VSU Concert Band, Special Guests from Berrien High School Perform April 24

VALDOSTA — Valdosta State University’s 54-member Concert Band will perform at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 24, in Whitehead Auditorium. Admission is free of charge and open to the public.

The VSU Concert Band will perform Mother Earth (A Fanfare), which composer David Maslanka’s describes as an urgent call “to be extremely alive and aware in our present moment, to become awake to the needs of our beloved planet, and to respond to it as a living entity.”

The VSU Concert Band will continue with Shenandoah, as composed by Frank Ticheli and inspired by the American folk song of the same name.

“In my setting of Shenandoah I was inspired by the freedom and beauty of the folk melody and by the natural images evoked by the words, especially the image of a river,” Ticheli notes. “I was less concerned with the sound of a rolling river than with its life-affirming energy, its timelessness. Sometimes the accompaniment flows quietly under the melody; other times it breathes alongside it. The work’s mood ranges from quiet reflection, through growing optimism, to profound exaltation.”

The VSU Concert Band will then perform E.E. Bagley’s National Emblem, one of the all-time great American marches, and Variations on a Korean Folk Song, as inspired by the Korean folk song Arirang, which composer John Barnes Chance heard while in South Korea with the United States Army in the late 1950s. 

The concert will open with a special guest performance by the Berrien High School Jazz Band, followed by the Berrien High School Symphonic Band. Their program lineup features Don’t Let Up by Erik Sherburne, Brass Machine by Mark Taylor, Blue Skies by Roger Holmes, Silvercrest by James Swearingen, Drums of the Saamis by Samuel Hazo, and Flourish for Winds by Gary Fagan.

Whitehead Auditorium is located on the first floor of VSU’s Fine Arts Building, at the intersection of Oak Street and Brookwood Drive.

Contact Dr. Benjamin Harper, director of athletic bands at VSU, at bgharper@valdosta.edu or (229) 249-4965 to learn more.