Symphonic Band

A Christmas Carol: Stories, Traditions, and Celebration

Christmas music can evoke far more than the familiar sounds of the holiday. It can tell stories, preserve folk traditions, summon memories, and create a sense of wonder through the power of sound. Tonight’s program explores these possibilities through four works that approach the Christmas season from distinctly different perspectives, moving from a dramatic new interpretation of a beloved literary classic to the intimate sounds of folk song and the majestic sonorities of a sweeping musical celebration. ‘Christmas’ music in this sense is not beholden to the Christian traditions, but recognizes them balancing the sacred, secular, and even the fantastical.

The concert opens with the world premiere of A Christmas Carol (2026) by Erika Svanoe, a new work for concert band accompanied by motion graphics created by Erik Evensen. Developed in collaboration with Bowling Green State University Bands, this approximately eleven-minute work brings together live musical performance and visual storytelling to reimagine Charles Dickens’s enduring tale. Evensen’s striking illustrations evoke the story’s shadowy, atmospheric world, from Scrooge’s encounters with supernatural visitors to the haunting prospect of a future he may still have the power to change. The interplay of music and imagery brings new immediacy to Scrooge’s journey from isolation and fear toward generosity and renewed humanity. By combining the expressive possibilities of the wind band with cinematic visual storytelling, Svanoe and Evensen invite audiences to experience a familiar literary classic in a fresh and compelling way. This world premiere celebrates both the enduring power of Dickens’s story and the creative possibilities that emerge when composers, visual artists, and performers collaborate.

From Dickens’s Victorian England, the program turns to the English folk tradition with Percy Grainger’s The Sussex Mummers’ Carol (1916, edited 1988), performed under the direction of guest conductor Dr. Pamornpan Komolpamorn. The carol was collected by English folksong scholar Lucy E. Broadwood, whose efforts helped preserve the traditional songs and musical practices of rural communities. Grainger’s interest in such music connected him to a wider movement to document and celebrate England’s musical heritage, a pursuit shared by composers and collectors including Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst. This tradition also provides a link to Grainger’s own Lincolnshire Posy, his celebrated suite inspired by folk songs he collected in Lincolnshire. The tradition of mumming involved groups of performers who traveled through communities during festive seasons, presenting dramatic entertainments and singing traditional songs. In The Sussex Mummers’ Carol, the distinctive character of a traditional seasonal song becomes a musical portrait of communal celebration, connecting the wind band repertoire to the voices, customs, and cultural memory of generations past.

The program then returns to the title A Christmas Carol, this time through the imagination of American composer Charles Ives. Dating from around 1894, when Ives was a young composer in New England, A Christmas Carol is Song No. 100 in his celebrated collection 114 Songs. Ives’s musical roots were deeply connected to the band tradition: his father, George Ives, was a Civil War bandmaster who later led community ensembles in their hometown of Danbury, Connecticut. Growing up surrounded by marches, hymns, and the sounds of bands performing in public spaces helped shape Charles’s lifelong fascination with the musical experiences of everyday American life. He would eventually become one of the most influential American composers of the twentieth century, receiving the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1947 for his Symphony No. 3. Heard tonight in an arrangement by Steven Paxton, this early song offers a more intimate glimpse of Ives’s musical world, reminding us that a Christmas carol can be both a reflection of cultural tradition and a deeply personal expression of the season that is not exclusive to a Christian tradition.

The concert concludes with Alfred Reed’s Russian Christmas Music (1944/1947), a landmark of the symphonic wind band repertoire. Reed’s connection to the music of his time was not merely academic: during World War II, he served with the 529th Army Air Forces Band, working as a radio production director and associate conductor while writing and arranging music for military broadcasts. Composed in 1944 during his military service, Russian Christmas Music was written for a concert intended to encourage goodwill between the United States and the Soviet Union during the war. Reed subsequently expanded and revised the work, creating the version that became a cornerstone of the developing wind band repertoire. Drawing on the sounds and traditions of Russian Orthodox Christmas, the music unfolds through contrasting episodes of youthful innocence, chant-like solemnity, lyrical warmth, and monumental grandeur. It grows from intimate beginnings into a powerful, expansive conclusion, demonstrating the extraordinary expressive range of the wind band.

Together, these four works reveal Christmas not as a single musical or cultural tradition, but as a season shaped by storytelling, community, faith, memory, and imagination. From the supernatural drama of Dickens’s world to the communal spirit of English folk song, the personal voice of a young American composer, and the grandeur of the musical expression of the Russian Orthodox church, tonight’s program invites us to hear familiar traditions anew. It asks us to reflect on the generosity, connection, transformation, and shared humanity at the heart of the season – certainly traits and attributes that are not exclusive to a single, or any, religious ideology.

-Program noted developed in part through conversations with ChatGPT

Flute
Macy Pohorence
Johnathan Robinson, piccolo
Holly Smith
Evelyn Purdin
Makayla Mutti
Cassie Fisher
Tiffany Mam
Jenna Schumaker

Oboe
Ramon Kulwicki
Ian Stiner
CJ Brown

Bassoon
Audrey Benson
Corbin Johns
Sean Hayes
Riley Burchard

Clarinet
Keller Shea
Morgan Thompson
Madison Inkrott
Rachel Dhaseleer
Chris Boyes
Jerod Reid
Cee Costello
Philip Kapp
Reagan Fairbanks
Amaya Newton

Saxophone
Helen Kangas
Kaynen Mims
Yangzihao Wu
Brittney Vonalt
Mitchel Daniel
Izaiah Ramos
Aaron Hallman

Trumpet
Evan Picchioni, Co-Principal
Alex Preston, Co-Principal
Jonathan Perez-Blanco
Courtney Woerlein
Elliott Shenberger
Connor Yorke
Addison Edwards
Tyler Heuerman
Blaine Mitchell

Horn
Ash Behn, Co-Principal
Emma Clement, Co-Principal
John Hennessy
Rowen Raynes
Jacob Phillips
Evan Gerard
Mason Gano

Trombone
Daniel Herman
Mason Armitage
Sofia Viers
Benji Chang
Michael Carlozzi
Zach Haas
Michael Ferraro, bass

Euphonium
Alex Stetson
Hannah Crowe

Tuba
Benton Harris
Noah White
Trey Reed
Tyler Huntington

Percussion
Aiden Barrows
Andrew Fulk 
Emily Brand
Sarah Hertenstein
Noah Lindsey
El Wisniewski
Noah Lancianesse

Bass
Leon Bautista