes in the score:

The five parts of this suite are named after French provinces, the very ones in which the American and Allied armies fought together with the French underground for the liberation of my country – Normandy, Brittany, Ile-de-France (of which Paris is the center), Alsace-Lorraine, and Provence. I used some folk tunes of the provinces. I wanted the young Americans to hear the popular melodies of those parts of France where their fathers and brothers fought to defeat the German invaders who in less than seventy years have brought war, destruction, cruelty, torture, and murder, three times, to the peaceful and democratic people of France.

The first movement, Normandie, features two lively Norman folk songs: “Germaine”, the tale of a young woman’s soldier returning home, and “La bergere de France et le Roi d’Angleterre” (The French Shepherdess and the King of England), which in its original form depicts a comic meeting between the two title characters. Movement 2, Bretagne, begins with the invocation of a fog-horn, and quickly dives into the sea shanties “La Paimpolaise” (The People of Paimpol) and “Les marins de Groix” (The Sailors from Groix), and a third Breton folk song, “La chanson des metamorphoses”, invokes the transformation of the singer’s lover. The third movement, Ile-de-France, depicts the bustle of Paris with lively children’s songs that employ unusual beat emphasis, “A ma main droite j’ai un rosier” (I tend a rosebush with my right hand), “Voici la Saint-Jean” (Here is Saint John), a summer festival song, and “La belle au rosier blanc” (The Fair Maid of the White-Rose Tree).

Alsace-Lorraine takes a decidedly more melancholy turn, suggesting distant artillery fire around a solemn funeral procession, fitting for a region that has been fought over by France and Germany for generations. The main melody is original to Milhaud, but the juxtaposes a hauntingly slow version of “Voici le moi de Mai” (Here is the month of May). Provence, Milhaud’s childhood home, is joyous and innocent with melodies of his own creation, and the folk song “Magali”, another story of a lover transformed.