Alyssa Grey
Berry College

Great rehearsals begin with thorough knowledge of a musical score. The deeper we investigate a piece, the more effectively we can anticipate students’ challenges and encourage musical moments during rehearsals. In this session, Grey will lead attendees through hands-on score study and explore ways to convey musical concepts through rehearsal techniques.

Score access provided by J.W. Pepper.

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Giovani Briguente
Presbyterian College

Brazilian music literature is vast and incredibly rich. It can add a myriad of genres, styles, forms, rhythms, harmonies, and colorful orchestrations to your program. This presentation presents Brazilian wind band selections from grades 6 to 2, their unique musical features, length, instrumentation, and easy ways to acquire the materials. Have you heard of Villani-Cortês and Osvaldo Lacerda? Now, imagine if Grainger and Holst were unknown to you. That’s what you are missing!

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Chris Westover-Muñoz
Denison University

"Art is not a mirror reflecting reality, but a [band] with which to shape it." -Bertolt Brecht (misheard at a band concert)

While wind-bands have long been associated with the exhibition of power and functioned as representations of the state/military and dominant culture, they also have a legacy as musical agents of direct action against the very means of power they more frequently reinforce. These two traditions of “band-ing”(1) are often considered as discrete domains; one that encompasses the potentially exclusionary and erasing values of high-art, patriotism (or nationalism), and strict hierarchies, and another that embraces the values of community (or social engagement), political action, and activism, especially in public spaces. I contend that we can see that these traditions in relationship with each other and understand their unique expressions of the band idiom as reflecting the values they embrace.

This paper considers “band-ing” as a social aesthetic practice in order to consider the politics embedded in each of the elements of the genre, its individual works and “the social relations inscribed in [their] production, circulation, and reception.” The paper draws connections between the wind-band’s past and present to show how it aesthetically reinforces dominant values, codes of conduct, and world-views. It thereby articulates characteristics of activist “band-ing” and demonstrates several approaches from different traditions. In this way, the paper establishes models by which establishment bands can consider the politics of their practice, see the relationship between their tradition and activist/countercultural traditions, and forge a more inclusive approach to making music in our discipline.

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