By Taylor Jones
With programs opened wide like newspapers, audience members trickle into Sherwood Hall, Salinas, to watch the St. Olaf College Band perform their 2012 winter tour, titled Winds In Motion. The ensemble hails from Northfield, Minnesota, and has traveled to countries including Japan, Norway, England, Ireland, and Mexico under conductor Timothy Mahr since 1994.
Narrow columns of wood line the high walls, popping like pinstripes, and the sections between them flow like rivers to a sea of blue that covers the ceiling. One by one, band members file up the staircase. Each instrument they carry adds more depth to the stage and more sound to the frenzy of tuning and warm-ups. The band is made up of nearly one hundred students, spanning a wide range of majors from music to biology, and tonight their differences in study are dwarfed by their shared passion for music.
One student with an obvious passion for music is euphonium player Eric Choate, a music theory and composition major. Mahr welcomes Choate to the conductor’s chair to direct a piece he developed titled “Windmills.” The song sways back and forth between two gentle chords, and the percussionists’ syncopation between ambient bells and triangles create an effect of distant wind chimes on a farm. You can close your eyes and picture a lonely windmill being comforted by a slight breeze. Ending in a slow fade of woodwinds, you focus intently on the decrescendo until the bassoons’ very last breath.
The orchestra has an immense presence, and although they are a large group, their sound blends like fresh cream on hot chocolate. It is almost as if you can see the sound being passed from section to section. Horns blend into the clarinets as they trade the melody, and each transition is carried out with undoubted ease. The music is so filled with emotion and depth that you cannot do anything but pay attention and soak it all up. I am transfixed. I cannot think about anything outside of Sherwood Hall, and not due to a personal lack of cognizance, but rather due to how gripping the music is.
The ensemble begins “Symphony No. 9,” —a segment of the seventy-four minute symphony they will be performing in May— with a very slow dialogue between the grand piano and the claves. This dialogue soon evolves into an open conversation with layers of brass and woodwinds. The song builds as if the musicians were climbing a mountain. And when they reach the top, they convey a feeling of overwhelming achievement. Somehow this brings me a great sense of nostalgia and I feel like crying. In fact, I feel like sobbing. With restraint, I keep my composure, but what is interesting to note is that all forms of music can make you share an emotion (let’s say this emotion is your “destination”), but concert music differs in the journey to that destination. It can take you on an adventure, make a couple of wrong turns, get you lost, and you’ll finally end up somewhere you didn’t expect to go, but inevitably enjoy the visit.
In admiration of this music, I am baffled at the amount of people in the audience who do not show the musicians their due respect. Mind these rules at any performance and you will be appreciated: turn off your cell phone (vibrate doesn’t count), do not bring a baby, and do not clap until the conductor’s hands are down. The only things pending my zone of listening to the music are a few ring tones and kids playing around.
Next, Mahr presents a piece that he composed called “Passages.” The song is dedicated to a late friend Mahr performed with while they were students at St. Olaf. Mahr says the work is symbolic of the “passages in our lives,” transcending many moods and stages. The piano starts; life begins with a feeling of lightness and love, followed by darkness and grief. The music is personified as it battles and recovers from tragedy. Wielding his instrument like a samurai, a percussionist lets the vibrations of the crash cymbals carry the sound throughout the hall. The band starts tapping their wrists, simulating a falling rain. The rain is a sign of the man feeling down, but he soon regains his spirits in a triumphant uproar. After life’s many twists and turns, time slowly comes to an end as the chimes strike like a clock tower. With a last farewell from the piano, the cycle of life ends in a reflection of how it began.
On a final note, the band performs “Limerick Daydreams,” a song that relies on a speedy percussion section. It begins in a mysterious mood, the snare drum turned off to create a jungle-type tone. With powerful movement, trills run through the clarinet section, which are soon interrupted by a bursting transition into a tribal drum break. The drummers are syncopated with each other like machines in a dynamic call and response between themselves and the rest of the band. This debate comes to an end as the music takes on a gentle feel, like a hot-air balloon that got lost in the clouds and stumbled across a hidden castle in the sky. As quick as the percussionist raises two sticks high above his head, he suddenly strikes down at the China cymbal, unleashing a crash that brings the piece to a close and the audience to their feet. A standing ovation is much deserved after St. Olaf has proven to be such dynamic performers.
Alas, the last trick up their sleeves is to invite the Youth Orchestra Salinas (YOSAL) onstage to perform “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” with them. Mixed into their prospective sections, the children wear ear-to-ear smiles on their faces as they play alongside the college students. Mahr has a few kids come up and conduct the song with him, amused by a tidal wave of bubbles that flow over the musicians. The St. Olaf Band proves how the musical theory of mind brings people of all ages and ethnicities together. When the rest of the world can’t seem to live in peace, music allows us to live together in harmony.
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