Returning to campus after concert tours that spanned central Europe and the Midwest, the Gustavus Wind Orchestra and Gustavus Choir will present their annual Home Concerts in Christ Chapel on Saturday, February 11. The Wind Orchestra, under the direction of Douglas Nimmo, opens the afternoon with its concert at 3:00 p.m. The Gustavus Choir and conductor Gregory Aune complete the day with a concert beginning at 7:30 p.m. Both events are free and open to the public.
The Gustavus Wind Orchestra returns to the campus after a 17-day concert tour which began in Germany and took the ensemble through the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Austria, before returning to Germany for its final concert and flight home. The ensemble traveled the footsteps it made in 1994 when it first traveled to central Europe. Its concert includes works commissioned for this tour including Light of My Soul, a new work by acclaimed composer David Gillingham and its opening fanfare by Steve Wright, professor of trumpet and jazz at Gustavus. Among other works by Percy Grainger, John Williams and Frank Ticheli, the band will perform Eric Ewazen’s A Hymn for the Lost and the Living, a work portraying the painful days following the attacks of September 11, 2001. This piece, and the band’s encore Nearer My God To Thee were among the most emotional and appreciated works on the recent central European tour.
The Gustavus Choir and conductor Gregory Aune return from a 10-day concert tour which included public concerts and high school clinics throughout Minnesota and Wisconsin. Gregory Aune has developed a program including Jacobus Gallus’ Ascendit Deus, Henry Purcell’s Hear My Prayer, O Lord, Pablo Casals’ O Vos Omnes and Eric Whitacre’s Lux Aurumque, first performed by the Choir at the 2005 Christmas in Christ Chapel. Also included in the program are El Hambo, composed by Jaakko Mantyjarvi and the southern folk hymn, My Song in the Night, arranged by Paul Christiansen.
Both concerts in Christ Chapel are free and open to the public and will be followed by opportunities for the community to meet and visit with the members and conductors of the two ensembles.