OBU to host wind ensemble concert
ARKADELPHIA — Ouachita Baptist University will host the Ouachita Wind Ensemble in concert at 7:30 p.m. March 6 in Jones Performing Arts Center on Ouachita’s campus. The concert is free and open to the public.
“I am very excited to share our music with the audience,” Craig Hamilton, Ouachita’s Lena Goodwin Trimble professor of music and director of bands, said. “I think the audience will enjoy the concert we have prepared for them.”
The concert will begin with “Rhosymedre” by Ralph Vaughan Williams and arranged by Walter Beeler; “Four Maryland Songs” by Jack Stamp, which includes “At the Edge of the Choptank River,” ”A Maryland Road,” “A Fisherman’s Sonnet” and “The Sires of Seventy-Six;” “Chester Overture for Band” by William Schuman; and “Pequeña Czarda” by Pedro Iturralde and transcribed by Roger Niese. The concert will conclude with “Miniature Suite,” which includes “Intriot: Tin Riot,” “Echo Dreams,” “Eristic Zeal,” “The Low Are of the Sun” and “Irrational Joy,” by Steven Bryant.
“Four Maryland Songs” will feature solo vocalist Esther Atkinson, a senior musical theater major from Rogers. Atkinson also plays flute in the ensemble. “Pequeña Czarda” will feature soloist Morgan Taylor, a junior music industry major from Hot Springs, on saxophone. Taylor won the honor of being a featured soloist by winning Ouachita’s 2017 Francis and Mary McBeth Wind and Percussion Concerto Competition.
Atkinson noted that “Four Maryland Songs” is “really a cool piece. Stamp picked four poems written by people from Maryland or about Maryland and set it to music. One of my favorites is the ‘Fisherman’s Sonnet,’ where he basically says something along the lines of, ‘If there ain’t fishin’ in Heaven, I ain’t going!’”
“The pieces we are playing are in no way traditional but they are most definitely unique. Each one provokes an emotional response,” percussionist Grace Steiner, a junior psychology major from Farmington, said. “It doesn’t matter who you are; this music makes you feel something, and I’m so happy to be a part of it.”
“Expect to have tunes that will be stuck in your head as you leave,” Atkinson added. “Soloist Morgan Taylor absolutely kills it in playing ‘Pequeña Czarda.’”
The concert also will be livestreamed at http://www.obu.edu/band. Email Hamilton at hamiltonc@obu.edu or call 870-245-5137 for more information.