Hodgson Wind Ensemble, Always Full of Surprises

Rounding out this season’s Thursday Scholarship Series is UGA’s Hodgson Wind Ensemble, led by Director of Bands and conducting area chair Cynthia Johnston Turner. The concert will take place on Thursday, April 19th at 7:30 in Hodgson Concert Hall.

Audience members may need to buckle their seat belts as the program begins with a bang. Under the baton of graduate conducting student Bradley Esau, the Hodgson Wind Ensemble will treat everyone to a brass tour-de-force fanfare by Australian composer Katy Abbott entitled Punch! 

The mainstay of the program is a suite by Adam Schoenberg entitled Picture Studies, a 21st century approach to Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. “The suite is made up of tuneful, rhythmic, engaging, and beautifully scored responses to art, including Van Gogh, Miro, and Kandinsky,” says Johnston Turner. While these pieces are being performed, visual renderings of the artwork will be projected. The combination of the visuals and the music highlights the difference between viewing art in a museum and listening to music in a concert hall, in a museum a viewer can move on to the next piece if one doesn’t resonate as much. However, with live music the audience must stay in the same space with the performance.

“What Schoenberg has done is forced me to look deeper into a piece of art that I otherwise wouldn’t study. In the process, I have been charmed at the discovery of elements that I didn’t see at first glance,” says Johnston Turner.

The audience is in for a treat as the Hodgson Wind Ensemble is transformed into a jazz “big band” for Riffs! by composer Jeff Tyzik. The piece is a fun, wild ride which includes a jazz drumming soloist, featuring percussionist Timothy Adams, the Mildred Goodrum Heyward Professor of Music. Throughout the piece, the performers will take everyone on journey of swing styles, and an infectious Afro-Cuban groove.

There may be some surprising encores guaranteed to get your feet tappin’!

Tickets for the concert are $20 for adults and $6 for students and can be purchased online at pac.uga.edu, by phone at 706-542-4400, or in person at the box office. For those unable to attend this event, the concert will be streamed at music.uga.edu/streaming. The Hugh Hodgson School of Music sponsors more than 350 performances each year. To view the school’s performance calendar and learn more about the School of Music, please click HERE.